Ken Borland

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.

The Bulls produced sublime rugby at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday night as they pummelled the Stormers 39-6 in their Super Rugby Unlocked match, the visitors being spared further humiliation by divine intervention as lightning forced the match to be abandoned after 64 minutes.

The decison to stop play was a surprise, given that the Bulls and Sharks played through a far more potent storm last weekend.

While a disappointingly flat Stormers side almost gave the impression that they had come to Pretoria for a holiday, the Bulls were outstanding and deserve credit for hammering their opponents into submission. The Bulls were accurate with their kicking game, their rolling maul was magnificent, the scrum put the much-vaunted all-Springbok opposition front row under pressure, and the razor-sharp backs were able to punch holes in the Stormers line with regularity.

And once the Bulls began dominating the breakdown, the Stormers were hapless, with a few forays into the home team’s 22 in the second half not bearing fruit, with Duane Vermeulen, in particular, enjoying a field day when it came to stealing ball.

Another veteran who enjoyed a sensational match was Bulls flyhalf Morne Steyn, who rolled back the years to the halcyon days of the late 2000s. He took full advantage of the platform laid for him by the brilliant pack and produced a masterclass of superb tactical kicking and slick distribution, including an outrageous behind-the-back pass that ensured the Bulls took advantage of an overlap they were about to waste for centre Stedman Gans’s first try.

He picked out with unerring accuracy destinations both far, with his long-range kicking ensuring the Bulls dominated territory, and close as his deft little chips over the defence created havoc. Steyn sealed a 32-6 halftime lead as he regathered his beautiful little chip off the left foot over the defence and sent impressive lock Ruan Nortje over with a perfectly-timed pass through a screen of defenders.

Having absorbed some pressure early in the second half, Steyn then produced a lovely little chip into space for Gans to rush on to, the livewire Sevens star bursting through fullback Warrick Gelant’s tackle to score his second try.

Scorers

Bulls: Tries – Johan Grobbelaar, Stedman Gans (2), Ivan van Zyl, Ruan Nortje. Conversions – Morne Steyn (4). Penalties –Steyn (2).

Stormers: Penalties – Damian Willemse (2).