Ken Borland

Winter may be upon us and the country still in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, but according to Central Gauteng Lions Cricket chief executive Jono Leaf-Wright, there are still sunny skies over the Wanderers and the floodlights will metaphorically keep shining bright through the crisis.

Leaf-Wright said the Johannesburg-based franchise is in a good position to hit the ground running when cricket resumes when he spoke in an online press conference to introduce the new Central Gauteng Lions board.

“The financials were in a great place back in February, but nobody envisaged then the impact Covid would have and we have lost many revenue streams. But it was to our benefit that the virus hit at the back end of our season and we are still in a decent place with no real long-term impact to the organisation. We are all working really hard on returning to work, training and playing.

“But we’re also working on mitigating the risks so we can return as quickly as possible and as safely as possible. It’s full steam ahead for our operations team and we’ve had exciting interest from our sponsors. Hopefully a lot of us will be back at the Wanderers in the next week or two and the floodlights are staying on to show people we are ready to return as soon as government allows,” Leaf-Wright said on Friday.

Leaf-Wright said they were hopeful that domestic cricket would be able to resume in November, but said they would be able to weather the storm if they had to wait until the new year.

“The plans we have discussed with Cricket South Africa are to have matches in November and there are still international tours that need to go ahead before that. There may be some problems if we don’t start as planned, but obviously we have to put safety first, we have a duty of care to the players. It’s not essential that we get back to playing in November, but we would need to if we are going to fit everything into the season.

“There are new tournaments that we want to launch but we won’t be able to if the schedule is full. The three existing events, the four-day series, One-Day Cup and the new-look Mzansi Super League, are key for us and our sponsors though. It’s just about how jam-packed we can make the season. In the meantime everybody on the team is working hard to stay fit and strong,” Leaf-Wright said.

If the Proteas are to be regularly playing on pitches with pace and bounce at home in the future then “the time is right to start moving now” towards the solution to the pitch problems that have been highlighted in South African cricket during the India tour, according to Cricket South Africa pitch consultant Hilbert Smit.

For a country renowned for the quality of their fast bowling, the pitches in South Africa have generally been becoming slower and lower, and the solution will be drop-in pitches, according to Smit.

“Our pitches are old, it’s as simple as that. Maybe only Centurion is less than 10 years old, so they are all over-used and full of organic matter. You must remember that a pitch is a living creature and when the grass dies off, you get natural decomposition which helps new grass to grow because nutrients are released. But you also get a build-up of organic matter and that’s what makes a pitch slow and low.

“And a new pitch can’t be used for international cricket for the first two years because it needs to settle and it’s more difficult to do this on-site because you have games next door or over it going on all the time. Plus we can only use the three or four middle strips for all televised games.

“Australia have similar conditions to us and they have addressed this problem with drop-in pitches. We have to make a plan too because with cricket starting on the highveld in August, there’s no time to grow pitches out in the middle. So drop-ins are the only solution,” Smit told Saturday Citizen on Friday.

The highly-experienced groundsman says he will be sending a comprehensive report to CSA at the end of March on the state of pitches around the country and, while Australia’s system is very expensive due to the cost of transporting the drop-ins, Smit believes necessity is the mother of invention and a local solution has been found which will bring the costs down to acceptable levels.

“In Australia it costs about A$7 million, but we do have a local engineer who has come up with a concept, a unique design, that could cut that to a one-off R2-3 million per ground. Then we can replace pitches every year. That is the way forward because it’s something we have to address,” Smit said.

While there will always be a debate around whether it is acceptable for the national team to demand certain types of pitches, there is general concensus around the cricketing world that wickets with pace and bounce are the best way to develop batsmen with the all-round game to succeed all over the world. Even India have pushed for those attributes at home.

Many have linked the fall of West Indies cricket to the decline in their pitches in the 1990s, hard surfaces with pace and carry becoming slow and low.

“You can’t expect to produce proper cricketers if you can’t produce proper conditions,” the late, great fast bowler Malcolm Marshall said in 1998 when he was the West Indies coach. “We’ve got batsmen coming through now with plenty of faults and that’s largely due to the sub-standard pitches they’re playing on.”

The good news for South African cricket is that there is agreement that there is a problem.

“Conditions in South Africa have changed quite a lot, the pitches are over-used and have become slower, more spin-friendly. There was a lot more pace and bounce when I started my career, for example in Durban, Shaun Pollock used to call the Kingsmead pitch his lawn because of all the grass. You now consider reverse-swing and spin as your main weapons there,” Graeme Smith, who debuted for the Proteas in 2002, said.

The groundsman’s lot is not an easy one with hostile African weather always threatening to derail the preparations, so they need all the help they can get given the enormous workload of their creations.

“Grass is what gives a pitch its pace, and our groundsmen are now trying to grow it through winter, but too much grass is dangerous. Cricket is the only sport in the world where you see the effect of such a little playing area, the pitch determines the whole way the game is played, everything’s all about that little 3×22 metre patch. It can cause a total mismatch.

“We are all human and we all get it wrong sometimes, plus you’ve got the influence of the weather as well. For an inexperienced groundsman, it is basically unfair and this series has highlighted that. But we don’t want to make the same mistakes, so we will have closer mentoring and link with the RPCs and Hubs to bring guys through. One of our shortcomings is mentoring and training,” Smit, who is only in his first year in a full-time capacity with CSA, said.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-africa-sport/sa-cricket-sport/1804869/the-time-is-now-for-south-african-cricket-to-cure-pitch-ills/

Saturday’s SuperRugby final that the Lions will host at Ellis Park against the Crusaders is going to benefit not just the rugby franchise but the entire city of Johannesburg, according to CEO Rudolf Straeuli.

A sell-out crowd of more than 60 000 has already been confirmed for the showdown as the Lions look to complete their fairytale resurgence by beating the most successful team in SuperRugby history and becoming only the second South African side to win the southern hemisphere franchise competition.

“Hosting the final is going to be a huge benefit for everyone who finds value at Ellis Park. It’s not just the union that benefits, it obviously also helps the Ellis Park Stadium Pty and it’s a huge marketing opportunity for the Lions company and a great honour to host the final. There’s the money from the tickets and hospitality and some extra reward in the form of the prizemoney. None of that was budgeted for, so it’s a bonus.

“But it’s also a big positive for Johannesburg, the whole city, and especially the Ellis Park precinct, all our neighbours. We are really blessed to be able to host such great events, we’ve had the All Blacks here before and the Test against France this year was also a big success,” Straeuli told The Citizen on Tuesday.

The Lions have not only established themselves at the pinnacle of South African rugby, but have also had to manoeuvre themselves out of troubled financial waters in the last five years.

“You can’t take anything away from the team because they are our flagship, and our juniors have done very well too with our Craven Week side being the best and our U21s and U19s winning their competitions last year. But a few years ago we were a business that was having retrenchments. But some staff took pay-cuts and simplicity has been key to our operations.

“We don’t have a big staff for the big area we have to manage and we have had to cut our cloth according to our needs. But there’s a really positive mood and success breeds further success. Plus people like Kevin de Klerk (president) and Altmann Allers (vice-president) are serious businessmen. If we didn’t have them behind us and their business acumen and that of the board, never mind their own money they have put in, then we wouldn’t be here,” Straeuli said.

http://citizen.co.za/sport/sport-rugby/1595200/super-rugby-final-will-be-a-boost-for-joburg/

The increased tempo at which the Springboks are playing is the single biggest difference between the side in 2017 and the bumbling 2016 outfit, according to Ian McIntosh, the former national coach.

The Springboks battled to get out of the blocks in the first year of Allister Coetzee’s coaching tenure, winning just four of their 12 matches and losing Tests against countries like Ireland, Argentina, Italy and Wales. McIntosh also only won four of his 12 Tests during his 14 months in charge of the Springboks in 1993/94, but he also had two draws, including one against the All Blacks in Auckland, and they beat Australia in Sydney as the coach dragged South African rugby kicking and screaming into the modern age.

Coetzee has implemented a similarly dramatic change in approach this year, and the Springboks have responded with three refreshing, convincing wins over France.

“It’s always a worry getting the right balance in your play, but the intensity that the Springboks have played with is what has impressed me most. I’ve seen snippets of what they’re doing at practice and the only difference between us and New Zealand is the tempo at which we play.

“These are early days, but if they carry on increasing their intensity like they have been doing and with the selection of all these juniors who are rising up the ladder, then we can catch the All Blacks. If we keep that intensity, we will be a big threat. We’ve got the talent, let me tell you, just as much as New Zealand do,” McIntosh told Saturday Citizen at a Players’ Fund and SA Rugby Legends Association training day for the Vuka development programme.

McIntosh said a reliance on a core of the top-class Lions team had also led to a turnaround in fortunes.

“The Lions players have had a big influence because they have already seen results playing that up-tempo rugby. They are realising their potential now at international level, which is exciting. People say we don’t know how to coach in this country, but we’ve got bloody good coaches; someone like Johan Ackermann is a great coach,” McIntosh said.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20170624/282364039682432