The complexities of being Kagiso Rabada

Kagiso Rabada isn't afraid to be black. When he bowls well, some of his white compatriots are reluctant to acknowledge that fact. In those plentiful instances, he is South African without caveat - his blackness goes unseen. But, should he perform below his own high standards, the racially poisoned questions start.

Is he trying less hard because, given CSA's racial selection target of a minimum of six black and brown players in every XI - at least two of them black - he knows he is unlikely to be left out? Can he afford to coast because no other black fast bowler could unseat someone of his stature? Is he lazy?

South Africa's black players have had those questions asked about them since the first, Makhaya Ntini, made his international debut in January 1998. That's more than 26 years of an undermining level of doubt and distrust that is never visited on South Africa's white players.

Whether they have earned their selection on merit is never asked. It is simply assumed they have, which is starkly different from the experience of South Africa's black and brown players.

The T20 World Cup in the United States and the Caribbean last month sharpened the focus on this disparity. Rabada was the only black player in a squad that included just five brown players. That's the smallest number of black and brown players South Africa have named in a World Cup squad, in both formats, since the 2016 T20 World Cup, when there were also six. There were eight at the 2019 and 2023 World Cups, and seven at the 2021 and 2022 T20 versions.

Previously, South Africa's squads have been chosen by a panel. Now they are picked solely by the coach. In the case of the white-ball squads, that's Rob Walter, who named a record-equalling eight black and brown players for last year's World Cup. He made clear when unveiling the T20 squad that the responsibility for finding and nurturing talent was CSA's, not his. And he is correct.

Similarly, it's not Rabada's job to be the best black fast bowler he can be. It's to be the best he can be, without caveat. Even so, did his singularity in the T20 World Cup squad, and what he knows from his own experiences as a black person in what remains a racially driven society despite the official end of apartheid in 1994, put extra pressure on him to perform?

"Not at all," Rabada told a press conference on Tuesday. "I'm a black player, yes. And if I should not be there on merit, that's fine - I'm not invincible, I can be dropped."

Theoretically, that's true. But, in practical terms, the fallout from leaving him out for a single match at the T20 World Cup would have been consequential. He duly played in all nine of South Africa's matches. Happily, that he deserved to was unarguable.

Rabada's class and experience shone through. His 13 wickets in the tournament was behind only Anrich Nortje's 15 among South Africa's fast bowlers, and his economy rate of 6.29 was bettered only by Ottneil Baartman's 4.94 and Nortje's 5.74.

"It would be such a heavy thought to have during a World Cup; thinking about yourself being the only black player in a team," Rabada said. "That seems like torture to me, and it takes away from the focus.

"But there are challenges and you ask a valid question because you wonder how players must have felt in the past, and how players in the future might feel. These are things you need to address.

"I can be brash about it and say, no, I didn't think about it too much. But I didn't. And I didn't put any pressure on myself. It was just about winning that cup. But, for other players, you never know how it feels. And what the media has to say about the situation can really mess up the players' psyche."

South Africa did not win the trophy, losing to India by seven runs in a white-knuckle final in Bridgetown. But that was the first time they had reached a men's World Cup final in 18 attempts. That they made it that far with so few black and brown players in their ranks would not have gone unnoticed.

"There are certain things we have to make peace with in South Africa because we have a unique landscape," Rabada said. "Transformation always seems to bubble up when we're at World Cups.

"You ask yourself what are some of the factors that might make a player feel that way, that they're the only black player? It's things like, 'We lost because of transformation or because we had to include players of colour or black Africans'. And if you ask yourself truthfully, looking back, have we not won a World Cup because of transformation? I mean, like, really?"

That will turn thoughts to the 2015 World Cup, when CSA's suits crashed South Africa's hopes by demanding the inclusion of an additional black or brown player in the semifinal. Kyle Abbott, the team's best fast bowler at that tournament, made way for Vernon Philander, who had not fully recovered from a hamstring injury. South Africa lost New Zealand by four wickets off the penultimate delivery of the match. CSA have since struggled to regain the players' trust, which was broken not by the inclusion of the highly respected Philander but by the administrators' clumsy and disastrous interference.

All but lost in the furore that followed the exposure of the suits ill-considered intervention was the fact that the only black member of that squad, Aaron Phangiso, was also the only member who did not play a match during the tournament. Further complicating the issue was the fact that the then coach, Russell Domingo, is brown.

"It's a unique system and a lot of people have different opinions on it because of where our country comes from," Rabada said. "It's not a system that is particularly easy to understand and move on from. It's something that has to be looked at in context."

The Olympics in Paris are part of that context. On Monday, Tatjana Smith won the 100-metre breaststroke final to earn South Africa's first gold medal of these Games. She was also the 200-metre champion four years ago in Tokyo.

"She's phenomenal," Rabada said. "Two golds in a row. That's really inspiring. As an athlete, it makes me want to achieve the same feat. This brings hope. She's representing the country and I feel very proud."

Smith's surname was Schoenmaker until November last year, when she married Joel Smith - the brother of Rachel Kolisi, whose husband, Siya Kolisi, captained the Springboks to rugby union World Cup triumphs in 2019 and 2023. Tatjana, Joel and Rachel are white. Siya is black. Maybe this wouldn't matter much in other countries. In South Africa, where inter-racial relationships were illegal until June 1985 and remain rare, it matters a great deal. Rabada knows it does, even though he wasn't born until more than a year after apartheid was abolished.

"She's a white swimmer. And I'm a black man. And people are watching. They want to emulate that and do the same things these people are doing, representing us all over the world."

Few of us can bowl as well as Rabada or swim as well as Smith. But we can emulate the pride they take in each others' champion performances, and treat them fairly when they don't win.