Cricket South Africa drops Nortje and de Kock from central contracts as Burger and de Zorzi earn their first

JOHANNESBURG (Agencies): Nandre Burger and Tony de Zorzi have earned their first national contracts while Andile Phehlukwayo has returned to the national fold, as Cricket South Africa announced their squad for the 2024-25 season on Tuesday. Dean Elgar (retired), Quinton de Kock, Sisanda Magala, Anrich Nortje, Wayne Parnell and Keegan Petersen have all dropped off the list which has reduced from 20 players to 18 for the upcoming season. Gerald Coetzee, who was upgraded to a full contract midway through the last period, has been retained. The most notable of those omissions is Nortje, who has not played an international since suffering a stress fracture in September 2023. He missed out on the ODI World Cup and the entire home summer but came back earlier this month for two domestic T20 matches and is expected to play at the IPL. Nortje is late to this year’s tournament following the birth of his first child last week, and may still come into consideration for the T20 World Cup. “He requested he wants to focus on T20 cricket for the next few months. He is not retiring from any internationals. He will avail himself for T20 internationals. Towards the end of the year, he will look to play ODIs again,” Enoch Nkwe, CSA’s director of cricket said. “We will be monitoring him and around to help him with whatever he needs.”

Another big name absentee is de Kock, who walked away from 50-over cricket after last year’s World Cup but at the time said he would remain available to play in T20 tournaments this year. De Kock did not play in South Africa’s three match series against India and opted for a deal at the Big Bash League instead, where he fared poorly. He scored 104 runs in six innings with a top score of 30, and returned home to a slightly better SA20 where he hit 213 runs in 12 innings, including one fifty. De Kock, who is currently at the IPL with Lucknow Super Giants, was allowed time off for personal reasons during the first few rounds of the CSA domestic T20 challenge – all other nationally contracted players apart from David Miller, who was getting married, were obliged to participate. “He will be available for the T20 World Cup but he understands he needs to perform. He wants to earn his place,” Nkwe said.

Magala has not played any cricket since last October and was ruled out of the ODI World Cup squad with a knee injury, Parnell continues to play for Western Province but spent parts of the season out of action with a shoulder injury and Petersen’s Test career seems to be hanging by a thread after he was dropped twice in two seasons. His biggest competitor in the Test squad, David Bedingham, has not been contracted. Kyle Verreynne, the current Test wicket-keeper, has also not been contracted. Instead, CSA handed out new deals to Burger, who debuted across all formats last year, and de Zorzi, who made his Test and ODI bow and recalled Phehlukwayo after dropping him from last year’s list. Phehlukwayo was part of the ODI World Cup squad, and played his first matches in the format in almost a year in 2023. The core of the contract list is unchanged, with Test and ODI captain Temba Bavuma and T20I captain Aiden Markram headlining the list and Miller and Heinrich Klaasen both contracted as white-ball only players. The national women’s contracted squad has increased from 15 players to 16 which has created space for both Eliz-Mari Marx and Ayanda Hlubi to earn deals. The only omission from last year is Shabnim Ismail, who retired last May. There was speculation that former captain Dane van Niekerk, who retired in March last year, may look to return ahead of this year’s T20 World Cup and though that could still be a possibility, she is not on the national contract list.