Shukri Conrad, 59, has held more roles in South African cricket than most people experience in an entire career. Having played at both club and provincial levels, he has coached across various tiers of the game. His father, Dickie Conrad, was similarly devoted to cricket. During the 2003 Men's World Cup—hosted across South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya—Conrad was commentating in the studio and coaching the Lions. This coaching role gave him an inside track to secure a handful of highly sought-after tickets for the final between Australia and India at his home ground, the Wanderers, on March 23, 2003. However, he was not at the stadium that day. Demonstrating his characteristic selflessness, practicality, and dispassion, Conrad gave all his tickets away to family members who had traveled up from Cape Town.
When the Men's World Cup returns to Africa in October and November next year for the first time since 2003, Conrad will be in the dugout as head coach rather than watching from a studio or home. He aims to achieve what no previous South African coach has managed: winning the tournament. After missing the first four World Cups due to apartheid, the Proteas have flattered to deceive in all nine of their subsequent campaigns, sometimes entering as favorites and other times as serious contenders. Despite reaching two quarterfinals and five semifinals, South Africa has never made it to the final. Infamously, they won only one of those seven knockout matches.
Addressing whether South African cricket has evolved, Conrad admitted, "I don’t know if South African cricket has changed much; we still display the same characteristics of the sides gone by." However, he noted a shift in the younger players, who play with more freedom. Conrad suggested that maybe they are not as shackled as some of the older players and the guys of yesteryear have been. He added that maybe this freer outlook has been forced on them by T20 cricket, even though essentially nothing has changed. While some observers might find this disappointing—since clearly what South Africa has tried in the past has not worked—Conrad is confident that their traditional style can succeed.
Under Conrad's guidance, Temba Bavuma's side played a brand of cricket easily recognizable as South African to win the World Test Championship (WTC) last year. Utilizing an all-seam attack and gritty, unglamorous batting, they defeated Pakistan by two wickets at Centurion in December 2024 to secure their place in the final. In that match, South Africa took Pakistan's final six wickets for 65 runs before stumbling to 19/3 while chasing a target of 148. In the June decider at Lord's, they overcame a first-innings deficit of 74 runs to beat Australia by five wickets. This combination of fiery fast bowling, flinty batting, and fighting back from desperate positions represents the essence of South African cricket, but this time it worked when it mattered. Conrad noted that if the WTC had existed before its August 2019 start, South Africa might have succeeded several more times.
Winning the WTC has provided the team with the belief that they are championship material, rather than being cursed by a cruel exceptionalism that denies them global trophies. Conrad highlighted the Centurion match as his biggest test, stating that the ebbing and flowing of the final day proved they could respond in clutch moments. However, he acknowledged that red-ball success is not a magic spell for limited-overs glory. At the T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka and India in February and March this year, South Africa entered the semifinals alongside India as the only unbeaten teams among the 20 participants, only to suffer an abysmal failure to launch against New Zealand and crash to an abject nine-wicket defeat.
Conrad, who was also head coach during that T20 campaign, remains focused on the upcoming 50-over tournament. "We’re certainly not going into the World Cup feeling complacent," Conrad said. "Yes, there’s going to be a sense of achievement, but we want that to be the springboard for what can be done in future." Having held numerous positions in South African cricket, Conrad knows that if he guides the team to a World Cup victory, he will never need to look for another job.
South Africans will hope their team have made the required shifts from all that by the time they start their 10th campaign.
