Ken Borland

Tighthead props have always been the pearl in the crown as far as Bulls coach Jake White is concerned when it comes to picking his teams, but unfortunately the World Cup-winning coach is going to have to do without his first-choice No.3, Springbok star Trevor Nyakane, for their opening Rainbow Cup match against the Lions on Saturday.

According to the injury report released on Monday evening by team doctor Herman Rossouw, Nyakane has a rib injury and “will in all likelihood miss the first game but should not be out for too long”. Rossouw described it as a “new injury”, so Nyakane must have picked it up in training.

Springbok Marcel van der Merwe has been released to play for La Rochelle in France as a medical joker, so Nyakane’s replacement is likely to be 23-year-old Mornay Smith, who is considered a highly promising young tighthead.

Regular captain Duane Vermeulen has received much well-deserved adulation for his role in reviving the Bulls but the Springbok hero also won’t be available on Saturday, although he has begun light training after knee surgery, along with outside backs Gio Aplon and Travis Ismaiel.

Wing Stravino Jacobs, another rising star, is also back in training, while lock Walt Steenkamp as fully recovered from the heart problems he had after contracting Covid and has been given the green light to start training again. Fans will also be happy to see exciting loosehead prop Simphiwe Matanzima is back on the field again after tearing his achilles tendon eight months ago.

Temba Bavuma’s hopes of starting his Proteas captaincy tenure with a series win were scuttled like a ship being hit amidships by multiple torpedoes when six of his first-choice starting XI were unavailable for the deciding match at Centurion, but it is always good to see what the fringe players can do out in the middle.

Unfortunately, South Africa’s depth would appear to be of rather middling quality at the moment. Especially in the pace bowling department.

Kagiso Rabada was classy as ever and although he only took a couple of wickets, his accuracy was such that his economy rate of 4.70 was the best for any seamer in the series. Lungi Ngidi had a poor series, but he has produced the goods many times before in white-ball cricket, so it should just be considered an aberration.

Anrich Nortje was a revelation, bowling with tremendous aggression and control, and the way he rips batsmen out in the middle overs is crucial for the Proteas. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a ready-made replacement for him yet in what bowling coach Charl Langeveldt described as the “enforcer” role.

Andile Phehlukwayo was relied on to bowl at the death, with mixed success. He did take five wickets, but finished as only a little bit less expensive than Ngidi; the all-rounder bowled some excellent overs, but there were some rubbish ones as well.

One big positive in terms of the attack, though, is that Keshav Maharaj is hot on the heels of Tabraiz Shamsi as the first-choice spinner. Slow left-arm orthodox may not be as sexy as Shamsi’s mystical wrist-spin, but Maharaj showed in his outstanding performance in the third ODI that tremendous accuracy allied with teasing flight and changes of pace make him a very effective limited-overs bowler as well.

The moment Bavuma probably regrets most in the series was when he called on Jon-Jon Smuts to bowl the penultimate over in the Centurion decider. The left-arm spinner had gone well up to that point, conceding just 42 runs in his seven overs, but Hasan Ali deposited him on the banks at SuperSport Park four times in an over that cost 25 and took Pakistan past 300 and enough for victory.

Smuts is the sort of gutsy cricketer that typifies the Eastern Cape’s make-a-plan, find-a-way attitude, and he is most certainly more than the sum of all his talents. He has done well for the Proteas in ODI cricket, averaging 45 with the bat and having an economy rate of 5.46 with the ball. But the time has probably come to call on George Linde, the left-arm spinner and hard-hitting batsman who has done so well for the Cape Cobras, and for South Africa whenever he has had the opportunity.

Coach Mark Boucher also spoke about the need for another left-handed batsman in the batting line-up, and Linde certainly fits the bill.

The batting as a whole looks in better shape and the middle-order is surely settled now with Bavuma steering the ship at three, along with Rassie van der Dussen at four and then David Miller and Kyle Verreynne in the finishing roles.

Heinrich Klaasen has not really set the world alight since being Player of the Series against Australia last year, and Verreynne, with two half-centuries and 163 runs in his four innings, deserves an extended chance now, having shown he has the temperament for international cricket.

Janneman Malan is another of the replacement batsmen who should keep his place. Aiden Markram has just not been able to capitalise on how damn good he has looked at the crease and an average of 25.33 for the series pretty much sums up his ODI career thus far. Malan, meanwhile, has put up the numbers – an average of 74 and a strike-rate of 89 in his four ODI innings – and those are figures that should not be ignored.

The other big positive from a batting point of view was the return to form of Phehlukwayo. His innings of 29 and 54 at Centurion were not enough to secure victory for the Proteas, but they were exactly the sort of contributions the team are looking for from their all-rounder.

Proteas stars Rassie van der Dussen and Temba Bavuma have always had one of the more calming relationships at the crease and their partnership did the bulk of the work as the Imperial Lions beat the Warriors by four wickets in their opening T20 Challenge match at Kingsmead on Saturday.

Coming together on a troubled 19 for two, Van der Dussen belted four sixes as he scored 64 off 41 balls, while Bavuma cruised to 40 off 35 deliveries as they added 64 for the third wicket to put the Lions well on course for their target of 158.

Seamer Aya Gqamane split the pair but Van der Dussen then added another 58 runs with Delano Potgieter (17).

Gqamane (3-0-20-3) dismissed both of them in the 17^th over  as the Lions eventually wobbled to victory with four balls remaining.

The dominant Lions attack bowled the Warriors out for 157 with Kagiso Rabada simply at another level as he took three for 23 in his four superb overs.

Fellow Proteas Bjorn Fortuin (4-0-18-1) and Dwaine Pretorius (4-0-23-1) were also outstanding, but the Warriors, led by captain Sinethemba Qeshile’s 33 off 28 balls, fought manfully to post a competitive total.

Sisanda Magala ripped through the tail to claim four for 37 and ensure that the Lions would not need to chase more than 8 an over.

Jake White has always had an attachment to big, physical players, but the new Bulls coach was most excited about the attacking flair on offer from the several whippets in his squad when he named his roster on Thursday for their SuperFan Saturday match against the Sharks at Loftus Versfeld.

The squad includes two Springbok Sevens players in Stedman Gans and Kurt-Lee Arendse, and there are other players like Gio Aplon and Jade Stighling who make up for their lack of size with the size of their talent.

“I’m told I usually only like big okes and that we’re only going to play like the Bulls used to,” White said ironically, “but these are little guys with lots of skill and pace and I’m really excited about them. Watch this space!”

The other selections that the former World Cup winning Springbok coach seemed particularly excited about where that of 19-year-old loosehead prop Jan-Hendrik Wessels, who is 6’3 and 120kg and spent a season with Clermont Auvergne in France, and, at the other end of the spectrum, veteran flyhalf Morne Steyn.

“Jan-Hendrik reminds me of Os du Randt and he will be a Springbok, there’s no doubt about it. We need to give him a chance to develop and playing with Springboks this weekend and learning about senior rugby will be a great experience for him before the U21 tournament starts next week,” White said of the former SA Schools and Grey College star.

“I’ve never worked with Morne Steyn before and when he was flourishing in South Africa, I was overseas. I did watch his progression at Stade Francais, where he won championships with them, and he’s just an unbelievable team guy, full of energy. He’s a lot more athletic than people think and the older he’s got, the more he understands what he can and cannot do. He looks after himself, he’s very fit and he’s a great role-model. There’s no doubt he still has a massive role to play at the Bulls and he’s exactly the sort of general we need,” White said of the 36-year-old, who has 66 Test caps and three Super Rugby titles to his name.

The Bulls will be without the exciting front row expertise of tighthead Marcel van der Merwe, loosehead Lizo Gqoboka and hooker Johan Grobbelaar, who are all unfit for play at the moment. Grobbelaar has had a particularly unfortunate time, having his appendix out seven weeks ago and then catching the Covid-19 virus, but White said the 22-year-old will be back in the fray soon.

Given the recent history of underperformance at Loftus Versfeld, the maiden season under White will see the expectation levels start at a high level. But the coach stressed that the weekend’s hit-out is not so much about the result as getting the combinations right for when the Super Rugby local competition starts and also ensuring they develop some continuity.

“We have lots of options on Saturday, but we’ll probably start with the ‘team’, see how the combinations go and then try out others in a match situation. So far we’ve been running moves with both teams knowing the plays against each other, so it will be nice to try them when the opposition does not know them. But the most important thing is the combinations.

“Saturday is all about continuity as well, especially if we lose some players to the Springboks, who have a trial next week. It’s important to remember we finished last in Super Rugby and seventh in the Currie Cup, we’ve won one out of six games this year. So we can only go up, but we do still have expectations on us. But I think the pressure is on everybody, the Sharks have been front-runners and far above everyone else,” White said.

Squad – Gio Aplon, Jade Stighling, Cornal Hendricks, Stedman Gans, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Clinton Swart, David Kriel, Travis Ismaiel, Stravino Jacobs, Morne Steyn, Chris Smith, Ivan van Zyl, Embrose Papier, Marco Jansen van Vuren, Duane Vermeulen, Nizaam Carr, Tim Agaba, Arno Botha, Muller Uys, Marco van Staden, Ruan Nortje, Juandre Kruger, Jason Jenkins, Sintu Manjezi, Trevor Nyakane, Mornay Smith, Corniel Els, Schalk Erasmus, Jacques van Rooyen, Jan-Hendrik Wessels.