Ken Borland

Titans coach Rob Walter has followed the same route as several other franchise coaches and included some young new faces in his squad for the opening weekend of RamSlam T20 Challenge action, but he says this is purely incidental because he is looking to put his best possible team out on the park for their match against the Dolphins in Centurion on Sunday afternoon.

Off-spinner Ruben Claassen and seamers Sammy Mofokeng and Lungi Ngidi have been called up to the squad, which also includes returning internationals Quinton de Kock, Farhaan Behardien and Chris Morris.

“This is the best team we can choose at the moment and the guys coming in have certainly showed that they have something to offer. The fact that they are young is just incidental. It was very clear in the Momentum One-Day Cup that if we get our skills together in all three disciplines, like we did in the successive bonus-point wins, then it’s difficult to compete with us. But in the rest of the games, some of our skills were only at 30%,” Walter told Saturday Citizen on Friday.

De Kock and Behardien are in fine form right now and will certainly boost the Titans against a star-studded Dolphins team in which David Miller and Kevin Pietersen pose a clear and present danger.

“It’s great to have those guys back, especially after such a successful series. They’re individuals who have done well, they’re in good form and they’ll bring energy and experience to the team.

“We don’t have any special plans for KP … he hasn’t hit many balls in the last couple of months. But the Dolphins are a good all-round team, their batting is probably their strong suit, but Kyle Abbott and Craig Alexander have been bowling pretty well,” Walter added.

Squads

Titans: Henry Davids, Quinton de Kock, Grant Mokoena, Mangaliso Mosehle, Farhaan Behardien, Qaasim Adams, Albie Morkel, Chris Morris, Marchant de Lange, Tabraiz Shamsi, Junior Dala, Heino Kuhn, Ruben Claassen, Lungi Ngidi, Sammy Mofokeng.

Dolphins: Morne van Wyk (captain), Cameron Delport, Cody Chetty, Kevin Pietersen, David Miller, Khaya Zondo, Andile Phehlukwayo, Keshav Maharaj, Kyle Abbott, Ayavuya Myoli, Craig Alexander, Rabian Engelbrecht, Prenelan Subrayen.

Storming Cell C Sharks loose forward Jean Deysel will be unavailable for four-to-six weeks after injuring his ankle, but the fabulous news for the KwaZulu-Natal team is that Springbok regular Willem Alberts is back to full fitness and ready for action again.

Deysel, who has earned four Springbok caps himself, had what the Sharks termed a “small procedure” on his ankle after the unfortunate defeat to the Bulls and is currently on crutches.

But the return of Alberts for this weekend’s crunch encounter with the Stormers at Newlands, four weeks into the competition, can barely have come at a better time for a Sharks team that has just one victory under their belts.

Alberts has been training at full intensity for two-and-a-half weeks now and is likely to be unleashed against the South African Conference leaders on Saturday.

Renaldo Bothma has been outstanding for the Sharks thus far, so Deysel’s absence will hardly be felt with either Alberts or the former Pumas hard man taking the empty place on the bench.

Currie Cup captain Tera Mtembu is also in contention and, as he pointed out on Tuesday, there is plenty of depth at loose forward for the Sharks.

“Every guy who has stood in has done well and it’s a good headache for the coach. It’s awesome to have Willem back and he’s raring to go, but Renaldo has done very well at number seven as well,” Mtembu said.

While a lot of the blame for the Sharks’ defeat to the Bulls can be laid at the door of poor officiating, Mtembu said the team has to shoulder the responsibility for their own shortcomings.

“Obviously it was a disappointing result and we’ve been working hard on certain things for the last two days to rectify them. The main thing is our consistency. We didn’t start well against the Cheetahs, we were awesome against the Lions and then we let ourselves down last weekend. That can’t go on. The energy is there, we just need to be smarter in our decision-making,” Mtembu said.

The return of hugely experienced backs Frans Steyn and JP Pietersen to the Sharks fold will also help them to match an in-form Stormers backline.

Not all players going to Japan come back in tiptop condition, but Steyn and Pietersen are both looking in tremendous shape.

“They’ll definitely give us a lift, as old as they are, they both want to do well, they bring a lot of energy and they are going to inspire the guys around them,” Mtembu said.

The Sharks team to travel to Cape Town will be announced on Thursday.

http://citizen.co.za/337125/deysel-out-but-alberts-back/

The Southern Kings bounced back in impressive fashion, providing South Africa’s only victory in the weekend’s Vodacom SuperRugby action, as they pulled off a hard-fought 34-27 win over the Highlanders in Port Elizabeth.

The tenacious victory lifted the gloom somewhat after a weekend in which the Sharks, Cheetahs and Stormers all lost, giving the Bulls, who had a bye, a handy five-point lead in the South African Conference.

Under the inspiring leadership of Luke Watson, the Kings were clinical and composed under pressure, scoring after the half-time hooter to reclaim the lead and then dominating the third quarter to open up a commanding 34-17 lead. They then had to rely on heroic defence to keep out sustained pressure from a defiant Highlanders team that threw everything into attack.

Tries by centre Shaun Treeby and wing Hosea Gear forced the Kings to defend with all their might to claim their third victory of the season and climb to 13th in the overall standings.

While the way the Kings managed to rebound from their 72-10 mauling at the hands of the Waratahs last weekend was highly admirable, credit too must go to their supporters, who still turned up in droves, 18,500 of them, to back their team.

“A lot of credit must go to the crowd – we got absolutely pumped last week and to see this crowd here – it’s thanks to the supporters for turning up. We really appreciate the support.

“We were able to bounce back and showed a lot of character,” Watson, who scored two tries from rolling mauls, said after the game.

Outstanding loose forward Cornell du Preez and scrumhalf Shaun Venter then scored second-half tries to earn the Kings their second try-scoring bonus point of the season.

The Sharks and Stormers both lost in Australia, to the Reds and Waratahs respectively and now have a slim chance of making the playoffs, never mind tussling for the Conference title as they were expected to at the start of the campaign.

The Sharks once again made a dreadful start, lacking focus and any steel in defence, and the Reds, who showed superb vision and efficiency on attack, punished them ruthlessly, running up a 29-3 lead in 34 minutes as they scored four beautiful tries.

The Sharks were much better in the second half and pushed the Reds when they fought back to 29-17 with 15 minutes remaining, but Quade Cooper, who orchestrated the Queenslanders’ attack with customary panache, then settled the outcome when he kicked a penalty 72 minutes into the game.

The Stormers went down 21-15 to the Waratahs in Sydney and coach Allister Coetzee said he felt the “bounce of the ball” was just not going their way as they slumped to their second consecutive defeat and their sixth in 10 games.

“The bounce of the ball really does not favour us at this point in time, but one must give credit to the Waratahs. They kept their composure and they stuck it out to the end. It was a Test-match situation, it was a physical game, but they fronted up until the end,” he said.

But he perhaps gave away what the Stormers’ problem is at the moment – they are relying on things just happening for them – trusting that their brilliant defence will force mistakes from the opposition, rather than making opportunities themselves.

The Stormers made 155 tackles to the 77 of the Waratahs and that just proves that they made far too many errors, gifting too much possession to the home side.

Although they made a strong start to the second half and still led 15-11 going into the last five minutes, they were defending with their backs to the wall in the final quarter and it was Israel Folau and Berrick Barnes who eventually made the breakthrough for Folau to score his seventh try of the season.

The Cheetahs, meanwhile, lost 39-34 to the Hurricanes in Bloemfontein and were guilty of playing the wrong game, trying to beat the visitors at their own high-tempo, ball-in-hand approach.

The ascendancy of the Cheetahs in the tight phases demanded that they squeeze the Hurricanes and play the territory game, but instead the “old” Cheetahs reappeared.

The tactical kicking was poor, the attack was more a lateral shifting of the ball from side-to-side rather than anything incisive and direct, and the defence was below the high standards the Cheetahs have set recently.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-05-13-superrugby-wrap-inspired-kings-reward-loyal-fans/#.Veg1Pfmqqko

The Indian Premier League is a circus, a jamboree, a get-rich-quick scheme and a money-laundering device according to some people, but it is also a gathering of top-class cricketers from the world over, a cacophony of entertainment and a two-month explosion of non-stop action.

Coming from South Africa (how many times a day do you hear a plaintive “only in Africa”?), we should understand that the IPL does things differently and just because the English don’t get it, it doesn’t mean we should turn our noses up at it either.

The best approach to the IPL is probably to just enjoy it for what it is – pretty mindless entertainment and a wonderful way for our marvellous cricketers to be financially rewarded – and not try to fathom how it all works, whether it is financially viable or whether good standards of corporate governance are being followed.

Because if you do probe beneath the garishly-coloured uniforms, skimpy cheerleader outfits and Shah Rukh Khan’s shiny suits, you are going to find controversies aplenty.

The IPL has tentacles that reach as high as the Indian government: When the Kochi Tuskers were dumped in 2011 for defaulting on payments to the governing body, it led to an Indian minister resigning from the cabinet because he had been using his influence improperly.

This year’s major controversy has been the banning of Sri Lankan players from Chennai, the home of the Super Kings, because the chief minister of Tamil Nadu has said she cannot guarantee their security in the wake of protests over the treatment of Tamils in the island just to the south of the mainland.

How a vote-seeking politician, pandering to populist interests, has been able to hold a multi-billion dollar international tournament to hostage has baffled many people. But then the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, who own the IPL, is Narayanaswami Srinivasan, whose cement company just happens to be based in Chennai and which owns the Super Kings.

The conflicts of interest are glaring, but that’s just how things operate in Indian cricket and the Super Kings are certainly not the only team to have stakeholders with interests in the administration as a whole.

Cricket South Africa have shown a tendency to believe this is how things can be run over here as well, but hopefully the public outrage that forced them to ditch former chief executive Gerald Majola, who was corrupted by the IPL millions, will keep the current board on the straight and narrow.

Although the IPL has attracted much more money than any other cricket tournament in the history of the game, there are strong indications that the current largesse is not financially sustainable.

The last two seasons have seen the lowest television viewership figures of the six years the event has been in existence, while the base price the new Hyderabad Sunrisers paid for the bankrupt Deccan Chargers was roughly half as much as the BCCI charged for the Pune and Kochi franchises in 2010.

And Venky Mysore, the chief executive of the Kolkata Knight Riders, admitted recently that, “Everybody has become conscious that player costs are going up and clearly it is not sustainable from a franchise point of view.”

Allegations of match-fixing and black money (unaccounted for) payments saw five players banned last year, but those in the know suggest there is much more malfeasance waiting to be uncovered.

In other embarrassments, Shah Rukh, the owner of the Knight Riders, was given a five-year ban from the Wankhede Stadium by the Mumbai Indians after he was involved in an unseemly altercation with security there last year, while Dale Steyn was threatened with a law suit by the Chargers for not fulfilling his contract, even though they no longer existed as a franchise!

This was also after Steyn, and Bangalore Royal Challengers star AB de Villiers, were both paid several months late by their franchises.

While Steyn and De Villiers are in the prime of their careers and obviously command top dollar, one of the charms of the IPL is that it allows international stars to keep entertaining their fans late in their careers.

Instead of sitting in their rocking chairs, the likes of Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting and Brett Lee are still out there performing for two months a year.

It was Lee who began IPL 6 on the perfect note by bowling India U19 star Unmukt Chand with a cracking first ball of the tournament; and was then clobbered for four by Mahela Jayawardene off the second delivery.

And who cannot be thrilled with the sight of Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar opening the batting together for the Mumbai Indians?

There are 76 matches in all, so there will no doubt be many more oohs and aahs to come.

South Africa is well-represented by Albie Morkel, Chris Morris and Faf du Plessis at the Chennai Super Kings; Johan Botha, Morné Morkel and Roelof van der Merwe at the Delhi Daredevils; David Miller (Punjab Kings XI), Jacques Kallis and Ryan McLaren at KKR, Wayne Parnell (Pune Warriors), De Villiers with the Royal Challengers and Steyn, JP Duminy and Quinton de Kock with rookies Hyderabad Sunrisers.

The Delhi Daredevils and Bangalore Royal Challengers, both consistent challengers for the title, are coached by South Africans in Eric Simons and Ray Jennings respectively, while Allan Donald is Pune’s bowling coach.

Interference by team owners – one coach famously had to field a player who could hardly walk – is a hardship they have to put up with. But if the dollars they are earning don’t compensate sufficiently, then they can always take a cue from the rest of us and just realise that it’s two months of cricket that doesn’t really mean a whole lot.

It’s more about entertainment than sporting excellence, and we can be thrilled by that too.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-04-10-ipl-enjoy-it-while-it-lasts/#.VcH4hfmqqko