Ken Borland

The last time the DP World Lions men’s team were in Bloemfontein to play the Free State Knights in a T20 match was, astonishingly, way back in December 2017 and it was a tiff that only lasted 13 overs before rain forced play to be abandoned.

Our defending champions are back in the City of Roses to take on the Knights in the CSA T20 Challenge on Wednesday night, and it is something of a journey into the unknown given the gap between T20 fixtures there and the fact that the Free Staters boast a new-look side.

Back in 2017, the Knights had players like Keegan Petersen, who scored an unbeaten 52 off 40 balls to take them to 86 for two when play was stopped, Theunis de Bruyn and David Miller playing for them. Now, having returned from being relegated to Division II last season, they boast some exciting new talent like Garnett Tarr, Dian Forrester and Tiaan van Vuuren.

The Free Staters may have only won one of their three matches so far this season, but DP World Lions coach Russell Domingo says it would be ill-judged to underestimate them in any way.

“The Knights could easily have won three from three; one of their losses was in a super over. They have good young cricketers but also lots of experience with guys like Aaron Phangiso, Malusi Siboto and Gihahn Cloete. Along with Jacques Snyman and Tiaan van Vuuren, they are a helluva dangerous side and they had a great win over the Warriors in their last match,” Domingo said upon their arrival in Bloemfontein.

“So we need to do what we’ve been doing in our last two matches, it’s working at the moment. We want to be solid and well-organised up front, and then play from there. We have a much less experienced batting line-up than last season with Ryan Rickelton, Rassie van der Dussen, Reeza Hendricks and Wiaan Mulder all away, and the last thing we want to do is lose early wickets like we did in our first game against the Titans.

“So our plan is to assess conditions in the first three overs or so, and then allow the really good finishers we have to play. I’m of the school of thought that T20 games are not won in the first six overs but in the last six overs of each innings,” Domingo said.

Evan Jones (SR 193.10), Connor Esterhuizen (SR 165.71) and captain Mitchell van Buuren (SR 159.37) are like heavyweight boxers, primed to deliver the knockout blow at the death.

Our DP World Lions won both their weekend matches in Johannesburg, but just to ensure their success does not breed any complacency, their game against the Dolphins ended up in a much closer finish than expected.

The bowling attack is yet to resemble the title-winning unit of last season, and has been dogged by wides and no-balls in the first three matches – 38 wides and six no-balls in total.

“I’m still reasonably happy because it’s always tricky starting the season with T20 because your bowlers are not yet battle-hardened. We’ve had quite a lot of extras, especially wides,” Domingo said.

With Kwena Maphaka staying behind in Johannesburg due to school exam commitments, Lutho Sipamla is likely to return to the attack. Codi Yusuf took his place in the last match against the Dolphins, after a tough opener versus the Titans, and bounced back in typical bulldog fashion with two key middle-order wickets while conceding just six runs-per-over.

“Codi was good, he’s a big bowler for us across all formats. He was just struggling a bit with confidence, but he’s done a lot of work with Allan Donald [bowling coach],” Domingo said.

Duanne Olivier was a member of the South African Test squad on their previous tour of England in 2017, but he had just one Test under his belt then and is obviously a very different bowler to the rookie who played in two of the matches as the Proteas were beaten 3-1.

Having enjoyed match figures of five for 57 on debut against Sri Lanka at the Wanderers in January of that year, Olivier arrived in England in the role of enforcer, pace and bounce being his key weapons. He played in the second Test, when South Africa levelled the series with an imposing 340-run win at Trrent Bridge, and then in the last Test at Old Trafford, which the hosts won by 177 runs.

Olivier took seven wickets in the series at an average of 27.57.

“The way I played in 2017 will be completely different to now,” Olivier told Saturday Citizen. “England play swing quite well and you need to get the ball to nibble around over there.

“That’s what I worked on in my three years of county cricket. But there are times when you can’t do that because the pitches and conditions play a massive role in England.

“It’s important not to complicate things, it depends on the situation whether you can be more aggressive or must be defensive. Maybe my job is to get the run-rate down.

“The important thing is to bowl in partnerships, put pressure on the batsmen. But you have to graft to get wickets. You get pitches where you have to just sit in and build pressure,” Olivier said.

The previous incarnation of the Groblersdal-born paceman seldom drew the batsman forward, he preferred to bombard them, pushing them back and only using the fuller ball if he hadn’t yet found a glove or an edge behind. Olivier, who turned 30 in May, knows he has to have a more rounded strategy in England.

“At times you can be aggressive with short-pitched bowling, but you aim to be fuller, especially early on with the newer ball,” Olivier said. “I don’t mind the batsmen coming at me, I will just try and hit my length and stay there.

“You have to stay within your game-plan and some days it goes for you, some days it doesn’t. We have to be patient, England play a risky game and if they lose two or three wickets early on then everything changes.

“Things happen quickly in Test cricket, and when you have that momentum, it’s about riding the wave, being ruthless when you’re on top. As bowlers, we also want to throw the first punch.

“We believe in our game-plan and we will stick to that, what we believe in, the simple things. Small things can make a big difference in the end and we know we have a world-class bowling unit,” Olivier said.

The Mumbai Indians won the Indian Premier League three times between 2017 and 2020 but missed out last year, and decided over the weekend that 18-year-old Dewald Brevis might be the missing ingredient they need to return to the podium in the world’s richest cricket tournament.

And Mumbai were willing to pay Brevis about R6 million at the IPL Auction this weekend to play for them, even though he has played just one senior level T20 game, scoring 23 off 25 balls for the Northerns Titans against the Free State Knights at the weekend. But Brevis has just come off an outstanding Junior World Cup, where he scored the most runs in the history of the event and was named player of the tournament despite South Africa’s early exit.

The star quality of other South Africans was confirmed as Kagiso Rabada was bought by the Punjab Kings for around R18.7 million, veteran Faf du Plessis goes to Bangalore Royal Challengers for R14.2 million, and Quinton de Kock was picked up by the new Lucknow Super Giants franchise for R13.7 million. Anrich Nortje is South Africa’s other big IPL earner, having been retained by Delhi Capitals for R13.15 million.

David Miller was bought by the Gujarat Titans, another new franchise, for R6 million, but needs to mend his reputation as a finisher in the IPL because he was only auctioned off in the closing hours on Sunday, having gone unsold on the first day.

Lungi Ngidi, who has shown lately he is on the mend from all his injury problems, was also only picked up late on Sunday, going to Delhi Capitals for R1 million.

New sensation Marco Jansen picked up a healthy R8.5 million price tag from Hyderabad Sunrisers, while Aiden Markram’s growing reputation as a T20 player saw him fetch R5.3 million from the same team.

There was joy for Rassie van der Dussen (Rajasthan Royals, R2 million) and Dwaine Pretorius (Chennai Super Kings, R1 million) as they both gained their first IPL contracts.

But the IPL’s baleful attitude towards foreign spinners was again highlighted by the fact Tabraiz Shamsi, one of the world’s best T20 bowlers, failed to secure a buyer.

Ill-equipped leadership is something which really hits a nerve when it comes to South African cricket, largely due to the incompetent and self-serving Board and CEO which the game here had to labour under between 2017 and 2019.

So it was distressing this week to see the new CSA Board suffer their first mis-step, showing the same sort of reactionary leadership of their predecessors rather than the proactive management that is required of a billion rand organisation.

The Proteas have been grappling amongst themselves with issues of a new team culture for these changing times, especially since Black Lives Matter has made such a dramatic impression on the global sports environment. And the anti-racism message of that movement should hit particularly near to home due to the notorious history of our country.

Unfortunately, the team have not been able to come up with a unified response to BLM. It has not been a good look to see some of the team kneeling, others standing; some with fists raised, some with hands by their side.

But the CSA Board has failed to provide strong leadership in this regard. It’s not as if this issue has suddenly sprung upon them. How to properly acknowledge BLM has been a problem for the Proteas for more than a year. A proactive board would have known the spotlight would be on the team at a World Cup and would have ensured proper engagement was held with the squad and a solution found before the tournament. The sort of engagement that happened on Wednesday night once the crisis was already in full swing.

Instead, like a poor captain moving his field around in response to a boundary being hit, CSA chose the ham-fisted route of not consulting and issuing a directive, on the morning of a crucial game.

The national team have had their fill of arrogant administrators having the audacity to run cricket as their own fiefdoms, and the timing of the edict, and the fact that it came out of the blue without any consultation, was bound to cause some push-back.

Quinton de Kock’s initial refusal to take a knee, even though he is a product of a mixed-race family, caused near hysteria in this race-obsessed country of ours. Personally, I believe it is the right thing to take a knee for Black Lives Matter, but what worried me more about De Kock’s actions was that he was willing to leave his team in the lurch, pulling out of a crunch game two hours before the start, because he was very annoyed at being forced to make a gesture.

But many of his critics should perhaps take the beam out of their own eye before they try to remove the speck in De Kock’s eye. How many of them are anti-vaxxers? Because that is a similar issue of personal freedoms versus common good.

How many of those who viciously labelled the 28-year-old as a racist would be willing to make a gesture when it comes to protesting Farm Murders?

Because in many people’s eyes, rightly or wrongly, Black Lives Matter is as politicised an issue as Farm Murders. Just as there surely can be no moral objection to Black lives mattering, surely all farm murders are wrong?

This is where education is so important. CSA should have sat down with the players a long time ago and explained exactly what Black Lives Matter means in a South African context and what exactly the team would be supporting and protesting against should have been thrashed out and finalised.