Ken Borland

In the first two editions of the Mzansi Super League (MSL), feted cricketers like AB de Villiers and Chris Gayle have been marquee players allocated to one of the teams but that is all set to change, along with many other aspects, in this year’s T20 carnival.

The third instalment of the MSL will see only eight CSA-contracted players allocated to teams. The plan is for each of the eight franchises to then be able to choose one Kolpak or non-contracted South African and one overseas player from the draft.

In that way the MSL draft will become a much more exciting extravaganza with the eight teams competing for some truly top-class attractions. It means someone like De Villiers, who is a non-contracted player, will no longer be allocated to the Tshwane team but will no doubt cause something akin to a bidding war amongst the eight teams as he will be available on the draft. And there will also be much jostling for international players, who have been of mixed quality over the first two seasons.

Quinton de Kock, formerly of the Cape Town Blitz, has been mooted as the new marquee player for the Centurion-based side.

The other change will be in the names of the teams. The six domestic franchises will now be able to choose whether to continue with their MSL brands or revert back to their own names – i.e. Cobras, Dolphins, Knights, Lions, Titans and Warriors.

It means cheesy names like the Tshwane Spartans, which have developed little traction with fans (what are Spartans anyway?), will be ditched.

Franchises will also be able to source their own sponsors and will share in whatever profits the tournament makes.

A new broadcast deal has yet to be signed for MSL III, but CSA are known to have offered the rights to SuperSport. The first two editions of the MSL were broadcast for free by the SABC, contributing to the massive losses the tournament made.

Geoff Toyana will give his Eagles team his usual shrewd strategic input before the game but the veteran coach knows that the nature of 3TCricket is such that that will only be the tip of the iceberg and captain AB de Villiers will need to be at his sharpest and most flexible if they are to win Saturday’s inaugural unveiling of the new format.

The country’s best 24 available cricketers will return to action in a SuperSport Park bio-bubble and the beloved game will return to our television screens on Saturday in a fundraising match for the cricket industry’s hardship fund. But it will be a version of the sport never seen before as three eight-member teams will battle it out at the same time, each batting for 12 overs in six-over blocks against each of their opponents.

The Eagles, Kingfishers and Kites will get their first sip of 3TCricket on Thursday when they play a practice match, but Toyana is already certain that captains will play the leading role. He has full confidence in his skipper, former Proteas captain De Villiers, who will lock horns with current national limited-overs captain Quinton de Kock (Kites) and ace fast bowler Kagiso Rabada (Kingfishers).

“It’s something new for all of us and we are still finding our strategy, tomorrow [Thursday] is the perfect opportunity to test things out and also sharpen up on the rules. There’s not just one opponent to worry about now but two and you need to be smart in terms of who bowls against who, each bowler only gets three overs, so do you bowl say Lungi Ngidi for two overs against the first team or against the second side?

“There are going to be headaches like that and the last man stands rule in batting is also very exciting. I think the captain is going to be the big player and he needs to get his tactics spot-on. He’ll have to really think on his feet, but fortunately AB is really positive and passionate about this. And he’s hitting the ball extremely well, as good as I’ve ever seen him hit it in fact,” Toyana told The Citizen on Wednesday.

While the Covid-19 restrictions will rob the match of some of its joy, Toyana said the players are all delighted to be playing cricket again.

“It’s just a really good thing to be back on the field again, the sun’s shining and we had really good training. Rassie van der Dussen is also looking good although he keeps wanting to bowl, Andile Phehlukwayo had a good hit too and Bjorn Fortuin was in his element. Lungi Ngidi and Junior Dala have been hard at work here at the Titans for the last two weeks and they are very excited too.

“We will have to observe social distancing of course and there are some strange red lines on the field. Plus the players all use their own balls, which makes it tricky for the coach because you hit one to a player and he ignores it because it’s not his ball! But these are tough times, it’s a charitable cause and the guys all just want to help out,” Toyana said.

Originally, Proteas white-ball spinner Tabraiz Shamsi was the only slow bowler named in the squads, but Highveld Lions star Bjorn Fortuin has subsequently replaced Sisanda Magala, who has pulled out due to a family bereavement. Judging by how spinners were fatally under-rated when T20 first came along, not having a frontline spinner could hurt the chances of the Kites, although Jon-Jon Smuts is far from a part-timer.

“I think this game will be good for spinners as well and I’m glad we’ve got one. And Bjorn is one of the best in the country at controlling the field, we could even use him up front against certain batsmen,” Toyana said.

The monotony of Lockdown has sent many people out to lunch but for Quinton de Kock the same simple ‘see ball, hit ball’ approach that makes him such a great cricketer has seen him get through the winter so far in typically phlegmatic fashion.

Named CSA’s Men’s Cricketer of the Year at the weekend, De Kock said he has not hit a single ball since the end of last season, but is comfortable that there is plenty of time for him to launch a reinvigorated assault on the bowlers of the world.

In 2019/20, De Kock scored 536 runs in seven Tests at an average of 38.28, with one century and four fifties, while he has also averaged 38, with one century and four half-centuries, in 15 ODIs in the last year. He also reached fifty four times in eight T20 Internationals, averaging a remarkable 48.42 at a strike rate of 167.

The left-handed wicketkeeper/batsman scored more Test runs in 2019 than any other Protea (713, 216 more than Faf du Plessis), but has set his sights on scoring more hundreds in the coming season.

“I’ve had the world’s best Lockdown, I’ve been very busy doing nothing. I’ve kept up with my fitness and training in the gym, but I’m based in a very remote place [Garden Route] and there’s not much cricket around here. But practice is mostly muscle memory and there’s still so much time before our next game, you could end up hitting balls for no reason. I needed the break and tried to stay away from cricket.

“But in terms of fulfilling my potential, I would only rank myself about 6.5 out of 10. I had too many starts without progressing, I’m tough on myself and to be honest I’d love to convert those starts into even bigger runs. I wanted to come up the order, I’m happy at five for now and I feel that I can score big hundreds there,” De Kock said after also being named Test Cricketer of the Year and Players’ Player of the Year.

One thing De Kock was adamant about is that he is not going to try and take on the Test captaincy as well as his role as white-ball skipper, wicketkeeper and key batsman.

“Mark Boucher and I had an informal chat and I said I wasn’t sure about the Test captaincy. It would be too much to handle, I realise that now, to be wicketkeeper and captain, I don’t need all that stress, I could see that a mile away,” De Kock said.

Laura Wolvaardt was named the Women’s Cricketer of the Year, largely on the back of her superb performances in steering South Africa to the semi-finals of the ICC World T20 in Australia, and the 21-year-old said the Proteas will try their utmost to do even better in their 50-over World Cup scheduled for January.

“Our main focus has been that ODI World Cup for the last three-and-a-bit years and once we start playing again it will be full steam ahead towards that. The T20 World Cup in Australia will always have a special place in my heart, just the way the team played and the brand of cricket we produced was very special. It was incredible how we performed.

“I definitely did not see all this success coming at all at the start of the season, especially my role at five in the T20s, and I’m very glad it went well. It was the magical idea of the selectors to move me there because I’d had struggles in the powerplay up front. It gave me more freedom once the field was spread, I could rotate the strike a bit more while getting set,” Wolvaardt said.

The fact that his previous two-year ban for doping has now been quadrupled to eight years for his next offence is something Chiliboy Ralepelle’s lawyers believe is grounds for an appeal, but the former Springbok hooker’s career is almost certainly over after the South African Institute for Drugs-Free Sport’s independent doping tribunal announced another guilty verdict on Wednesday.

The 33-year-old tested positive for the growth hormone Zeranol while with the Sharks in January 2019. It was his second doping offence after being banned for two years in September 2015 for use of an anabolic steroid, Drostanolone, while recovering from injury in France.

Ralepelle has actually tested positive on three occasions, with his initial brush with the law coming in 2010 when he and wing Bjorn Basson were found to have the banned stimulant methylhexaneamine in their systems after the Springboks had played Ireland in Dublin on an end-of-year tour. But they were only given a reprimand when a judicial hearing found that it was not their fault because it came from a tainted supplement provided by the South African Rugby Union.

So it seems Ralepelle’s legal team are set to argue that it is only his second doping offence.

“We have concluded that there are definitely grounds for appeal, but we are creatures of instruction and we will take those instructions from Ralepelle on how he wants to proceed. We are preparing an opinion for Ralepelle on whether, solely from a legal perspective, he should appeal.

“There is one example: Chiliboy was previously banned for two years and the WADA laws say that the second offence must be double the standard for the first offence. In that respect, from our legal view, from a two-year previous ban, it should have been a four-year ban at best and not an eight-year ban. But we are still considering the contents of the judgement,” legal representative Hendrik Hugo told ENCA on Wednesday.

A four-year ban for a second offence involving serious drugs would appear to be a light punishment, however, given that some first-time offenders, such as Welshman Owen Morgan in 2017, have been given four-year sentences.

Springbok wing Aphiwe Dyantyi is facing a four-year ban himself after testing positive for three different steroids last year. According to SAIDS, a virtual hearing to the 25-year-old’s case should be held in the next two months.

At the other end of the spectrum, former Swansea hooker Dean Colclough was banned for eight years in 2014 for possessing and distributing steroids.