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Ken Borland



Paarl Royals emerge from SA20 Auction with most impressive roster 0

Posted on November 07, 2022 by Ken

The Paarl Royals have emerged from this week’s SA20 Auction with the most impressive roster of players, benefiting from a bold start to the auction and then a strong finish as they kept valuable bid money in reserve.

Having pre-bought T20 stars like David Miller, Jos Buttler and Obed McCoy, Paarl then netted two marquee bowlers from the first set of players to go under the hammer, getting Proteas lynchpins in Tabraiz Shamsi and Lungi Ngidi.

Jason Roy, Dane Vilas and Bjorn Fortuin, all with strong T20 pedigrees, came from sets two, three and six respectively, before a late flurry of bidding saw Paarl emerge from the express rounds at the end with half-a-dozen fantastic signings.

Former England captain Eoin Morgan was their penultimate pick for R2 million and the Royals have gained some great local talent in Boland stars Ferisco Adams and Imraan Manack, and hard-hitting batsmen Wihan Lubbe, Evan Jones and Mitchell van Buuren.

JP Duminy, in his first year as a head coach, said he will benefit from the experience of players like Morgan, captain Miller, Buttler and Roy.

“The team has an inexperienced coach so it needs a good bunch of leaders,” Duminy said with characteristic modesty. “Fortunately it played out that way.

“There’s a lot of leadership quality in the squad, Eoin Morgan is a World Cup winning captain, and David Miller will gain traction from that as he gets exposure to the captaincy.

“We know Jason Roy will be destructive up front and I’m sure he will find form in the next few months. We had planned for Donovan Ferreira, but that did not work out and then it was about who will fill the finisher role?

“Eoin is one of the leading finishers in world cricket and Evan Jones is someone for the future as well, and he will have the opportunity to learn from Eoin,” Duminy said.

While the Proteas’ leading run-scorer in T20 cricket said much of their success at the auction in Cape Town was ‘the rub of the green’, there is little doubt the Royals executed a carefully thought-out strategy, aiming for players who have done well in Paarl before.

“Bjorn Fortuin and Tabraiz Shamsi were pivotal to the success of the Paarl Rocks in the 2019 MSL, and I’ve already seen a pic on social media about how excited they are to play together again,” Duminy laughed an hour after the auction.

“And it’s good to see locals like Ferisco and Imraan in the squad; Ferisco sent me a message saying he will be bringing the whole of Robertson to our home games!”

Watching T20 cricket at Boland Park is set to once again be a real earful as well as an eye-catching experience.

Paarl Royals squad – Jos Buttler, Jason Roy, Wihan Lubbe, David Miller, Eoin Morgan, Dane Vilas, Corbin Bosch, Bjorn Fortuin, Tabraiz Shamsi, Lungi Ngidi, Obed McCoy, Evan Jones, Ferisco Adams, Mitchell van Buuren, Imraan Manack, Ramon Simmonds, Codi Yusuf.

SA go up against 6 of the top 8 to go to next World Cup 0

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Ken

The International Cricket Council have announced a new system for deciding which teams will go to the World Cup, instituting the ODI Super League, and South Africa have drawn the short straw because they will have to play six of their top-eight colleagues in their bid to qualify for the 2023 event in India.

The ODI Super League begins on Thursday when England take on Ireland in the first of three ODIs, and features 13 teams vying for seven automatic qualification spots, along with hosts India. The bottom five teams will have to go to the World Cup qualifiers with five other Associate nations and battle it out for the last two World Cup places.

Teams will play eight series each, four at home and four away, earning points for each ODI won, with each series offering a set number of points as in the World Test Championship.

The only ‘minnows’ that the Proteas will go head-to-head against are Ireland and the Netherlands; while the only top eight team that South Africa will avoid is New Zealand.

Because of the difficulties of fitting this new pathway to the World Cup into the existing Future Tours Programme (FTP), teams do not play every other country and Pakistan and Bangladesh seem to be most favoured by the draw.

They avoid playing each other, while Pakistan also miss out on taking on India and Sri Lanka but will play Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and the Netherlands.

Bangladesh, apart from not meeting Pakistan, also miss Australia and India, while playing Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland.

The World Test Championship also does not feature every team playing everybody else and apparently the ICC tried to balance out those discrepancies with the ODI Super League draw.

“The ODI Super League format was devised some time ago, maybe three or four years ago when the rankings would have been different. But what you lose in the ODIs you gain in the Test Championship; it was just difficult fitting all these match-ups into the existing FTP,” a Cricket South Africa official involved in the new qualification system, told The Citizen.

“But the big thing is we now have better relevance and context for every ODI, every game will now have an effect, even those between the lower-ranked teams. This will make 50-over cricket more meaningful.”

Roster

Australia: v England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan.

Bangladesh: v England, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Ireland.

England: v Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Netherlands.

India: v Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan.

New Zealand: v Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Ireland, Netherlands.

Pakistan: v Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Netherlands.

South Africa: v Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Netherlands.

Sri Lanka: v Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan.

West Indies: v Australia, Bangladesh, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Netherlands.

Zimbabwe: v Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Afghanistan, Ireland, Netherlands.

Afghanistan: v Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Netherlands.

Ireland: v Bangladesh, England, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Netherlands.

Netherlands: v England, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Ireland.

CSA board ignore their own dire mismanagement to take on players 0

Posted on January 07, 2018 by Ken

 

Despite their dire mismanagement of the postponed T20 Global League, Cricket South Africa (CSA) look set to take on the South African Cricketers’ Association (Saca) in the new year in a bid to weaken what they perceive as the players’ undue influence on the game in this country.

Speaking with CSA president Chris Nenzani alongside him, acting CEO Thabang Moroe said on Wednesday that CSA would be pushing towards plans to dictate to the Proteas what franchise they should play for and to renegotiate the revenue-sharing deal which has been in place with the players for several years.

Given the level of uncertainty surrounding the majority of players in South Africa, and the numerous lucrative offers they are tempted with from overseas, any aggressive moves by CSA are likely to antagonise their most valuable assets and chase them away to greener pastures.

“The Proteas need to be allocated to franchise teams or there could even be a draft system. We want all our Proteas to participate domestically. We were very happy with the RamSlam T20 Challenge, but it could have been even better if all the Proteas were playing at once in different teams.

“Change is definitely needed and it’s unfair on those unions that work so hard to develop players and then lose them, what are these franchises doing in their own provinces? We might not even consult Saca. The players are our employees and in the corporate world, when you are an employee, you just get an e-mail saying ‘this is the new direction, this is the way it’s going to go’.

“A trade union doesn’t have a say in our view of how our company should be run and how we engage with trade unions. There is no room for a union to intervene if CSA decide to go in a different direction. There is nothing to stop us from moving away from revenue-sharing. CSA makes the money for cricket in this country and not the players’ union,” Moroe said in Port Elizabeth.

When asked about how much money CSA had lost due to the postponement of the T20 Global League, Moroe could not resist another attack on the players.

“The money we spent on upgrading facilities has not been lost, the money we spent on buying the trophy has not been lost. The only money we’ve lost is what we paid to players for not even bowling a ball,” he said.

Moroe and Nenzani defended the board’s handling of former CEO Haroon Lorgat and his failed business plan for the T20 Global League, saying they had to resist the urges to interfere until it became absolutely necessary.

“We had management that had performed extremely well in the past and the board had complete trust in them. They drive the projects and the board does not want to interfere in daily operations, but we do get regular reports. We only became uncomfortable with the details in June/July,” Nenzani said.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-africa-sport/sa-cricket-sport/1769502/1769502/

SACA MVP top-ranking will keep Van der Merwe warm through winter 0

Posted on May 18, 2015 by Ken

The winter break is often a good time to consider the talent that is coming through at franchise level, who the players to follow are as they bid for national recognition, and the South African Cricketers’ Association’s MVP Rankings are perhaps the most accurate measure of just who the most valuable stars are just one step below the Proteas.

The franchises play in three very different formats these days, of course, so comparing players can sometimes be a confusing, almost impossible task.

But this is where the Saca MVP rankings are so good: They take into account the four-day Sunfoil Series, the 50-over Momentum One-Day Cup and the RamSlam T20 Challenge. And the points are awarded based on a complex calculation that takes into account far more than just the number of runs scored or wickets taken.

The Saca MVP rankings are weighted so that those performances that really matter in terms of influencing the result of a game earn more points.

“What sets our rankings aside from other rankings or stats is that the MVP rankings take both the stats and the match context into account. For instance, a batsman scoring 100 not out in a total of 634 for three declared is going to earn way fewer points than one who scores 100 out of 150.

“Similarly, a bowler who gets the top-order out will earn more points than someone who gets nine, 10 and jack out.

“There are also different weightings depending on the format. For instance, economy rate and strike rate are more important in T20 cricket. Plus there are more points on offer if your team wins and for the captain of winning teams.

“It’s all about who performs in clutch situations, who pulls the team through and is also a consistent performer,” JP van Wyk, Saca’s player services manager, told the Daily Maverick.

And the 2012/13 rankings tell us that Titans all-rounder Roelof van der Merwe, famed for his tenacity in just those sort of pressure situations, was the most valuable player of last season.

The mere statistics inform us that Van der Merwe scored 515 runs in the Sunfoil Series, the most for the beleaguered Titans, with five half-centuries and he took 12 wickets. The left-arm spinner has always been a top-class performer in the limited-overs formats and 58% percent of his 473.47 points came from the 50 and 20-over competitions.

Van der Merwe was the leading spinner in the One-Day Cup, taking 22 wickets at an average of 19.95 and economy rate of just 4.69, taking five wickets in an innings twice. In the T20 Challenge, he took nine wickets at a good economy rate of 7.09 and his 208 runs were the second-most for the Titans, at a handy average of 23.11 and a strike rate of 107.

The 28-year-old is hardly a promising youngster though, but rather a renowned competitor who revels in the nickname “Bulldog”.

Instead of trying to break into international cricket, Van der Merwe is trying to get back there. The Waterkloof product has played in 13 ODIs and 13 T20 internationals, but has not represented South Africa since June 2010 in the West Indies. He was outstanding in his last game, taking one for 27 in 10 overs and then scoring 10 not out off seven balls to clinch a thrilling one-wicket victory in Port-of-Spain, but was then strangely dropped.

“I don’t think anything went wrong, it was more a case of different combinations being used and different times. Over time we’ll see if those combinations work out… ” Van der Merwe says phlegmatically from Delhi, where he is playing for the Daredevils in the IPL. “You never know in terms of a comeback in international cricket, but I’m not too worried about it. If I perform well, then it has to happen.”

Van der Merwe has been included in South Africa’s preliminary 30-man squad for the Champions Trophy in England in June and it must be a good omen that some of the strongest early challengers for the MVP crown – Kyle Abbott, Rory Kleinveldt, Dean Elgar and Quinton de Kock – all found themselves in the national team before the end of the summer.

Leg-spinner Imran Tahir and fellow orthodox left-armers Robin Peterson and Aaron Phangiso are the other spinners in the squad, but it counts in Van der Merwe’s favour that he is cosy bowling both up front with the new ball and at the death.

“At the death you’re on a hiding to nothing, but it’s all about your attitude. I want to do that job and that helps a lot. I don’t see myself as the most talented cricketer, so I’ve got to have aggression, that Bulldog spirit if you like,” Van der Merwe says.

That same determination has also seen Van der Merwe break out of his pigeonhole as a limited-overs specialist. Having scarcely been used by the Titans in four-day cricket, sitting behind the likes of Paul Harris, Imran Tahir and Shaun von Berg in the queue, he could have fobbed off the longer version of the game, especially since his financial future is secure with his involvement in the IPL.

But the Johannesburg-born fighter played every Sunfoil Series game this season for the Titans (wicketkeeper/batsman Heino Kuhn was the only other player to do so).

“My game has developed the last few years and I’m playing four-day cricket again after a lot of hard work. In the past, the Titans had great longer-form bowlers and I didn’t get much opportunity. But I was told I have to work on my batting if I want to take my career further and being able to bat as well definitely helps.

“Bowling in the longer form also helps my limited-overs bowling. In four-day cricket, there’s a lot more skill involved, you need more pace and variations and that’s what I’m also working on in India,” Van der Merwe says.

Van der Merwe held off a strong challenge from Warriors paceman Andrew Birch (450.89pts) for the MVP title, while De Kock, Hardus Viljoen and Abbott also scored more than 400 points.

The country’s leading players struggle to crack the top 100 because they are off on international duty so often.

The MVP award also comes with the sizeable cash prize of R110,000 for Van der Merwe, with Birch and De Kock winning the runners-up cheques of R66 000 and R50 000 respectively.

The top players in each competition were also the recipients of cash incentives, with Abbott, Johann Louw and Birch being the top three in the Sunfoil Series; Van der Merwe, Richard Levi and Birch dominating the One-Day Cup; and De Kock, Albie Morkel and Sohail Tanvir the pacesetters in the T20 Challenge.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-04-25-coming-up-through-the-rankings-roelof-vd-merwe/#.VVsjOPmqqko

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