Ken Borland

While Australia’s panicking cricketers at the Indian Premier League are perhaps paying their penance for refusing to tour South Africa earlier this year, Cricket South Africa and their players in the league have adopted a more measured approach with it being left up to the individual whether they want to come home or not.

India are facing a massive outbreak of Covid-19, with the largest number of daily infections recorded anywhere in the world since the start of the pandemic, and on Monday it was confirmed that the virus has breached the IPL’s biobubble. Monday’s match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Bangalore Royal Challengers was postponed due to two Kolkata players testing positive.

There have also been unconfirmed reports of positive tests in the Chennai Super Kings camp and amongst the groundstaff at Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium, one of six venues the T20 competition is using.

A handful of Australian cricketers have already pulled out of the IPL, but with their government now instituting a travel ban, threatening a five-year prison sentence for anyone entering the country who has been to India recently, their remaining players have been agitating for a chartered flight to be organised to fly them home.

There has also been speculation that the England and Wales Cricket Board will order their players in India to come home.

But CSA will neither organise a chartered flight nor tell the South African players what to do, chief medical officer Dr Shuaib Manjra told The Citizen on Monday.

“We communicated with the players last week and told them that CSA will support them whichever way they want to handle this, the decision is their’s whether to stay and play, or whether to come home. This event is outside of their CSA contracts, which is why it’s up to them. We will offer them advice, but we are not going to spend millions on a chartered flight,” Manjra said.

While South Africans might be saying ‘ooh la la’ at seeing karma in action for the Australian and English cricketers, the health and safety of the 10 South Africans at the IPL is obviously of prime importance.

Five of those players – Kagiso Rabada, Quinton de Kock, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi and Anrich Nortje – have CSA national contracts.

With the coronavirus ripping through India at a rate of more than 3000 deaths a day, the pandemic now hitting the IPL amidships could cost the BCCI hundreds of millions of dollars if the tournament has to be called off. India’s hosting of the T20 World Cup at the end of October must also now be in doubt.

The Sharks made a painfully slow start to their Rainbow Cup match against the Stormers in Cape Town at the weekend, which did not please coach Sean Everitt at all, but he was happy that his team showed the character to win in the end.

The Sharks were 17-0 down after 12 minutes but eventually triumphed 33-30 and were helped by the Stormers having to play with 14 men for 40 minutes due to two red cards (with replacements allowed after 20 minutes under the new trial laws) and 13 men for 10 minutes. The first of those red cards came in the 13^th minute when wing Seabelo Senatla clumsily upended fullback Aphelele Fassi in the air.

“Obviously we’re not happy with the performance but we’ll take the result and I guess it’s the sign of a good team that you can win when you haven’t played well. Thanks to our conditioning I thought we did really well at the end, especially in stopping their driving mauls. In the last 20 minutes we just could not get out of our 22, we just didn’t have possession.

“It was not the performance we wanted, but the positive is that the guys showed character, work-rate and effort. What was really pleasing is that we are not a team that gives up. The guys found a way to win and at times we moved the ball really nicely. We knew it would be an uphill battle against the Stormers with all their Springboks, but we need to be better,” was Everitt’s frank assessment after the game.

The hard slog for the Sharks began in the lineouts and they also conceded too many penalties. But the new trial laws allowing the Stormers to replace their red-carded players after 20 minutes most certainly kept the home side in the game. Although the new rules made his life harder, Everitt said he supported the change in regulations.

“It’s always tough for the spectacle when there’s an early red card and what Senatla did was not intentional, probably just careless, it was not malicious at all. Fortunately Aphelele was not injured. I think it’s a good idea that a team can change their red-carded players after 20 minutes,” Everitt said.

Bulls coach Jake White wants his team to be flexible and so he was satisfied that they were able to ‘win ugly’ in their opening Rainbow Cup match against the Lions at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday night.

White had before the game promised an attacking approach if conditions were dry, and the Bulls started superbly, keeping ball in hand for two minutes from the kickoff and then scoring the opening try. But thereafter they were constrained by a watertight, rapidly approaching Lions defence and the soft underfoot conditions, only managing to cross the tryline again in the 66^th and 80^th minutes for a 22-9 win.

The victory and a bonus point would also have been in the bag much earlier if the Bulls hadn’t had three tries disallowed due to captain’s referrals.

“Sometimes you’ve got to win these sort of games and we found a way to win. The Lions were very good at the breakdown, they tried to slow us down all the time. To have four tries disallowed – I think the yellow card for a deliberate knock-on could maybe have been a penalty try – was helluva frustrating because you keep thinking you’ve put a bit of distance between you and the opposition.

“But we know everyone will be coming for us because we’ve won the last two trophies and today we had to vasbyt for the win. We started so well and we were probably seduced a bit by that, the players maybe thought it was like a training run. But then the Lions had so many players in the line … if we had turned them around more with little kicks then we could have found a bit more space behind them,” White said after the Bulls’ 13^th successive win at home.

The Bulls dominated possession but at times they suffered from the rugby equivalent of bulimia – having an over-abundance of ball and generally keeping it in hand meant they also coughed up a lot of possession as the Lions dominated the breakdowns.

“We will work on not being sucked into playing too much rugby, sometimes we need to be a bit smarter. But we did end up playing into the wind in both halves because the wind turned … it was a bit extraordinary, something we’re not used to here. But it’s exciting times with guys like Elrigh Louw and Janko Swanepoel just out of the U21s, Mornay Smith is a young tighthead, Joe van Zyl, Stravino Jacobs and David Kriel are all young.

“But if you have too many youngsters then they can start to panic, so it’s nice for them to learn from the seniors exactly how to close off a game. I told the bench before the match that I was looking for composure at the end, for them to show maturity, and I was satisfied that they did. Lizo Gqoboka, Arno Botha and Morne Steyn are all Springboks, Jacques van Rooyen is very experienced, and it showed,” White said.

The Bulls may have scored as early as the second minute, but for more than an hour they then struggled to go around or get through a ferocious Lions defence, eventually battling to a 22-9 win in their Rainbow Cup match at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday night.

The Bulls began superbly, retaining possession from the kickoff for two minutes before flyhalf Chris Smith jinked and slipped though some tackles to score the opening try. Thereafter, however, the Bulls found themselves in a tremendous tussle, struggling to cope with the Lions’ line-speed in defence and their aggressive targeting of the breakdowns.

Only once in the whole game was there a short kick over the top of the rapidly advancing Lions defence and it nearly resulted in centre Cornal Hendricks scoring. But the Bulls did not use that tactic or the grubber nearly enough. And for all their possession, the Lions were dominant at the breakdowns so it almost always came to nothing.

Smith added a penalty to the conversion of his try and Lions flyhalf Fred Zeilinga kicked two penalties as the Bulls went into halftime 10-6 ahead. The Lions made a good start to the second half, allowing Zeilinga to close the gap to just one point with another penalty in the  44^th minute.

The final quarter belonged to the Bulls though as they camped in the Lions half. After 10 minutes in the 22 they eventually broke through, helped by EW Viljoen’s yellow card for a deliberate knock-on, when replacement prop Lizo Gqoboka won a turnover to win a penalty, and then produced a mini-break before offloading to substitute scrumhalf Zak Burger to race over under the poles for the matchwinning try.

The never-say-die Lions were better than the final scoreline suggested, conceding a try right at the death as flank Elrigh Louw powered through several tackles to score. Hendricks had fought hard on the gainline in the build-up, before offloading to Burger, who darted well and then found Louw with a neat offload.

But the Bulls will point to having three tries disallowed by the TMO and the soft underfoot conditions as having put paid to their more ambitious plans.

Scorers

Bulls: Tries – Chris Smith, Zak Burger, Elrigh Louw. Conversions – Smith, Morne Steyn. Penalty – Smith.

Lions: Penalties – Fred Zeilinga (3).