With two World Cups, a plethora of football and "Barbenheimer" at the cinema, domestic cricket is not exactly the sexiest way to pass the time.
Even within the wider cricket landscape, provincial cricket won’t be the principal item on the agenda. After the Cricket World Cup, South Africa will host India and then of course there’s the SA20. So the HollywoodBets Dolphins vs the Gbets Rocks that raises the curtain on the new season on September 16, in Durban, is understandably unlikely to garner much attention.
Nevertheless, the 2023/24 season looms as a crucial one for South African cricket. Besides the addition of the Domestic Women’s Professional League, this season’s Four-Day competition will be more closely monitored as Proteas Test coach Shukri Conrad tries to fill a squad for the tour to New Zealand, which will be missing household names because it is being played at the same time as the SA20 in January/February next year.
"Without domestic cricket you don’t have a national team, it's really that simple," said former Proteas and Bangladesh head coach Russell Domingo.
The 49-year-old, who oversaw the Proteas for four years guiding them to the semifinals of the T20 and 50-over World Cup and securing a Test series win in Australia in 2016, has taken on the coaching reins at the DP World (Central Gauteng) Lions.
"This is a fantastic job," said Domingo. "The Lions are one of the leading franchises in South Africa, they have a great group of players. I think that this is a big job, it's really satisfying to try and develop players and to win things here."
In addition to his own extensive international experience, Domingo has also got Hashim Amla on board as batting coach. "The young players are massively privileged to have someone like Hashim behind the nets, giving them information. He’s faced challenges about his technique, he’s faced challenges culturally, about his selection and eventually become one of the best players to ever play for South Africa."
Obviously there are financial implications, but when you look at it from the outside, they are playing too few Four-Day games.
— Domingo
With such a high-powered coaching staff, the Lions will be under pressure to not only win trophies — which they've done regularly in the past five years — but also to keep producing players for the Proteas.
"The job is two-fold: you have to win for the Lions and the other part of the job is to make South African cricket stronger, which is an important part of my role. If South African cricket is No.1 in the world, that will benefit all systems, there will be so much more resources available. I think I am mature enough to understand that if I have a player who is performing technically well enough at the Lions, but does not have the technical nous to perform at international level, then part of my job is to help him bridge that gap."
Doing so, of course, risks the player "being lost" to the union because of international duties, but that doesn’t bother Domingo.
"It’s not an issue for me as a coach. I have a clear understanding about what I need to do with the Lions and how I need to produce players for South Africa."
With the SA20 set to affect the availability of nationally contracted players for the tour to New Zealand, the importance of this season’s Four-Day competition, which starts in November, has increased. "I look at some of the Lions players here who will have a great opportunity to get picked for the Test side, and if that happens for the first time and they do something special in New Zealand, which is a strong team, it could set up their international career for years to come," said Domingo.
Although he hasn’t watched domestic cricket closely in the past few years given his international commitments, Domingo shares the same opinion as virtually every other provincial coach — local teams need to play a lot more.
"Obviously there are financial implications, but when you look at it from the outside, they are playing too few Four-Day games. Only seven Four-Day games, that’s not good, only seven One-Day Games, that is not good."
Drawing comparisons with England, where teams play up 10 One-Day games and 14 First Class matches, Domingo said the lack of match time was detrimental to player development.
"You could end up playing just six matches if there is a rain out somewhere or if the nationally contracted players come back, the provincially contracted guys get just five matches, those are the challenges (CSA) sits with.
"Once things settle down financially (CSA) definitely need to invest in more cricket for the players, particularly more Four-Day cricket," said Domingo.
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