Cricket South Africa’s marketing department has much to do if they want to build interest around a busy summer

Whether any of the KwaZulu-Natal Cricket Union’s internal review into the poor attendance at last week’s first Test at Kingsmead will be made public is uncertain, but it is clear there is no single factor at play.

At R50 apiece, tickets were priced reasonably, and the top two teams were playing. And it’s not as if Australia tour South Africa regularly. The last time they played in South Africa was a one-day series before the 2023 World Cup.

They last played Tests in South Africa in 2018 — a storied, transformative series. There was plenty from a sporting perspective that was extremely attractive in the latest match: the history between the teams, what it means for South Africa’s defence of the World Test Championship (WTC) title, and the quality of players in both teams.

None of that mattered to sports lovers in Durban. An average attendance of around 4,000 people a day made for a sparse background to what should have been a highlight on the local sports calendar. The overriding question is: why?

It needs to be said that violent protests on Thursday and Friday (when the Test started) didn’t help. Kingsmead is located less than 2km from Durban’s city centre, where the protests occurred, and police sirens could be heard blaring past the ground during the first session on Friday.

A number of other issues will no doubt arise, but one element that will be uncomfortable to confront is the Proteas team itself.

There’s nothing wrong with the players as such. In fact, for the most part they are fine role models, the majority of whom have young children, and last year’s WTC victory has given them something no other South African team could achieve.

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The problem is that, barring Temba Bavuma, Kagiso Rabada, Aiden Markram and David Miller (who is not in the Test team), the public generally doesn’t know the players.

It didn’t help that the side which won the WTC title didn’t get the opportunity to play on home soil last summer, owing to Cricket SOuth Africa’s (CSA) mishandling of scheduling.

The opening ODI against Australia was the first time Matthew Breetzke had played one in South Africa. Tristan Stubbs joked with medical staff that this season felt like his first summer in South Africa because he’d played only four of his 17 ODIs and six of his 15 Tests at home.

The South African public simply doesn’t know the players. Other than international cricket, which is broadcast on SABC, the rest of the sport, including the popular SA20, is on satellite TV, and provincial competitions are mostly streamed online. Domestic rugby and football are easier to find and therefore watch.

The players could do more to market themselves, but it’s also a job for CSA, which has a marketing department to build more awareness about the national players.

Given the absence of cricket last year, much more work had to be done by the CSA marketing department to build interest around a busy summer. Perhaps they got overconfident when all that controversy stirred around ticket purchases and applications for the Newlands Test involving England over the New Year.

However, the early start to the international season, the fact that Durban — where crowd support has dwindled so much that the Boxing Day Test was moved from to Centurion — was hosting the match, and the poor attendance at the first ODI should have focused attention.

There are several avenues to pursue: more should have been done through the SABC, where the majority of South Africans still access news, while the SA20 has shown how effectively social media platforms can be used to garner interest.

There is plenty of international cricket content over the next few months, so names like Ryan Rickelton, Lungi Ngidi, Keshav Maharaj, David Bedingham and Marco Jansen have the opportunity to grab the spotlight.

But CSA needs to understand that among the major three national sports, theirs is the one where the public awareness of the “stars” is much less than is the case for football and rugby. The need to work harder and more creatively in conjunction with the players to change that.