Ken Borland

In many ways, Malibongwe Maketa is the coach that just refuses to go away and his patience and consistent excellence has finally seen him rewarded with the post of Proteas interim head coach for their Test tour of Australia.

The three Tests in Australia, between December 17 and January 8, are South Africa’s penultimate series in the ICC World Test Championship, in which they currently lie second, 10 percentage points behind Australia. So if the Proteas win the series 2-1 or 1-0 then they will catch Australia up, but any bigger victory will see South Africa take top spot. Their final series is against the West Indies at home early next year.

The 42-year-old Maketa has long been highly-rated as a coach ever since his work as head coach of the Eastern Cape Warriors team from 2014/15 to the end of 2017, especially in white-ball cricket in which he steered the under-resourced franchise to two finals and a share of the One-Day Cup title.

He then became an assistant coach for the Proteas under Ottis Gibson, unfortunately a poisoned chalice for his career. Not only was he tarnished by the under-performance and eventual collapse of the national team in 2019, but his talents as a head coach were lying dormant.

When he lost his job at the same time as Gibson was let go, it seemed that Maketa would have to go back to the bottom of the coaching pecking order again. Fortunately, former director of cricket Graeme Smith restored Maketa to his rightful place as a head coach, giving him the SA A job that he has held up till now.

After his own unsatisfactory experience as an assistant coach, current director of cricket Enoch Nkwe fully understands Maketa’s struggle, but the fact that he has spent a lot of time around international cricket and is also heavily involved in the growth of the next generation of Proteas will stand him in good stead.

“Malibongwe … is a familiar face to the environment and has worked in the same space previously when he served as assistant coach,” Nkwe said in a CSA statement.

“Mali knows most of the players well, they know him too; and with such a short time between now and the tour, we as Cricket South Africa felt we needed someone who could step in immediately and lead us through what is an important series for the Proteas. We have no doubt he will do South Africans proud in this series.”

CSA chief executive officer Pholetsi Moseki said: “Malibongwe has earned respect and acclaim as a coach and a leader. This interim appointment is in recognition of his ability to integrate himself into any system and assure continuity.

“As no stranger to the Proteas set-up, I am confident that he will acquit himself well and hit the ground running.”

After the Australia series, South Africa’s next international commitment is an ODI series at home against England at the end of January.

Lungi Ngidi was left out of the Proteas XI for their previous game at the Sydney Cricket Ground, but he is coming off a man-of-the-match performance against India in Perth, so South Africa’s selection team face something of a quandary for their crunch T20 World Cup meeting with Pakistan on Thursday.

The pitch for the comprehensive win over Bangladesh in Sydney was certainly slower than the one in Perth, where Ngidi absolutely revelled with figures of 4/29. But pace was still effective against Bangladesh, with Anrich Nortje taking 4/10. But spinner Tabraiz Shamsi also shone with 3/20, so conditions on the day could be the decider.

Ngidi admitted after his demolition job on India that he was by no means certain he would even be playing the match.

“I was a bit surprised, I’ve not played much in this World Cup, so to come in on the day and perform against India … I couldn’t have asked for a better day,” Ngidi said.

“I’m very happy and it is probably one of my best performances. You could see there was pace in the pitch. The plan was to not give any width and try to keep it as tight as possible. Dig it into the wicket.”

South Africa will also be very happy with the way all-rounder Wayne Parnell is performing, and he also enjoyed himself against India with 3/15 in his four overs.

“It was about hitting good areas. Sometimes you can get carried away with bowling short. Personally, it was just trying to hit the top of the stumps and keep things simple.

“We have a group of bowlers who are all capable of winning games. Each of us believes that and we know someone can step up on any given day,” Parnell said.

South Africa also know that if they beat Pakistan, then their semifinal place is almost certainly secure because they will have seven points and only one of India or Bangladesh, who play each other on Wednesday, can get to eight points if they win both their remaining matches. Zimbabwe would have to beat both the Netherlands and India, and substantially improve their nett run-rate, to finish on seven points and edge out the Proteas.

Dewald Brevis has a phenomenal talent for batting destruction, but in terms of character he seems a prim and proper, respectful young man who backs himself to the hilt, but is also not getting ahead of himself.

Importantly, he always seems to play with a chuffed smile on his face, and that grin was as broad as the bat with which he plundered 13 sixes during his incredible innings of 162 off only 57 balls, breaking all sorts of records, for the Northerns Titans against Free State Knights in the CSA T20 Challenge in Potchefstroom.

A more emphatic statement of proof that the 19-year-old is the genuine real deal could not have been made. While Brevis believed last year already that he was ready to play for the Proteas, he understood the need for him to go through the journey of dominating at senior level after being player of the tournament in the U19 World Cup earlier this year, with a record tally of runs.

“Playing in this tournament is an important part of learning my game, I have to do this, it’s part of my journey. I’m at the right place, where I need to be, scoring thirties and forties was part of my development,” Brevis said after exploding into the limelight.

“Everything is built up, every match is part of learning your game, and what’s important is that this innings was the next stepping stone. The people in control [of national selection] know best and it will work out as it should.”

Brevis is the quintessential modern T20 superstar. His magnificent ball-striking and confidence to back himself from ball one fits in perfectly with where the shortest international format is heading, plus he offers dangerous leg-spin bowling, the hardest craft to master but one in which he already shows much promise. And he is a superb fielder – he capped his unbelievable innings with a brilliantly-judged boundary catch against the Knights.

“The tougher the conditions, the better I am. I’m always trying to be positive, you must take the first three balls of an over on, don’t wait until the last three because then the bowler is on top.

“You have to allow good balls as well, there always will be good balls, but you must try and score ones off them. I’m trying to score off every ball,” Brevis said.

After the current T20 World Cup, we will surely see Brevis take his talent to the international stage.

Following their impressive victory over the Sharks in their United Rugby Championship derby at the weekend, the Bulls house is in order and the campaign is back on track, coach Jake White says.

The 40-27, bonus point win over the Sharks at Loftus Versfeld was the Bulls’ second in a row after a couple of defeats on tour, and it lifted them back into third place on the log.

“It’s a tough competition and we’ve toured and had a couple of injury problems, but we’ve done well the last couple of weeks,” White said. “The campaign is back on track.

“We’ve played seven games, we’ve got five wins, scored lots of tries, got a handful of bonus points and we’re third on the log. That’s fantastic for us, one-third of the way into the competition.

“And there’s no reason we can’t get better, with 14 games left until the final. Hopefully it’s a well-timed break for the players now, and we come back on November 9.

“Then we’ll switch on for two home games and wait and see who we get back from the national squads,” White said.

The coach did admit to some frustration at the Bulls’ performance against the Sharks, however, with the home side sometimes their own worst enemy.

“At times we shot ourselves in the foot. We couldn’t get out of our half and we had two kicks direct into touch. We were outstanding in the first 20 minutes but just didn’t finish,” White said.

“We knocked on in their 22 twice and chose the wrong lineout play once. We should have stayed with the maul, they had two warnings, but we moved away from the maul when the Sharks probably would’ve got a card.

“So there are a lot of things still to look at, we let them score three tries after all. We can’t give teams those soft moments like we did just before halftime.

“We practised defending against that Aphelele Fassi move the whole week, but he scored anyway because we get narrow.

“But when they led 17-16, no-one was thinking about a bonus point win, so there is a lot of excitement and energy in the changeroom. Now it’s time to recharge and it will be nice to have that same energy when we come back from the break,” White said.