Ken Borland

Veteran Sunshine Tour star Adilson da Silva goes into this week’s Titleist Championship in hot form and believing that a win is nearby when the third event of the Rise Up Series tees off at Pretoria Country Club on Wednesday.

The 48-year-old is third in the order of merit having finished sixth in the Betway Championship at Killarney Country Club and tied for second in last week’s African Bank Championship at Glendower; only the winners of those respective tournaments – Darren Fichardt (Killarney) and Danie van Tonder (Glendower) are ahead of him. And Da Silva has fond memories of Pretoria Country Club, having finished 11^th there in 2018 on his last competitive visit, for one of his best European Tour co-sanctioned results.

“It’s definitely a course I like because it doesn’t really suit the bombers and it’s a bit dry so it probably won’t run as much as the last two courses have. So if you can hit the fairways then the ball should stay on and the greens are stunning, quicker than they usually are during summer – you will hole a lot of putts if you get your stroke right. The greens are so good and my putting feels right.

“I had a practice round this morning [Tuesday] and I’m happy with the way I’m hitting the ball. I’m very happy with the way I’ve been playing but I’ve just got to be patient. Wild shots on this course can get you into trouble very quickly because of all the bunkers and trees. It could be cold too and they say the wind will be up. I hope they keep the greens fairly soft otherwise it’s going to be very hard to get close,” Da Silva told The Citizen on Tuesday.

Cold air will also mean the ball not going as far as usual on the Highveld and Da Silva knows the importance of accuracy off the tee.

“You’ve got to hit good shots, especially off the tee it’s very important. If you drive well then you’re going to give yourself lots of chances. Fortunately I’ve been hitting the ball good and putting well and just a little change made by John Dickson, the coach at Johannesburg Country Club, has helped a lot,” Da Silva said.

There are, however, other contenders who have even more intimate knowledge of the Waterkloof course. George Coetzee knows exactly where to ping his drives having won the Tshwane Open at Pretoria Country Club in 2015 and 2018, while Fichardt has played there since he was a teenager and won several amateur titles and Jacques Blaauw finished second, sixth and tied-13^th in the European Tour co-sanctioned tournaments held there.

Many professional cricketers have suffered the indignity of not having their contracts renewed, but very few have rebounded and proven their former employees made a mistake as rapidly and emphatically as Eldred Hawken.

A year ago, the fast bowler who hails from Limpopo had been let go by the Titans and was contemplating playing club cricket in Johannesburg because at least he had family he could stay with in the city. But at the weekend Hawken was named both the Lions’ Player of the Year and the Players’ Player of the Year after his key role in the franchise defending their four-day title and being their best seamer in the Momentum One-Day Cup.

“It has definitely all caught me by surprise. When I lost my contract last year I felt hard done by and defeated. But my old man took me out to golf and said I should give professional cricket one more year, I had managed to build up some savings and he said he would cover me if I needed more. But I felt my future wasn’t moving forward in cricket,” the 31-year-old told The Citizen on Monday.

“I had tried to find a franchise contract somewhere with my agent, but it’s not easy. But Northerns coach Mark Charlton is a good mate and his opinion was that I should keep going, we did some one-on-one work and he said I should play some club cricket in Johannesburg and you never know where it will go. So I was living out of a suitcase, moving between relations, it was a crazy time,” Hawken said.

Having signed with Old Edwardians, Hawken had yet to play a game for them when North-West coach Monty Jacobs phoned him and asked if he was interested in playing first-class cricket for the Potchefstroom-based team. What followed on October 31 at Senwes Park was a pure sporting miracle as Hawken took nine for 14 against Easterns, who had won the toss and elected to bat. Not many have recorded better bowling figures, in fact they are the fourth best in South African first-class history.

“Monty was great to me, he said when I feel like training I must come through to Potch. I did pretty well but then North-West did not play in December and I was on three weeks holiday in Tzaneen when Lions coach Wandile Gwavu phoned to say they needed bowlers and I must come through for a few training sessions the next week.

“I guess taking those nine wickets in an innings said they must take notice of me, it got me into the mix. And then I took five wickets on debut against the Titans, I was man of the match, we won the game and the Lions just backed me from then on, I played every game,” Hawken said.

The wiry Merensky High School product is a bowler blessed with the ability to swing the ball late and, when he is on song, has wrecked many a batting line-up as a first-class record of 205 wickets in 53 matches at an average of just 21 attests.

“I guess I just get hot at a particular moment, all of a sudden I feel things just snap together and I can create things, you just want to jump on it and ride it when that happens. But I felt like I was also a more consistent bowler last season and I’m trying to focus on that. My economy rate proves I am becoming more consistent. Before I lacked confidence in white-ball cricket.

“For the Titans I never really got into a rhythm of playing week in week out, every game I played you felt under heaps of pressure to impress and you still might not play the next match. My goal is still to play Test cricket for South Africa and I know I can get there; if I lose my belief that I can do it then that’s when I should hang up my boots. In the short-term I just want to be part of another season in which the Lions do well,” Hawken said.

As the last year of Hawken’s life has shown, cricket is a queer old game and, if he can produce another great franchise season, who knows where his journey will end?

Danie van Tonder felt becalmed through the first four holes of the final round of the African Bank Championship at Glendower Golf Club on Friday, but he showed his ever-growing maturity as he held his round together and posted a bogey-free 68 to win the Sunshine Tour’s second Rise Up Series event by three strokes.

Van Tonder started the final day tied for the lead with in-form Martin Rohwer and rising star Jayden Schaper, but they fell away and his greatest challenge came from the experienced Neil Schietekat, who birdied three holes in succession from the second to briefly move into a one-shot lead on eight-under-par.

The 29-year-old Van Tonder, from The Els Club Copperleaf, even had to contend with hitting into the water on the par-five second hole. He managed to scramble his way up-and-down for a par and his patience started paying off once he birdied the par-four fifth.

He gained another shot on the seventh and birdies on the two par-fives on the back nine saw him saunter to victory as Schietekat (69) finished on eight-under, tied for second along with Adilson da Silva (67) and George Coetzee (68).

“I had to be patient because I made a slow start and hit it in the water on the second but managed to get up-and-down for par. But sometimes it’s just your week, to be honest I felt I played good golf the whole week, I was consistent and I was confident in my game. I kept the same aggression as the first two rounds but just made sure I missed in the right place.

“If you hit the ball well and putt well then this is the sort of course you will do well on, if you hit it straight then the course will give you a few birdies because the greens are so quick and true. And it feels special because of putting in all the hard work during Lockdown, getting those callouses back on my hands, gyming and training hard,” Van Tonder said after his fourth Sunshine Tour triumph.

Veteran Da Silva produced some marvellous golf to climb into a share of second, birdieing the 16^th and 18^th holes, both par-fours, to post a 67, joint best round of the day with Tristen Strydom, who lifted himself into a tie for 13^th.

The 19-year-old Schaper endured a chastening day as he went after his first professional title, slumping to a three-over-par 75 to finish in a share of sixth along with Rohwer. Schaper started bogey-bogey and this marvellous prospect will have learnt much from being in the final group. Deon Germishuys (68), Luke Brown (69), Louis Albertse (72), Darren Fichardt (73) and Jaco Ahlers (74) were the other golfers to finish tied for sixth on four-under, while Dylan Mostert was alone in fifth after an excellent 68 lifted him to six-under.

Attempting to transform South African cricket and develop the game such that it is equally accessible for everyone in this country has gobbled up hundreds of millions of rand every year and it is money cash-strapped Cricket South Africa can ill afford to spend without any return on their considerable investment.

Which is why it is so important that the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) project they launched on Friday is not just an attempt to redress the considerable wrongs of the past, worthy as that objective is, but that it is also forward-looking and can ensure that the struggles their current ambassadors such as Geoff Toyana, Makhaya Ntini, Marcia Letsoalo, Dinesha Devnarain, Nolubabalo Ndzundzu and Shandre Fritz had to endure do not continue further into the decade. CSA are dogged by so many issues that the last thing they want is for their transformation record to once again be in the spotlight in five years time.

I know from conversations with director of cricket Graeme Smith that ensuring there is a return on all the money they spend on development pipelines is an issue that consumes him and he has immersed himself since his appointment in December in trying to find solutions.

But the best plans in the world are not going to feed a single child from a township or rural area into the pipeline unless they are backed by concrete action. I get the feeling that CSA is an organisation replete with theories but is slow on responsiveness and sometimes mindsets and hearts have to genuinely change.

This was brought back to me by an incident that occurred during one of the key parts of the SJN launch at Olympic House in Melrose on Friday. The ambassadors for the project that were present were called up to receive their certificates. But the programme director forgot to call up Letsoalo, who represented the Proteas 118 times and came through the Limpopo and Atteridgeville development systems. Mistakes obviously happen, but when the oversight was pointed out, the MC only made matters worse by saying “Marcia now you know why you were 12^th man so often” and then rather patronisingly referring to a great catch the fine bowler had taken some years previously. The fact that this came from the person who is the head of transformation in CSA just makes it so much worse.

So an impressive launch and engagements with parties who were hurt in the past are all good and well, but CSA need to ensure that SJN is not just another well-meaning project that will look good in their reports to parliament and help to get the sports minister off their back. They cannot afford – both literally in terms of finances but also when it comes to their credibility – for it to not follow through with concrete action.

It is encouraging that they have a collection of ambassadors who are real ‘salt-of-the-earth’ types with strong community ties and that the ombudsman who will head up the project – Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza – is obviously a very wise and experienced person. I would have liked to have seen more Coloured representation, for instance Vernon Philander, who is passionate about his community and has devoted tremendous energy into uplifting their cricket now that his great Proteas career is over.

I hear that some former players turned down the request to be ambassadors. That is unfortunate but is an indication of the work the CSA Board need to do to restore their credibility. SJN is, after all, their baby, and even though Ntsebeza is an independent, strong voice, what powers does he really have? He can still only make recommendations to the Board when it comes to action.

That would be the same CSA Board that is so in love with power and status and their little cabal assignations in hotel corridors and corners. Sports minister Nathi Mthethwa addressed Friday’s launch via a virtual link and gave the CSA Board two very good pieces of advice: Make public the forensic report into fired CEO Thabang Moroe and ensure that fresh leadership is voted in at the AGM on September 5.

Current acting president Beresford Williams, who is standing for the permanent job, sat stony-faced when the minister spoke these words, but it is difficult to have sympathy for a man who staunchly defended both Moroe and the previous president, Chris Nenzani, even when it was clear they were leading CSA into the current shambles. Cricket South Africa desperately needs people of action who will put the interests of the game first.