Ken Borland

Simon Harmer returned to South African cricket last year with not much more than hope that he would be able to make an international comeback too and be reunited with the precious green cap that was packed away in his debut Proteas kitbag in the Eastern Cape.

And now he is sitting in Christchurch, New Zealand, back in the Proteas camp for the first time since 2015. The prolific off-spinner had to go to some lengths to make sure the same cap he was given on his debut against the West Indies in Cape Town in January 2015 made the trip too.

“I’ve still got all my caps because my brother and I have a pact that we’ll have a beach-house together one day and all my memorabilia will be for the bar,” Harmer explained on Monday.

“My Test cap was in the bag I was given on my Proteas debut, but I was not sure it would ever see the light of day again. I had to get my mother-in-law to post it to Pretoria from Kenton-on-Sea.

“It was very nostalgic to see it again and it’s always something special when you get your new kit, all with the South African badge on it. I was like a kid on Christmas opening all the bags.

“I always aspired to play for South Africa, but being allowed to play cricket at home again, I was trying to keep my head down and focused on the Titans environment, while trying to get back into international cricket,” Harmer said.

The 32-year-old will probably still have to show the sort of patience that he is famous for with ball-in-hand because that long-awaited return to Test cricket is probably not going to happen on a Hagley Oval pitch that is seamer-friendly unless frontline spinner Keshav Maharaj is ruled out for some reason.

“The Hagley Oval is probably the greenest, quickest, best-bouncing pitch in New Zealand, so the chances of us playing two spinners are low,” Harmer admitted. “But I will just make sure that I am ready.

“I see myself as a supporting act to Kesh, who has done extremely well. So I will keep working hard, supporting the team and just trying to contribute however I can, whether that’s by playing good music in the changeroom, throwing balls or giving encouragement.

“I’m under no illusions, Victor Mpitsang [selection convenor] was transparent about how I fit into the whole structure, but I am here now and I will try and show what I’m about.

“I think I’ve matured a lot and I understand now what I need to do and how to go about things. When I first played for the Proteas I put so much pressure on myself, worrying what people thought and whether I was good enough. I’m a lot more comfortable in my skin now,” Harmer said.

The FIH Pro League that will be hosted in Potchefstroom from Tuesday provides the South African men’s team with the ideal avenue of measuring their progress against the top hockey nations in the world, according to national coach Garreth Ewing.

South Africa will come up against India, the Netherlands and Germany, all inside the top-six on the world rankings, in the tournament that runs through to February 21 and features 14 matches, eight of them involving the hosts.

“It’s an amazing opportunity, although it will be incredibly tough,” Ewing told The Citizen. “But we’ve got to play against the very best in the world if we are going to find out what we need to grow as a team.

“You’re never going to play against teams in the top eight of the rankings without them being strong outfits, but teams in the Pro League do mix up their line-ups a bit.

“It’s often used an opportunity to expose new players because it’s considered the beginning of the next Olympic cycle. And that’s the same as what I’m doing. But the top sides will have their usual superstars here as well,” Ewing said.

South Africa’s squad will include three players who have graduated from the ‘pram’ of the SA U21 team into the senior game – Clayton Saker, Connor Beauchamp and Sihle Ngubane.

And the prodigies that are the Cassiem brothers – Dayaan and Mustapha – are both back in the fold.

Unfortunately, South Africa will be without their regular captain, Tim Drummond. Because hockey is strictly speaking an amateur sport in South Africa, many of the players don’t have much leeway when it comes to taking leave from their full-time jobs and the veteran midfielder has had to declare himself unavailable.

Fellow Olympian Keenan Horne takes over the captaincy, with Tuks star Bili Ntuli, a member of the national team since 2015, his deputy.

“There are a few changes, but we have the bulk of the Africa Cup squad that won the title last month,” Ewing said. “And we’re taking a 23-man squad to Potchefstroom because we have quite a few games in a short space of time.

“Leave has been a big issue for some guys, but that’s the nature of the sport in this country. So we are going to experience some serious pressures, but it’s more about the experience of playing really hard matches than the results.

“We’re going to have to pay a lot more attention to defence and tap into the counter-attacking strength we used so well in the Tokyo Olympics.

“We need to be a lot more comfortable on the ball under pressure, and this tournament is an invaluable opportunity to get experience of that,” Ewing said.

Lions coach Ivan van Rooyen listed defence, game-management and his side’s ability to bounce back from a chastening defeat as the qualities he was happiest about in his team’s performance against the Bulls in their United Rugby Championship match at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend.

Although the Lions went down 13-21 to their Gauteng neighbours, it was a markedly improved showing from the previous weekend when they were hammered 34-10 by the same side at Ellis Park. And the Lions could even have won in Pretoria were it not for their failure to execute at lineout time, missed chances on attack and a couple of unfortunate scrum penalties that went against them.

“The defence is probably the area that has grown the most since June,” Van Rooyen said. “It’s been difficult to change our system, but against a big, physical Bulls team, we made it difficult for them, we put them back.

“We thought it would rain and we tried to keep them in their 22. We had much more territorial advantage this game and Tiaan Swanepoel makes a big difference with his big boot. The game-management overall was much better today.

“It was a tough week after the loss at Ellis Park, but the reaction we got from the players today says a lot about the group and how they are growing. We really had the Bulls under pressure for the first 20-25 minutes,” Van Rooyen said.

Captain Jaco Kriel, who had been outspoken in his criticism of the previous weekend’s effort, said there had been a welcome lift in intensity at Loftus Versfeld.

“It was nice to see that reaction to what happened last week and how we stayed together as a group,” Kriel said. “But we can be much more clinical. We were in the right areas but we just didn’t round off.

“We spoke about defence for the whole week and the guys’ shoulders certainly felt it! We created enough opportunities through that, but then just small mistakes let us down.

“We had enough chances to convert that pressure into points, but we just didn’t take them. But there was no question about the effort nor the intensity today,” Kriel said.

As head coach and one of the chief setters of goals for the Bulls, Jake White said he was content with their two successive United Rugby Championship wins over the Lions, although he felt they missed a golden opportunity for another bonus point in their 21-13 win at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend.

After a torrid first quarter, the Bulls look set to repeat their 34-10 triumph at Ellis Park a week ago when they stormed into a 21-6 lead after 49 minutes. But mistakes and a creaking scrum continued to plague their performance and they failed to add to their score as the gutsy Lions fought their way back into the game.

“I said to the players that if I had been offered nine points in two matches against the Lions in two weeks then I would have taken that based on where we were,” White said.

“We had to find a way to jump up the log. But we had enough chances to get the bonus point again, but we just couldn’t score again. Which was not ideal because we had set it up nicely.

“But the rain came when we had gone from 6-0 down to 21-6 up, which meant we went 21-0 in the middle block of the game, so you can’t be too upset, we were doing something right.

“I’m not satisfied that we didn’t get the bonus point, but we also can’t be arrogant. Two weeks ago we were under pressure and now we have nine more points against a Lions side that beat the Stormers in the Cape,” White pointed out.

The former Springbok coach also said that the Lions were adept at using the black arts to further frustrate his side.

“The Lions did a very good job of making the game as scrappy as possible, they were off their feet, not rolling away, hands in. And it worked because they got close to getting the result,” White said.

“But we are going to play games like this again, when the referee’s interpretations are different, and you’ve got to find ways to win when you’re under the pump.

“You’ve got to be good enough to adapt to whatever happens. And so many things happened. We just want consistency, but the same situations are being seen differently. There’s no common sense.

“But we have to be good enough to take the referee out of the equation,” White said.