Cricket enthusiast, Ashraf Allie, has emerged as a prominent figure, bringing his unwavering passion and managerial acumen to the local cricket scene.
As the chairperson of the esteemed Hanover Park Cricket Club, Allie has become a guiding force, transforming the club’s fortunes and fostering a vibrant cricketing community.
Allie is a man who has dedicated himself together with his management team, to nurturing talent, fostering camaraderie, and enriching the lives of cricket players in his community.
Please tell us who Ashraf Allie is and what is it that you do in sport?
My full name and surname is Yusuf Ashraf Allie. I reside in Crawford, Athlone. I’ve been in sport all my life from a very young age. I played football at an amateur level and I was an average player, but I loved the sport. I played cricket but never officially for a club. My involvement with cricket basically came in 2009 when I was approached by St. Augustine Cricket Club to be part of their executive and I served as a secretary of the Club. I was there for a number of years. I was instrumental in bringing the biggest sponsorship to the club’s over 100-year history when I approached Quality Beverages and negotiated a five year deal, the biggest sponsorship of the Club under the brand Jive.
What was the initial aim behind the development of the club in your area?
I think there is a number of factors, obviously the social ills that are prevalent in our communities. Hanover Park is no different and I think the lack of investment, the spatial planning of how our communities are being housed. People staying on properties and having back dwellers in their back yards is not conducive to proper living. And then we look at the lack of facilities in our areas, this plays a major role so the challenge is and the aim was to keep our youth off the streets, off the courts, not sport courts but the criminal courts because there was a lot of activities there, wrong activities and they say if you keep a youth off the streets and give them sport they are kept out of courts and away from anti-social behaviour. That was one of the main aims, others were youth not seeing the opportunities from a working perspective. Being unemployed and not realising that they can use sport as another vehicle to develop and grow themselves with the non-playing aspects of sport i.e. becoming an administrator, coaching etc. and making a career out of it. Besides the playing aspect we have produced official umpires, scorers, administrators as well as coaches. These are the opportunities if you’re not going to make it as an international cricketer, an avenue to make a career out of it. Together with one another, including our partners, our stakeholders and our patrons we working hard to develop these youth. This has been the main goal of developing the club over the years and we are continually doing so with many different interventions to help sustain the club.
What are some of the challenges you face as a club?
The challenges that we face are access to finances despite having sponsorship, it is simply not sufficient to get us to level the playing field. Access to proper opportunities and access to proper facilities. I’ve spoken to many across the board in business, sport and civil society and they all agree that those three are the main reasons why we will never get to be able to compete. It is important that these three aspects are looked at and rectified, there has to be a political will to want to change these dynamics in order that these challenges are addressed appropriately by all three spheres of government.
Closer to home, the current mindset of our communities, are due to not investing properly in our communities and it’s a challenge for us to rectify that and undo bad habits. We don’t want our members to become dependent on handouts and we don’t want them to feel that they’re entitled to these opportunities. They must work for it. There are challenges with other sport codes that don’t have similar values, similar ideals and that’s a challenge in itself and will have to be addressed this over time.
How are you combating these challenges and who is assisting? (Is it the community that is helping or any sponsors?).
We have been combating these challenges, with continually having robust and fair discussions. Unfortunately or fortunately I can’t say but together with some of my management, we are robust in our engagements with various stakeholders be it our federation, at local community level, at local municipality level, at provincial or at national government level.
We engage robustly but we believe fairly to tell our story. I’ve mentioned that I think we have a good story to tell, it’s for others to listen and we hope they hear and appreciate our story and support accordingly. Yes, we do have donors and sponsors that are assisting but you cannot call upon them each and every time, you have to understand that there is a great need for a lot of other organisations so it’s important that we focus on the self-sustainability expects as well. The challenge is by trying to ensure that our facilities are at best similar to those that we’re striving to compete with, unfortunately there’s still a disparity that needs to be changed. At federation level this is where we feel that the federation needs to do more, be at provincial level and at a national level. Cricket South Africa needs to come and change the dynamic, too, at grassroots level.
How many girls/ladies do you have at the club and how has being part of the programme impacted their lives?
Our ladies team started around 2017. The first two/three years we were finding our feet. We made a commitment that we wanted to correct the gender empowerment aspect at our club. In fact, I’ve gone on record that we would love to see the Club be led by a female one day. I remain committed to that, together with our leadership.
In our management we have a number of females that are part of the leadership that helps to make the decisions and help implement the development of our youth. Our ladies’ team consists of ladies that were honoured to represent the Western Province and were privileged to travel to Johannesburg, some of them for the very first time. These girls were able to get funding from our club. We’ve built another two teams over the last three or four years and as I said they now play in the Premier League. Our preference for this season is to have a woman coach which we’re busy trying to secure. We have about twenty ladies that are playing for our women’s teams. And we have an under 13 girls team, we have about 14 to 16 girls. These are big opportunities to continue to grow both with the ladies and the girls team.
What are your future plans for the club?
I can assure you that we are a very ambitious club. I think in the opening statements I made that we want to become the best Cricket Club in the country and/or globally, firstly by starting to produce Protea players, international players male or female as well as in each and every other aspect of the game, i.e. management, coaching, administrators, etc. We want to make a mark in all facets of the game and the goal of the club is to have our own facility that we can run without any hindrances or clashes with other sporting codes. Have our own club house, have our own indoor net facility and make it self-sustainable, run it as a business but also using it for our own development of our youth both male and female. It’s pretty clear, on the playing side we want to play at the highest level, Premier League Cricket because that’s where you seriously get noticed. In that way, we can start producing our Proteas players that would be an ongoing process to continue our development plans. The main objective is to secure the opportunities, secure the facilities and have access to different funding streams.
How can people get involved in your mission and play their part to support the club?
Whoever wants to join our club, you don’t necessarily have to play for the club but if you want to give back, we need your time and different skills sets. If you have deep pockets we need some of your finances yes, however your time and skill sets are of equal importance and you can help make a difference.
What is your message to corporate giants and federations on how they can increase their support not only for HP Cricket Club but for rural/development initiatives across the country?
The money should not only be spent at the highest level. Money has to be spent at grassroots level as well, proper investment. All the money corporate sponsors seems to be administered to is at the highest level. I understand the need for corporates to receive their brand value however at some point corporates need to ensure or verify or guide, I don’t know the proper terminology but they have to make sure that federations, whether it’s the national federation, whether it’s the provincial federations, has to administrator funding, into the grassroots structures properly and not be the sole custodians, wanting to dictate how the purse must be spent. You have to engage with those in the trenches and here I’m referring to your chairpersons at community clubs, your administrators and the respective management. Not only in the urban areas but in the rural areas as well because they’re equally disadvantaged and monies needs to be filtered through to these organisations and they should be allowed to spend the funds how they see fit with obvious accountability measures in place. My message to the corporate giants and federations, kindly take note of these matters and grow the game in a balanced manner.
Photo 1 Caption: Cricket enthusiast and chairperson of the Hanover Park Cricket Club, Ashraf Allie, emerged as a voice for change, a game changer, a disruptor to help transform the club’s fortunes and fostering a vibrant cricketing community morally and ethically. Photo: Supplied
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