Ken Borland

An excellent third-wicket partnership between Zubayr Hamza and Kyle Verreynne held a tidy, probing Netherlands attack at bay in helpful bowling conditions, before the dam wall broke in the last four overs as Andile Phehlukwayo raced South Africa to 277/8 in the first ODI at SuperSport Park in Centurion on Friday.

Phehlukwayo lashed 48 off just 22 balls, including six mighty sixes, as he and Keshav Maharaj (18*) pounded 68 runs off the last 40 balls of the innings, including 61 off the final four overs. It provided the late boost needed to convert an average score into a good one.

Winning a useful toss under cloudy skies following heavy overnight rain, the Netherlands gained early reward for bowling first when left-armer Fred Klaassen removed both Proteas openers inside the first seven overs. Reeza Hendricks (6) played way too early and popped a catch to cover, while Janneman Malan (16) edged a loose, flatfooted drive at a wider delivery to second slip.

At 24/2, Zubayr Hamza had just the man for a crisis join him in fellow Western Province star Kyle Verreynne. The pair added 119 off 137 balls for the third wicket to give the innings a solid platform.

Hamza looked particularly good and played some wonderful strokes, while Verreynne was typically busy and positive and ensured that the Dutch bowlers never totally gained the upper hand, playing strongly off the back foot.

Hamza fell for 56 off 79 deliveries when he skied a pull off a Brandon Glover slower ball, but Verreynne went on to a career-best score and was in touching distance of a century when he was unfortunate to fall to a slower-ball gone wrong from Vivian Kingma. The back-of-the-hand delivery came out as a dipping full toss, which the wicketkeeper/batsman swung away one-handed, but straight to deep square-leg.

Verreynne had worked hard through the tough times for his 95 off 112 balls, and was all set to really launch before his dismissal.

The rest of the batting was made of flimsier material though as South Africa slid from 143/2 to 209/7; up to that point, Verreynne and Hamza had scored 57% of the Proteas runs.

Fortunately, Phehlukwayo showed his finishing ability as he belted the ball over the boundary to great effect, with skipper Maharaj providing important support as the Proteas made a strong end to their innings.

New-ball bowlers Klaassen (8-2-45-2) and Kingma (9-0-49-2) were good for the Netherlands, while Roelof van der Merwe returned to his former home ground with 1/27 in six overs of tidy left-arm spin.

Temba Bavuma’s outstanding leadership – sensitive to the unity of the team but also decisive and intuitive – at the T20 World Cup has shown that he is the man to lead the Proteas in the next edition of the tournament which will be held in less than a year’s time in Australia.

To have such a strong, inspirational captain is a massive positive for South African cricket, and Bavuma also batted with trademark tenacity in tough conditions, averaging 30 for the tournament. He will want to work on his strike-rate of 108, but that was higher than Quinton de Kock’s!

The T20 World Cup in Australia should be a high-scoring affair and South Africa’s batting will need to become more attacking. Knowing Bavuma, whose overall strike-rate in T20s is 125, he will be working very hard on that aspect of his game in the interim.

But with the huge strides made by Aiden Markram and Rassie van der Dussen, plus the continued reliability of David Miller as a finisher, Bavuma is likely to need to move up the order and open the batting with Quinton de Kock, who remains South Africa’s most dangerous T20 batsman.

But the way Markram has transformed into a boundary-clearing finisher, as well as still being able to play the building and changing gears role like Van der Dussen has done so well, is another huge positive for the Proteas.

South Africa’s bowling attack continued to perform as an outstanding unit in the UAE. They have a variety of skills to cover a pretty catholic range of conditions.

Anrich Nortje, who tormented batsmen with both his sheer pace and great control, and Kagiso Rabada are a fearsome pair of fast bowlers, with Lungi Ngidi waiting in the wings.

South Africa’s spin-bowling strength, led by Tabraiz Shamsi and Keshav Maharaj, has been the defining force of their great run in T20 cricket – their win over No.1 side England means they have won 13 of their last 15 matches.

Dwaine Pretorius, who took nine wickets and conceded just 6.88 runs-per-over bowling mostly at the death, has shown he is a cool and wily cat, and Wiaan Mulder is waiting in the wings with a package of all-round skills that might just be better suited to Australian conditions.

In terms of depth, Bjorn Fortuin, Reeza Hendricks and Heinrich Klaasen were also part of the squad in the UAE and they have all shown the ability to shine at international level. Add George Linde and Andile Phehlukwayo to that list and it is clear there is quality back-up in most positions.

Of course coach Mark Boucher would love some more players to put in consistently dominant performances at domestic level to add to that depth.

But there are a whole lot of reasons to feel hopeful about the future of this Proteas team and fans should be licking their lips in anticipation of their further development.

The last time I was fortunate enough to attend the KFC Mini-Cricket National Seminar was five years ago in Kruger Park, so it was wonderful to see CSA’s flagship development programme has lost none of its energy or passion when I was invited to this year’s annual gathering, held at Zebula Golf Estate outside BelaBela last week.

This mass participation grassroots programme, which will celebrate its 40^th anniversary next year, is operated by the noble crew of 10 500 volunteer coaches, working closely with the sponsors and CSA’s development office.

Some of the bile that has been thrown around in cricket circles over the last couple of years has been difficult to stomach, but being able to share in an environment where everyone is just working for the love of the sport, where egos are put to the side because this is the grassroots game, is gratifying enough to cure the most severe indigestion.

Graeme Smith, as director of cricket, has had to deal with much of that bile, but he was happy and relaxed at Zebula, being asked for plenty of photographs by the delegates after his address on the first morning.

“I basically just gave them an update of where cricket is and then it was great to sit through the sessions with them,” Smith said.

“I feel like I’ve been starved of being on the ground with these sort of cricket-lovers. It’s so exciting to be here, this programme is nearly 40 years old and has been a massive investment in the game at all levels.

“All credit to the volunteer coaches and co-ordinators who grow their communities and are mentors for the youngsters. It’s so important that kids have the opportunity to be touched by the game and I know how important KFC Mini-Cricket is to CSA.

“These coaches are the life-blood of our game and I’ll be surprised if there are any other development programmes in this country that come close in terms of reach,” Smith said.

Unfortunately though, like everything else, the effectiveness of the KFC Mini-Cricket Programme does come down to how many Rand are in the bank for CSA.

The organisation held its AGM last weekend and the financial statements clearly showed the serious effects of Covid and how important it is for the Proteas to be a ‘box-office’ team on the global stage.

CSA still has total assets of R797 million, but they suffered a nett loss of R221 million in 2020/21, having budgeted for just a R177 million deficit.

This was largely due to broadcast revenue plummeting from R534 million to R161 million. Having made up almost half of CSA’s revenue the previous financial year, broadcast rights now only accounted for 31% of profit. Sponsorships also dropped from R186 million to R79 million, 15% of revenue.

Accordingly, in an environment of sometimes brutal cost-cutting (but pleasingly with no employees laid off because of Covid), investment in development dropped from R385 million to R273 million.

So anyone who wants to see the game in this country truly transform has to also acknowledge that the Proteas have to be one of the best teams internationally. That’s the only way the Big Three will want to tour here, generating the lucrative broadcast rights that are by far CSA’s biggest revenue-earner.

And KFC Mini-Cricket has certainly produced its fair share of Proteas – Beuran Hendricks and Sinalo Jafta were two in attendance at Zebula. But the programme also wants to empower the coaches, while bringing an estimated 118 000 kids from diverse schools and communities together this summer, introducing them to cricket and also getting them active.

More than just providing the joy and relief of his first T20 series win, coach Mark Boucher said the Proteas’ 3-2 victory over the powerful West Indians offered great insight into what could work and what won’t in the T20 World Cup that will now be held in the United Arab Emirates in October.

South Africa won the fifth and final T20 by 25 runs at St George’s in Grenada at the weekend to finally vanquish a West Indian team that is rated as one of the favourites for the T20 World Cup. The win was built on the outstanding second-wicket partnership of 128 in 14 overs between Quinton de Kock (60 off 42) and Aiden Markram (70 off 48), followed by another magnificent display of wrist-spin from Tabraiz Shamsi (4-0-11-1).

Shamsi, the player of the series, was given great support this time by an impressive return to form by Kagiso Rabada (4-0-24-2) and Lungi Ngidi (4-0-32-3), while all-rounder Wiaan Mulder, included for the first time in the series, did an excellent job with two for 31 in his four overs.

“The biggest thing from the series is that we take a lot of knowledge from it because we will probably have conditions like this in the UAE. The pitches there are also going to be dry after the IPL and we’ve seen you’ve got to be skilful and smart and not just bash away. We saw that with our bowling today, the guys listened and bowled in the right areas.

“We’ve had a couple of guys out of form but we’ve still won the series, so we must be doing something right. We just want to be very smart in difficult conditions, play our brand of cricket and the guys have bought into it. Maybe why we don’t score so many runs at the end of the innings is because the Windies are very skilful there, but we are very skilful in the middle overs and in the end we won the series,” Boucher said.

Nowadays, everyone quotes a batsman’s six-hitting figures or their strike-rate as being the most important factor in T20 cricket, but the West Indies clearly dominated those statistics and yet still ended up on the losing side. Which shows that a one-paced, all-or-nothing, six or dot-ball approach is not the way to go.

“There are a couple of things in our game that we know can be much better and we would like to finish our innings better. But just because someone is out of form in one series, in tough batting conditions, does not suddenly make them a bad player. But if we can find an extra 15-20 runs – get past 180 – then it becomes very difficult to chase that in dry conditions.

“We have a basic idea of our best XI, especially when we are firing on all cylinders, but there are still places that need to be solidified. We will take confidence from beating a very good team though, and that is immense. We’ve learnt that if we really rock up on the day, we can probably beat anyone,” Boucher said.