Ken Borland

The Sharks, back in home port in Durban after meeting expectations on their three-week overseas tour, will be bringing a lot of pent-up energy to Loftus Versfeld on Sunday when they tackle the Bulls in a massive United Rugby Championship derby.

Victories on the road against Zebre and the Dragons was followed by a superb attacking showing against Leinster, who only pulled away in the final quarter in Dublin. With the Springboks returning to action, the Sharks exploded in the final half-hour of their homecoming match against the Glasgow Warriors, and there was a real sense of momentum building for their big clash with Ulster last weekend.

And then the match was controversially postponed the day before it was scheduled to happen. The one positive to offset the great disappointment felt at Kings Park is that an even fresher, hungrier Sharks side will now travel to Pretoria this weekend.

“It was quite shocking news to get on the Friday,” prop Ntuthuko Mchunu said on Wednesday. “We had had a really good week of preparation coming off a win, we were looking forward to the festivities of the day.

“And of course we were really looking forward to playing the game, having prepped so well and brushed up on a few things. But at least this week it means we are really fresh and looking forward again.

“It’s always a big game up there, two South African sides going at each other. It’s never easy at Loftus and both teams will front up. We have prepared well for a physical battle at set-piece.

“The Bulls have really good players, but what happened there in the past is past, we’re now looking forward to the future. It’s always a great game against the Bulls,” Mchunu said.

The Sharks will be without half-a-dozen of their frontline Springboks, but Mchunu says there is a real unity within the group remaining behind, following their achievements on the fields of Europe and the fun they had doing some urban sightseeing.

“The one thing the Sharks have done is grow the group. We prepared really well together in pre-season when the Springboks were away, and this team has grown.

“We showed a lot of fight and character against Leinster, it was an awesome tour that really grew us. The combinations worked well together and we want to carry that spirit through to this weekend,” Mchunu said.

The Bulls, meanwhile, are perhaps retreating into one of their laagers as they have been playing hard to get with the Fourth Estate from the start of the week.

Cricket South Africa have questioned the timing of former Australian captain Tim Paine’s allegations that the Proteas were also doing illegal work on the ball now that the great ball-tampering scandal of 2018 is back in the news.

Paine inherited the captaincy after Steve Smith was suspended, but stood down in November last year after it was revealed the married cricketer had been sending explicit messages to a Cricket Tasmania employee.

Paine’s autobiography, The Price Paid, was released on Tuesday and his shock accusations will obviously be great publicity for the book. Paine accuses the Proteas of ball-tampering even after Australia’s skulduggery with sandpaper was exposed at Newlands in the third Test, and David Warner, Cameron Bancroft and Smith were sent home in disgrace.

“I saw it happen in the fourth Test of that series. Think about that. After everything that had happened in Cape Town, after all the headlines and bans and carry-on,” Paine writes.

“I was standing at the bowlers’ end in the next Test when a shot came up on the screen of a South African player at mid-off having a huge crack at the ball.

“The television director, who had played an active role in catching out Cam, immediately pulled the shot off the screen.

“We went to the umpires about it, which might seem a bit poor, but we’d been slaughtered and were convinced they’d been up to it since the first Test. But the footage got lost. As it would,” Paine complained.

CSA chief executive Pholetsi Moseki told The Citizen it was upsetting that none of these allegations were made at the time of the numerous investigations that were held, and are now only appearing four-and-a-half years later.

“CSA and Cricket Australia have engaged on this matter and the necessary sanctions levied at the time. Both bodies have reiterated their commitment to a clean game, … above reproach,” Moseki said on Tuesday.

“It is unfortunate that allegations of ball-tampering are emerging at this stage, which information could have been useful had it come out at the time when the rot in the game was being rooted out.

“While CSA respects the rights of individuals to air their opinions, it also calls upon all those who love the game to come forward with any information of misconduct on the field at the appropriate time, and not wait for time to elapse. This will assist the relevant authorities within the system to investigate and institute appropriate relevant sanctions should they be required,” Moseki said.

Without their sandpaper, Australia’s attack in the fourth Test at the Wanderers had as much venom as a granny doing flower-arranging as the Proteas piled up 488 and 344/6 declared. Australia’s batting was equally lame as they crashed to 221 and 119 all out to be thrashed by 492 runs.

South Africa would obviously back themselves to beat any of the qualifiers in the T20 World Cup, but the stakes are going to be raised even higher on Monday with their opening match in Hobart under threat of the weather.

The Proteas will play the team that tops Group B in the qualifying tournament that ends on Friday, with Scotland, Zimbabwe, the West Indies and Ireland all on two points after playing two of their matches.

But there is an 80% chance of rain on the island of Tasmania on Monday, so South Africa will be anxious not to drop points in their opening match, considering their opponents in the rest of Group II are Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Unfortunately, the flood rains that are sweeping over the east coast of Australia are showing no signs of abating, and South Africa’s last warm-up match, against Bangladesh in Brisbane on Wednesday, was abandoned, the seventh preparation game to be lost to the rain.

That washout meant Proteas captain Temba Bavuma has not played a match since October 6 and his return to Proteas action since an elbow injury kept him out for two-and-a-half months has seen him score just 11 runs in four innings. That form will also be a cause of anxiety for the squad.

Bavuma is undoubtedly a top-class batsman in the longer formats, but a snub in the SA20 Auction has cast a harsh light on his T20 record, especially a strike-rate of just 116 at international level.

With Reeza Hendricks a wonderfully in-form and ready-made replacement for Bavuma, and a couple of able captaincy options in Keshav Maharaj and David Miller, it is a dilemma for coach Mark Boucher and the selectors.

Does one leave out the appointed captain, a respected man who enjoys a great standing amongst the Black community, but is going through a slump, backing the batsmen who are in form right now? Or does one give Bavuma a vote of confidence in the hope that he will find a way to score runs, and briskly?

A decision to drop the captain can often have a destructive effect on team dynamics, but what would a World Cup be without South Africa supplying a healthy dose of drama?

Rilee Rossouw showed his boundary-hitting prowess in a superb unbeaten century and the bowlers then took regular wickets as South Africa bounced back from successive defeats by beating India by 49 runs in the third T20 in Indore on Tuesday.

Rossouw also fought back, from successive ducks, as he battered 100 not out off just 48 balls, with seven fours and eight sixes, as he and Quinton de Kock (68 off 43) added 90 for the second wicket in eight overs. De Kock was back at his fearsome best as he struck six fours and four sixes, and both left-handers targeted the leg-side and played an array of remarkable strokes.

They set a wonderful foundation, and although Tristan Stubbs (23 off 18) did not really get going, he added another 87 in seven overs with Rossouw. And then David Miller came in and blasted 19 not out off just five balls in the final over to boost South Africa to 227/3.

It was another struggle, however, for Temba Bavuma, who scored just 3 off eight balls before skewing his first really attacking stroke to a wide midwicket, and the clamour for Reeza Hendricks to replace him at the top of the order will only get louder as the Proteas T20 side’s next assignment is the World Cup in Australia.

On a tiny field with a good batting pitch, with even mishits flying for six, 228 was by no means out of reach of the explosive Indian batting line-up.

But South Africa made a great start with the ball as Kagiso Rabada bowled captain Rohit Sharma off the inside edge for a second-ball duck.

Left-arm paceman Wayne Parnell then trapped Shreyas Iyer (1) lbw in the second over with a wonderful delivery that straightened back into the right-hander.

Rishabh Pant (27 off 12) and Dinesh Karthik (46 off 21) began to go through the gears though and Pant greeted Lungi Ngidi’s introduction into the attack with two sixes and two fours. Ngidi had been over-pitching, so he switched to around the wicket to the left-hander, bowled shorter and was cut for six, but the next ball saw Pant for some reason hold back on his cut shot, allowing Stubbs to anticipate brilliantly at point, running and diving to take a crucial catch.

Karthik hit Keshav Maharaj (4-0-34-2) for successive sixes, but the class bowler that he is, the left-arm spinner bounced back by bowling him.

Stubbs took another great catch, sprinting in from deep point and diving forward, to catch the in-form Suryakumar Yadav for just eight off Dwaine Pretorius, who finished with 3/26 in 3.3 overs as India were bowled out for 178 in the 19^th over.

Rabada was outstanding with 1/24 in his four overs.