Ken Borland

Both Central Gauteng Lions Cricket and their title sponsors Imperial have stated that the advancement of women’s cricket is one of their main priorities and on Tuesday they put their money where their mouths are as the franchise’s women’s team became one of the first to get proper contracts.

Not only does the groundbreaking move see all senior women’s team players get a contract but Imperial are also sponsoring the two women’s premier club leagues.

Lions captain Yolani Fourie has been one of the stalwarts of women’s cricket who has soldiered on trying to balance work demands with playing high-performance sport and she said the move will be a game-changer for the team.

“It’s brilliant to now get some reward for playing and it’s a definite step in the right direction. I started playing provincial cricket in 2008 and I’ve been with the Lions for the last seven years and it is so motivating to think that I’m going to get my first actual contract. The national team gives out 14 contracts and they are professional, but the next step is to do that at provincial level.

“We just want to be able to focus on our cricket and this shows that there is hope for the youngsters, a lot more of them will stick to playing cricket because they can see a future career in it for themselves,” Fourie told The Citizen at the Wanderers on Tuesday.

CGL chief executive Jono Leaf-Wright said he was confident the partnership with Imperial would result in more Lions players making the step up to international level, joining current Central Gauteng Proteas Ayabonga Khaka, who is playing at the IPL, and Raisibe Ntozakhe.

“We want to place women’s sport on the platform they deserve and create a high-performance space for them as well, because we know we have a championship side. Imperial really see the value in our women and also want to take women’s sport to the next level. We are very thankful for their investment, which means for the first time in our history, we can give our women’s team contracts, which means the world to us,” Leaf-Wright said.

South Africa’s leading cricketers have been counting the minutes until they could return to proper action and their wait will finally be over at 10h00 on Monday morning as the CSA 4-Day Domestic Series gets underway and marks the return of serious competitive action for the first time since March.

And the opening round of action is full of interest as the defending champion Imperial Lions travel to Durban to take on the fast-rising Dolphins, last season’s runners-up, the Titans travel to Cape Town to play their arch-rivals the Cobras and a rapidly-developing Knights side host the Warriors in Bloemfontein.

In a star-studded Titans team, reliable all-rounder Grant Thomson is wearing the captain’s armband and he gave a taste of the enthusiasm with which his team is approaching their return to action.

“Playing at Newlands there will always be good cricket and I’ve yet to experience an easy game against the Cobras, they are always highly competitive. And I think the competition as a whole is going to have a phenomenal standard because there are great players in all the teams, and Proteas scattered throughout. To play the Cobras first up is going to be a great test for us and we will see where we are first up.

“We’ll be able to test our skills and also see what our new players have to offer, hopefully we can step up together and put together a good performance, our Proteas have been working really hard and Aiden Markram and Theunis de Bruyn are both special hungry and Dean Elgar looks in fantastic nick and Heinrich Klaasen scored a double-hundred in a warm-up game,” Thomson said.

Lions captain Temba Bavuma is expecting similarly fiercely-congested cricket, starting with the Dolphins at Kingsmead and then from all other the teams as they try to stop his team from becoming the first in the franchise era to win three successsive four-day titles.

“All the Proteas are taking part for at least the first two rounds, so it’s going to be massive and the sort of standard we look forward to – strength versus strength and the type of cricket from which we can really test ourselves. We need to try and win back the confidence from the public after a lot of uncertainty and we are all raring to go after what has felt like a really long time off the field,” Bavuma said.

Sharks coach Sean Everitt admitted that his team still has plenty of work to do on their efforts in the tight-loose, despite their comfortable winning margin of 42-19 over the Pumas in Nelspruit at the weekend.

The Pumas were typically robust and confrontational up front, but where the Sharks had a decided edge was in terms of their clinical finishing, and the sharpness of both their backline and the rolling maul. But were it not for the Pumas being extremely wasteful on several occasions when they were inside the Sharks’ 22, the match would have been a lot closer.

“We’re very happy with the result, especially since last year we lost here, and we showed a lot of energy for the full 80 minutes, but the breakdowns let us down and that still needs a lot of attention. Francois Klelinhans and Jeandre Rudolph are both very good on the ball, but we need to tidy that area up,” Everitt said.

Not that the Sharks coach was upset with his forwards though, because there were areas where they played much better than last weekend against the Bulls in Pretoria, and the Sharks were expert at mining that front-foot ball and turning it into gold.

“There were obviously things we worked on after the Bulls game and it was great to see the set-piece come through – we were rewarded for some good scrums and we didn’t lose a lineout. Plus our maul was really good and led to two tries for us,” Everitt said.

Stormers coach John Dobson admitted that the Bulls had played them off the park in their Super Rugby Unlocked match at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend, with play being called off at the 63-minute mark with the Bulls enjoying  commanding 39-6 lead.

Dobson pointed to the fact that the Stormers were about to enjoy their first put-in at a scrum when the match was ended due to lightning as a measure of how error-free the Bulls were, and their coach Jake White admitted that his team were certainly where they wanted to be at this stage of the season, and probably playing better than he expected.

“As a coach, one can always be critical of little things and we will learn from those and get better. But I’m looking forward to where we will be in two months’ time if this is the sort of improvement the guys are showing now. We are where we want to be, considering that we haven’t been together for long, only four or five weeks. So the future just looks good.

“But we have won nothing yet and we will prepare the same every week, and make sure we still keep our detail sharp. We have a good group of players and I’m looking forward to seeing how they grow. We managed to hold on to the ball and the first 40 minutes are the best rugby the Bulls have played in a long time. What I enjoy the most was the continuity we played with,” White said after the match.

The game was touted as being a massive forward battle, but predictions of an intense, tight match were made foolish by the Bulls forwards putting in an exceptional display.

“The forwards were outstanding, the scrum and the maul, but I was especially pleased with their ability to adapt and the interplay between backs an forwards was very pleasing. We knew the Stormers would use their forward pack to get out of trouble and our plan was to nullify them and get them to play out of their own half. The game hasn’t changed and it’s still your pack of forwards that wins you the game.

“Our pack was outstanding, the scrums were very good and the way they carried the ball, their offloading, and the way they played between the backs was great. They gave the platform for the backs to play. And then watching Morne Steyn and Ivan van Zyl and the impact they made was great, and I’m really enjoying the combination at centre between Stedman Gans and Cornal Hendricks,” White said.