Ken Borland

Speculating on Springbok squads is always one of the more enjoyable aspects of being a rugby writer and I was pleased to read Allister Coetzee said choosing it had been one of the highlights of his career. One of a scribe’s other jobs is to then evaluate the selection, and I’m pleased to say the new coach’s squad makes me largely very happy.

It would be remiss of me, however, not to point out what I believe are a couple of oversights in Coetzee’s first task in his new project.

I will explain the first by asking you, dear reader, to imagine you have been transported forward in time by a week and you are perusing this column on the morning of the opening Test against Ireland. And the shock news has just broken that Pat Lambie injured himself in yesterday’s captain’s run.

This will be a major problem for Coetzee and the Springboks because of the flyhalves he has chosen in his squad. Elton Jantjies has only just resumed training after having surgery on a fractured finger, so he has not had much time to heal or acquaint himself with what the new coach is hoping to do on the field. Garth April is a bright talent, no doubt, but has only made three starts in top-flight rugby and it would be a massive gamble for him to play in a Test match.

So who is going to be the general as South Africa enter a new era against a tough Irish side?

We can look at the other side of the halfback equation, the scrumhalves, but the picture is just as bleak there, with Faf de Klerk and Rudy Paige no doubt players of the future, but vastly inexperienced at the moment when it comes to Test rugby. I have some sympathy for Coetzee when it comes to the dearth of scrumhalves though because he did apparently approach Ruan Pienaar, who turned him down, possibly because of all the abuse he takes from fickle Springbok fans.

Nic Groom also does not inspire much confidence. Against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld recently, the Stormers enjoyed a surfeit of possession, but he was unable to stamp his mark or take control of proceedings against a team that was hammered by the Lions the following week.

With Lambie out, the Springboks could be forced into playing Willie le Roux, who has had no serious rugby with a number 10 on his back, in the pivot position. All this could have been avoided by just naming Morne Steyn as the third flyhalf. It’s too late now because you can’t fly him out from France on the eve of a Test.

The other error, I believe, is in the composition of the loose forwards. They are all fine players with varying skills, but there seems to be, apart from Duane Vermeulen, a lack of a mean and nasty ball-carrier, someone with mongrel who can crash through the advantage line and bounce away anyone trying to get through the Springbok defences.

With Jaco Kriel and Francois Louw surely fighting over the openside flank position, Siya Kolisi is likely to wear the number seven jersey and is a super player, with a tremendous work-rate and great skills, but for me he is more of a hybrid loose forward, good at plenty of things and master of none. As a ball-carrier, he is only ranked 58^th in Super Rugby this year, according to the Vodacom stats.

And Coetzee could open himself up to accusations of Stormers bias with his selection of Sikhumbuzo Notshe, another hybrid flank, as well as the likes of Steven Kitshoff, Groom and Scarra Ntubeni, ahead of players like Jean-Luc du Preez and Malcolm Marx.

But overall, it is a pleasing squad with the experience of players like Beast Mtawarira, Eben Etzebeth, JP Pietersen, Vermeulen, Lambie, Le Roux and Louw being combined with some of the exciting talent sweeping through our rugby, and a fine choice of captain in Adriaan Strauss.

And there is the thrilling prospect, looking at some of the selections, of the Springboks playing a more high-tempo, ball-in-hand style of rugby.

When Kagiso Rabada took a record-equalling 13 wickets in just his sixth Test match it may have astonished the cricket world, but it merely continued an amazing trend in his still youthful career of rapidly excelling at every new level he has been thrust into.

While he was a pupil at St Stithians, he made the Gauteng Schools side while still in Grade 11 and immediately made his mark with 3/26 and a brilliant final over to win a T20 game against North-West.

He was earmarked as a future star by being chosen for the SA Schools Colts side and by the time Rabada was in matric, he was already playing for the SA Under-19 team touring England.

SA Schools selection was a given in 2013 and he first announced himself to the global stage at the 2014 Under-19 World Cup when he destroyed Australia with 6/25 in the semifinal and played a major role in South Africa winning that prestigious ICC title for the first time.

He made his first-class debut for Gauteng in the same summer and, after just two games and seven wickets in the first-class three-day competition, he was promoted to the Highveld Lions senior franchise team, again taking seven wickets in two matches.

When the Highveld Lions won the Sunfoil Series in March 2015 – the first time they had won the four-day competition since the inception of the franchise system – Rabada was their joint leading wicket- taker with Hardus Viljoen, taking 39 wickets at 21.12, including a magnificent 14 wickets in the match against the Dolphins at the Wanderers. His nine for 33 in the second innings, setting up a 10-wicket win, were the second-best innings figures in the franchise era and his match haul of 14 for 105 beat Dale Steyn’s previous best of 14 for 110. They were the best figures ever recorded at the famous Bullring.

Despite his tender years, international cricket was the logical next step and, in his ODI debut against Bangladesh in Mirpur, in conditions that could not have been more foreign to the lush Highveld pitches he was used to, Rabada took six for 16, including a hat-trick.

While being able to swing the ball at high pace is an amazing gift, Rabada still seems to have an extraordinary knack for taking wickets. Former West Indies bowling all-rounder Ottis Gibson, the England bowling coach who spent many summers in South Africa playing for Border, Gauteng and Griqualand West, says that’s because Rabada bows a fuller length than most South African fast bowlers, meaning he will find the edge of the bat more often.

While the 20-year-old generally gets the ball up there to maximise movement, he does possess a slippery bouncer and uses it extremely well as a surprise delivery. At his pace, it’s more like a shock ball.

Because of his tremendous talent and his importance in socio-political terms, there has been plenty of noise about protecting Rabada from a too-heavy workload. But the bowler himself said this week that he prefers doing more bowling and he doesn’t feel that he needs treatment that is any different to the monitoring and managing the other Proteas quicks undergo.

The knees are good, he has a tremendously athletic build and, apparently, a perfectly-aligned spine, an absolute rarity that is a great gift for any fast bowler.

Gibson was also certain that Rabada would get quicker as he reaches full adulthood – a scary prospect – and, interestingly, that there were even technical tweaks he could do to give him some extra yards of pace.

Time will tell whether Rabada will break the records of Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Makhaya Ntini and Steyn at international level, but they have all been mightily impressed by the level-headed young man who has the temperament to go with his physical attributes.

“His overall skill just blows me away and even his control is exceptional, it’s a bit freakish. I still think he’s going to get quicker and it stands him in good stead that he’s grooving that control for when the extra pace comes later. He’s already ahead of where he should be, his rhythm is good, he’s tall, athletic and can bowl a heavy ball, and when you combine all of that together, as he grows into his body he’s definitely going to get faster,” Donald, who was the bowling coach when Rabada was first included in the Proteas squad, said.

“He’s got all the raw ingredients. He has pace, control, heart and athleticism. And he is only 20. He has shown he can learn fast and has also bowled very well in the end overs, shown very good temperament,” was Pollock’s considered view.

Steyn is excited about someone he has been mentoring.

“KG has a very good attitude and is always asking a lot of questions – and the right questions. He has everything he needs to be a good fast bowler – pace, a good build, quite tall and intimidating,” Steyn said.

Ntini, for so long the lone Black African flagbearer, is delighted.

“I am so excited, happiness is an understatement. I am excited to watch him in the long run. He has put it out there that you should fear me now, not me being worried about who I am bowling to. If he can continue and have his head grounded, nothing will change. He is almost like a young apple tree that is growing very, very fast in a desert.”

http://citizen.co.za/967847/sky-the-limit-for-rising-star-rabada/

Some awful things have happened in South Africa over the last 10 days, reflecting themselves in a depressing pall of negativity over a land that seems to have forgotten the miracle of the Rainbow Nation. Even us sports writers, fortunate as we are to pursue a career in something we love, are affected by the politics of the day.

Of course the results of our sporting heroes – and let’s be honest it’s been a poor year for South Africa – do affect us as well, although I always try to remember that it’s only a game. It’s far more important what sport can achieve in terms of bringing people together and changing lives.

So I’m delighted to report some good news in these tough times, a few encouraging things that have happened.

It is not easy to achieve complete transformation and equality because change is usually met with resistance and there is centuries of injustice to correct. It is difficult to come up with the right answers when one is trying to ensure representivity but also endeavouring to maintain standards and also do the right thing by the people you are trying to uplift.

It was most encouraging then to see our Springbok Sevens team triumph in the Cape Town stage of the World Series and do it with a fully transformed side. Following the blows to rugby’s transformation record at the 15-man World Cup, it was a timely reminder that there is plenty of black talent out there, it just needs to be nurtured.

Cricket had its own transformation scandal during their World Cup earlier in the year but it still seemed a low blow when Mark Nicholas, a former English county cricketer now commentating on Australian TV, suggested that South Africa will be the next international team to be “severely threatened” by the same disintegration that has afflicted West Indian cricket.

The financial situation outside of the Big Three is obviously a concern for Cricket South Africa, although it is ironic that the plummeting of the rand probably helps them (due to the sale of television rights in dollars) while it spells grave danger for rugby. But CEO Haroon Lorgat, a qualified chartered accountant, is a forward-thinking man and the organisation is running in a much leaner, efficient fashion than before.

Whatever White South Africans might think, the future of this country’s sport is Black – it’s simple economics and obvious when one considers the population.

The RamSlam T20 Challenge final at Centurion was a top-class evening, boasting great cricket, a sell-out crowd – one of the best I’ve seen for a domestic match since the days of isolation – and even the hero of the game was a Black player – Mangaliso Mosehle.

For me, the final offered a glimpse of what the future of South African cricket could be – and it took a lot of effort on the part of Cricket South Africa, the Titans and their marketing partners.

A thoroughly New South Africa crowd was entertained by Black Coffee and Euphonik; whereas Steve Hofmeyr would have been favoured by previous administrations.

I can only presume that Nicholas has been spending too much time with some of the expats in Australia who are notorious for broadcasting their opinion that everything is a nightmare in South Africa.

The day after the final, I spent the morning at Killarney Country Club where their Mandela Day fundraising is being put to good use coaching traumatised children in golf and tennis as part of their therapy. The sheer joy of the children and how apparent it was that they loved what they are doing, once again showed how much opportunity there is for sports bodies to tap into the raw talent that is there and hungry to be found.

The RamSlam T20 Challenge final,the Springbok Sevens’ success and the kids at Killarney Country Club showed what can be built when there is a will to be inclusive and a desire to spread the game and utilise the talent present in all communities.

It’s been an eventful and testing year for Australian golfer Marc Leishman, but he had the energy to end it on a high and claim the biggest paycheque of his career in winning the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City by six strokes on Sunday.

With home favourite Jaco van Zyl tumbling down the leaderboard – despite eagling the second he slumped to a six-over-par 78 – Leishman’s only challenger in the final round was world number seven Henrik Stenson, who had overcome severe flu to lead the first two rounds.

But after some early struggles, Leishman’s precise iron play took the wind out of Stenson’s sails, with the 2008 champion only managing to post a level-par 72 in stifling heat as the eventual winner produced some superb golf with six birdies in the last 12 holes.

Leishman began the year ranked 46^th in the world after top-10 finishes in the Open and two World Golf Championships events in 2014, but his early season was severely disrupted by his wife Audrey suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome, going into toxic shock and only being given a 5% chance of survival.

Happily she made it through and Leishman played in the Open Championship in July and lost out in the playoff with winner Zach Johnson and South African Louis Oosthuizen.

“I’ve been pretty happy to get this year over with, obviously with Audrey being very sick and I lost an uncle who was very close to me. The Open was very good but disappointing, so this win tops off the year for me. It’s pretty great, an awesome feeling and I’m very happy. It’s the biggest paycheque I’ve ever won so I’ll have to hang it on the wall of our new house,” a delighted Leishman said after he became just the second Australian to win the Nedbank Golf Challenge after Robert Allenby, who beat Stenson in a playoff in 2009.

With the demise of Van Zyl confirmed on the ninth, where he three-putted for bogey to add to the double-bogey he had on the sixth and another dropped shot on eight, the recipient of the $1.25 million winner’s cheque was obviously going to be either Leishman or Stenson.

But Leishman spun a sand-wedge back to within a few inches of the hole for birdie on the par-four 13^th and the final nail in the coffin was hammered in when he birdied the 15^th from 15 feet and Stenson made bogey after a wayward drive meant he had to chip out of thick bush.

Another birdie on the par-three 16^th and two pars coming in meant Leishman completed the round of the day with his 67.

“Henrik is an awesome player who I knew could come back with five birdies in nine holes and two or three up is not that many over nine holes on this course. I knew that trouble waited on every shot and you don’t need to hit that bad a shot to get bogey here. It was probably only after the putt on 16 that I knew I would have to do something really dumb to lose it, but fortunately I was able to be more conservative,” Leishman said.