Ken Borland

Sarel Erwee will head to the Hagley Oval in Christchurch next Thursday feeling he is on the verge of being dished up something he has waited a long time for.

And no, it is not a creamy prawn pasta, his favourite meal, at one of the Italian restaurants that surround Hagley Park, to break the monotony of room service in their MIQ hotel.

Instead, it could be a long-awaited Test debut for the 32-year-old as he replaces Keegan Petersen, who most unfortunately had to miss the tour to New Zealand due to a positive Covid test. Proteas captain Dean Elgar recommended the left-handed Erwee as the fill-in No.3 batsman for the second time on Thursday.

“Sarel has been part and parcel of the squad for over a year now, so he’s maybe the favourite to come in,” Elgar said. “Zubayr Hamza has also scored a lot of runs for SA A, so I would say it’s between those two.

“Sarel is a great team man, he’s rolled a lot of energy into his 12^th man duties, he’s earned respect, and if there is a pecking order than I would think he’s next in line.”

Erwee’s batting is stuffed with the same sort of determination and solid defence as his captain. The son of a formidable Natal rugby centre, he is not a small man either and brings a certain presence to the crease.

It will be a tough introduction to international cricket for the Pietermaritzburg product. New Zealand have tended to run rings around their opposition at the Hagley Oval, losing just one of their 10 Tests there. They have been in rampant form in their last four games there – beating Bangladesh and Pakistan by an innings, India by seven wickets and Sri Lanka by 423 runs.

“Their attack may be a little down on pace compared to India’s, but they execute their skills perfectly and use their home conditions to the full,” Elgar said.

“Hagley Oval is known for its pace and bounce, it’s the quickest venue in the country and we know they are going to come out all guns blazing.”

Whatever the final starting XI that gets sent through to CSA by the selectors, the facts of the matter are it is going to be an intense two-Test series. Much like against India, there are going to be frustrations for the Proteas to adapt to on and off the field.

And the Black Caps, the world Test champions, will come hard.

“It’s a bit disappointing that we don’t get to play them a lot because I’ve loved the series I’ve had against them,” Elgar said. “They are fierce competitors who have played brilliant cricket of late.

“It’s going to be a great test for us against a team that is at their peak at the moment. We have a great rivalry with New Zealand.

“The competitiveness of matches against them has been right up there with some of the best. They are a fearsome side and we both play with a lot of pride,” Elgar said.

South Africa are hosting the FIH Hockey Pro League in Potchefstroom over the next fortnight with high hopes of being competitive, but the multitude of unforced errors they made caused a most adverse outcome in their opening match against the Netherlands on Tuesday night as they were hammered 11-1.

The Netherlands scored first, in the seventh minute, through a penalty stroke by Tim Swaen after an early defensive mistake by the hosts.

And the third-ranked Dutch side stamped their dominance on the game from the second quarter as they went into halftime 4-1 up.

The floodgates really opened in the final quarter as the Netherlands more than doubled a 5-1 lead, scoring four goals in the first six minutes.

South Africa, ranked 14^th in the world, equalised at 1-1 in the 20^th minute through Bili Ntuli’s excellent deflection of a reverse-sticks cross from Mustapha Cassiem, but they didn’t have a prayer thereafter.

Their main failing was their inability to hold on to the ball, basic mistakes gifting possession to the Dutch, and there was also some naïve defending.

Jip Janssen, with two set-piece goals, Swaen, Thierry Brinkman and Thijs van Dam, with two goals apiece, were South Africa’s chief tormentors.

“We played badly against a good team,” South Africa coach Garreth Ewing summed up succinctly. “We lost our shape completely in the last 30 minutes. But hopefully we have all learnt a lot.

“There’s a lot to take on board. This was a reminder of where we are in world hockey. We will have to come out with the right attitude tomorrow night against India.”

India beat France 5-0 in Tuesday’s other game.

Keegan Petersen revealed himself as one of South Africa’s brightest batting talents in the series against India, but the man who made the No.3 position his own has now suffered the disappointment of being ruled out of the tour to New Zealand due to a positive Covid test. This does, however, potentially open the way for an exciting young batsman like Ryan Rickelton to make his long-awaited debut.

Petersen, who is asymptomatic, has been replaced in the squad by Western Province talent Zubayr Hamza.

But Petersen’s misfortune, announced on the morning of the team’s departure for New Zealand, could well be just the break the 25-year-old Rickelton has been waiting for. The Central Gauteng Lions batsman has been part of the Proteas squad since the tour to Pakistan a year ago, but is yet to catch a game.

Rickelton has been in exceptional form in the domestic four-day competition this season, and scores of 90 and a match-saving 102 not out for the Lions against Western Province at Newlands last weekend took his tally this summer to 473 runs in five innings, at an average of 118.25, with three centuries.

But as much as one would like to see a new talent on the international stage, you have to wonder if the Proteas selectors won’t use Petersen’s absence as a lifeline for Aiden Markram.

Markram has scored just 140 runs in his last nine innings, with one half-century, and there was a strong possibility he was going to lose his opening spot in New Zealand to the uncapped Sarel Erwee, who is averaging 86 in four-day cricket this season.

But both Markram and Erwee could conceivably fill Petersen’s No.3 spot. Rickelton is also a top-order batsman, comfortable in the top three, but choosing two uncapped batsmen in Erwee and Rickelton could be too much of a risk for the selectors, so it will be interesting to see which option they choose.

Helping set up South Africa’s series-clinching victory over India in the second ODI in a sweltering Paarl on Friday did not come cheap for opening batsman Janneman Malan, who described his condition as being “critical but stable”.

On a day when the temperature reached 41°, Malan batted for two-and-a-half hours, scoring 91 off 108 balls, top-scoring as the Proteas chased down 288 with seven wickets and 11 balls to spare to complete remarkable back-to-back series wins over one of the superpowers of world cricket.

Malan put on 132 for the first wicket with Quinton de Kock, who blazed a quickfire 78, before solid 30s by Temba Bavuma, Aiden Markram and Rassie van der Dussen saw South Africa cruise to victory.

“It was way hotter than in the first ODI and it was always going to be a challenge for the body. But that’s what we work on our conditioning for. I feel critical but stable,” Malan, who cuts a rugged figure, said after the game.

His cricket brain was clearly as sharp as ever because he not only played a beautifully-judged innings for the situation, but also identified the two key areas where South Africa have had the edge over India in this series.

When India hammered the Proteas 5-1 in the 2018 ODI series here, spinners Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal took 33 cheap wickets between them. This time it has been Tabraiz Shamsi, Keshav Maharaj and even Markram who have had the wood over the Indian batsmen.

“We’ve handled their total overs of spin better than they have handled our overs of spin, and that has been a big confidence boost for us,” Malan said.

“Our playing and use of spin has been coming along for a couple of years now, we’ve been working really hard to improve and have better plans. Especially when the pitches are slow and its spinning.

“So we are using our sweeps, making sure they are well-executed to get the percentages our way.

“The other key thing has been partnerships. We made them work for every run and our bowlers kept getting wickets. We’re very proud that we had a century partnership and then two fifty-run ones. Those are really good signs,” Malan said.

Some of South Africa’s fielding on Friday was bad enough for their fans to fall of their chairs in front of their TVs, but the key characteristic of this team is their tenacity, which they have shown time and again in shocking the much-fancied Indian team.

As captain Bavuma said after the game: “I think as a team we have a lot of self-belief and confidence in our ability. We go out there and fight for one another. We really try to put in a real team effort.

“We don’t rely on superstars or one or two performances. Coming into this series, no one gave us much of a chance, so that really gave us motivation,” Bavuma said.