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Ken Borland



Rabada worn out at T20 World Cup, but looks forward to knocking over Aussie batsmen 0

Posted on March 14, 2023 by Ken

Kagiso Rabada has admitted to feeling worn out at the T20 World Cup, but the Proteas pace spearhead is excited about knocking over a few Australian batsmen in the Test series that is set to begin in Brisbane on December 17.

Rabada ended October by producing an intense, pressure-building bowling spell, as well as two superbly athletic outfield catches, in the impressive T20 World Cup win over India, but he was then flat and ineffective against Pakistan and the Netherlands as South Africa made a shock exit from the tournament at the group stage.

The 27-year-old said that is why he decided to rest rather than play any four-day domestic cricket ahead of the crunch series back in Australia.

“I felt like I needed to rest, it’s been a long year,” Rabada said on the morning of the Proteas’ departure for Australia. “It is a concern the amount of cricket we are playing and it needs to be managed.

“You can feel the fatigue in the intensity of your play, it’s just not where you want it to be. It catches up with you and at international level you really want to be playing at high intensity.

“I’m not trying to make excuses, I wasn’t up to scratch at the World Cup and I did have a disappointing tournament. I didn’t feel like I had great energy. I tried my best but it felt like the harder I tried, nothing really came out.

“But I am excited about playing some cricket now, playing against quality opposition like Australia always seems to bring the best out of me and I have good memories of playing there,” Rabada said.

In the three Tests in Australia in 2016, Rabada took 15 wickets at an average of 22.40 and his overall record against them is outstanding – 38 wickets in seven matches at 20.50.

Rabada has had some famously fiery exchanges with the Australian batsmen, and some of the language thrown around then probably belongs in the Adult Classifieds, but as befits the leader of the South African attack, he says he will never back down.

“We will be tested over there and against them it always seems like we are going up against some sort of feud, that is always extremely apparent,” Rabada said.

“It’s always a good contest and,  as much as nerves and passion are incredibly important, sometimes you must just let it happen. It always seems to be a challenge against Australia.

“But I won’t back down to the challenge, if they want to come hard then I will stand up to it. That’s what competition is,” Rabada said firmly.

Elgar believes he has a great attack, but pressure on the batsmen 0

Posted on March 08, 2023 by Ken

Proteas captain Dean Elgar believes he has a great attack for Australian conditions, but at the moment the pressure is on his batsmen to put enough runs on the board for them to be effective in their three-Test series that starts on December 17.

The South Africans departed for Australia on Thursday night and Elgar admitted the focus would be on their embattled batsmen.

“The style of cricket we play is tailor-made for over there, we have great fast bowlers. It’s bad enough facing them in the nets, I’m really glad I don’t have to do it in a match,” Elgar said at the Wanderers on Thursday morning.

“But runs on the board is key in Australia and our attack needs those scores to be most effective. Our batting has not been good enough in the last year, there is no shying away from it.

“It’s up to the batsmen to take accountability and responsibility. There are a lot of guys on the fringes who are champing on the bit and eager to play,” Elgar said.

There has been some criticism aimed at the recalling of Theunis de Bruyn and Heinrich Klaasen to the squad, both of whom are over 30 and last played Test cricket on the ill-fated tour of India in October 2019. But Elgar backed them as both having the experience and ability to dominate the strong Australian attack.

“Heinrich is a good, experienced international cricketer now and he has immense ability and a lot of character,” Elgar said.

“I’ve always thought that Theunis is one of the most talented batsmen in the country, he just has that extra gear which not a lot of guys have. He can really take an attack apart.

“I think he’s also in a really good space for Test cricket now, he has come a long way as a cricketer and person since his last international encounter and he will definitely be part of the selection discussion.”

Elgar is also fully expecting the Australians to try and bait his team with verbals, but said the Proteas must not back down when things get fiery.

“Australia is a tough place to play because there are a lot of external pressures and in their home conditions they are always pretty feisty. It’s the nature of them as individuals – brash and bold and in your face.

“But we enjoy that confrontation and we’ve shown the ability to keep calm heads. I would encourage the players not to shy away from it because that’s when South Africans show their best character,” Elgar said.

Census of International team shows team unity challenge Immelman faces 0

Posted on May 06, 2020 by Ken

A census of the last four International teams to participate in the Presidents Cup shows that anything from six to nine different countries, from three to five continents, have been represented in each edition of the biennial golf match against the United States. Which poses a considerable challenge in terms of creating a team unity between such disparate cultures and languages as Australian, Chinese and Chilean.

Which is why newly-appointed International captain Trevor Immelman has said he is going to lean heavily on the culture created by his predecessor, fellow South African Ernie Els, in the 2021 event at Quail Hollow in North Carolina. Els, faced with the most diverse team in Presidents Cup history, with nine countries represented from five continents, spearheaded the toughest challenge the United States have experienced in the event for many years, the Americans eventually having to come from behind on the last day to win 16-14.

“Though we were unable to deliver Ernie a win at Royal Melbourne last year, the legacy that he established in his time as captain is something I hope to build on moving forward. I can’t wait to continue adding to the platform he created for us. Ernie knew that he needed to find a way to create a family dynamic among our team, and we felt that over the years that might have been what was missing.

“It’s a pretty big hurdle to try and overcome when you have players coming from nine different countries, with their own cultures and languages, in just one week. Ernie really went out of his way to build unity amongst the group and that worked in our favour. That was something he wanted to create for further down the road too. He really felt like our team needed some kind of identity. With the creation of a new International Team logo, that identity was born.

“What he did for us is going to be a turning point for the International team. We have the blueprint that will hopefully lead us to victory, we had amazing chemistry in our team room down in Australia. And it translated on to the golf course, where our guys really did compete as one unit, and we came so close to pulling it off,” Immelman, who was an assistant captain in Melbourne, said in his PGA Tour player diary this week.

Immelman made his name globally by winning the 2008 Masters, beating Tiger Woods by three strokes, but wrist, elbow and back injuries then put his playing career into intermission. He made a comeback on the European Tour and re-entered the top 500 in the world rankings in 2018, but it is his work as a TV analyst that has mostly preserved his high profile. It will also help him in sifting through the talent at his disposal as captain.

“They are literally and figuratively massive shoes for me to fill, but I think we have a nice plan going forward. I’m going to draw on all sorts of different things that I’ve picked up over the years from a leadership standpoint from successful people all over the globe and all walks of life. But we’re going to be having a great time, we’re going to have great communication and there’s going to be a lot of attention to detail.

“In the last two years we’ve had a number of youngsters step up as some of the best golfers in the world. We have a lot of different players starting to play really well, guys who were on the fringes of the team last time around. We had a group of 12 in Melbourne and now I can cast a bigger net and create a group of 30 to 40 golfers, and start to get the camaraderie going,” Immelman said.

The crude & immoral reasons behind the Lorgat witch-hunt 0

Posted on November 24, 2017 by Ken

 

And so, finally, we know why the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have been so keen to sideline Haroon Lorgat, and why English and Australian administrators sided with them in agreeing to a witch-hunt that would keep the former International Cricket Council CEO sidelined while those three countries stage a hostile takeover of the game.

 If you’re going to stage a coup that hands almost complete power in cricket to the three greedy pigs of India, England and Australia, using the flimsiest of economic reasons to justify it, then the last person you want in the boardroom is a trained chartered accountant with in-depth knowledge of the ICC and their global events, someone able to see through the efforts to bamboozle with lots of numbers, and able to rally the other nations into rejecting, with the utter contempt it deserves, the crude and immoral proposal to change the ICC’s structure.

While Lorgat’s suspension from ICC activities was ostensibly part of India’s efforts to punish him for not kowtowing to their every whim while he was the global body’s CEO, it has now become clear that the BCCI’s shameful interference in Cricket South Africa affairs was part of a much bigger plan – an evil attempt to seize control of cricket, along with England and Australia. David Becker’s ill-judged letter then provided the perfect ammunition to force Lorgat’s removal from ICC affairs.

While the players – through Fica, their international union – and fans the world over have expressed their dismay at the new low the world’s leading cricket administrators are now proposing, the aptly-named Wally Edwards, the Cricket Australia chairman and one of the three men responsible for drafting the bombshell proposal, expressed his annoyance that anybody has dared to question the bona fides of himself, Narayanaswami Srinivasan of India (the Jabba the Hutt of world cricket) and the odious Giles Clarke of England.

“Traditionally, Cricket Australia does not comment on ICC discussions it is about to have – we talk to other ICC nations across the table rather than via the media. But we were today disappointed to see the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations question whether CA and others have met their fiduciary duties as ICC members,” Edwards harrumphed.

But his feeble protestations cannot hide the fact that three nations are trying to use their current wealth to ensure a monopoly over the game that will only widen the gap between them and the rest of the cricket-playing world; cricket will become like American Football, a game reserved for the few and ignored by the rest of the world.

Which makes it clear that Edwards has not met his fiduciary duties as an ICC director. He and the other two conspirators are proposing something that is patently not in the best interests of the game as a whole, but will rather serve the narrow self-interest of three countries only.

It will take cricket back to the dark days of the Imperial Cricket Conference, where you had to be a member of the British Empire to join and England and Australia both held a veto when it came to voting on anything to do with the game.

It was only in 1993, with the formation of the International Cricket Council, that this stranglehold on the game was broken. One can only hope that when the ICC board meets at the end of this month, the other seven Full Members don’t vote themselves back into slavery again.

And while they are at it, Edwards, Srinivasan and Clarke, a former investment banker, should all be summarily fired as directors and Lorgat should be exonerated of all wrongdoing.

It’s all gone very quiet when it comes to his inquiry, by now the ICC really should have been able to find evidence if there was any unethical behaviour on his part. But then again, the evil triumvirate will have achieved what they set out to do with their spurious allegations if Lorgat is not inside the ICC Board meeting at the end of the month, having already been absent when the restructuring proposal was sprung on the other directors on January 9.

The BCCI have already issued a thinly-veiled threat to boycott ICC events like the World Cup and the World T20 if the Board does not submit to their plan for world domination.

In a statement released on Thursday, the BCCI said it had “authorised the office bearers to enter into agreements with ICC for participating in the ICC events and host ICC events, subject to the proposal being approved in the ICC Board.”

Once India have control of the international cricket schedule, along with England and Australia, there is little doubt that no cricket will be allowed to be played during the IPL, therefore ensuring the newest, least gratifying format of the game takes centre-stage.

Fortunately for cricket fans and the players, there is still hope even if the ICC Board do the unthinkable and sell-out to India, England and Australia.

If the ICC act unconstitutionally, or even if their directors are deemed to have breached the code of conduct and failed in their fiduciary duties to act in the interests of the sport and not their own narrow agendas, then there are stakeholders willing to take the matter all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Perhaps Cricket South Africa should send their independent lead director, Norman Arendse, a fiery, outspoken advocate, to shake things up at the ICC?

The governing body seems to have totally lost sight of the reason for their existence: which is to grow the game, not take it back 100 years.

And the point of the game is fair competition: the idea that India, England and Australia should be exempt from any possible Test relegation is laughable and goes against the very principles of fair play. The last five years suggest all three countries are being incredibly arrogant to presume they will remain strong on the playing field ad infinitum.

But then again the smugness currently coming out of England at their own cleverness in finding a devious way of returning to the top table of world cricket (never mind how shocking the on-field performance has been recently), bugger the rest of the world, suggests fair play is no longer the defining characteristic of cricket.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-01-23-cricket-the-mystery-of-the-lorgat-witch-hunt-unravelled/#.Wh6eSFWWbIU

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    John 13:35 – “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

    “The Christian’s standards are the standards of Christ and, in his entire conduct and disposition, he strives to reflect the image of Christ.

    “Christ fills us with the love that we lack so that we can achieve his purpose with our lives. If we find it difficult to love, … open our lives to his Spirit and allow him to love others through us.” – Solly Ozrovech, A Shelter From The Storm

    His loveliness must be reflected in our lives. Our good deeds must reflect his love.

     



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