Ken Borland

Ruan Nortje is far too polite to ever be accused of frustration, but there is no doubt being passed over for Craven Week created a great hunger in the lock which can still be seen today in his rip-roaring displays for the Bulls.

The Wonderboom High School product only made the Bulls team for the U18 Academy Week in 2016, but he did secure a place in the provincial academy at Tuks. He caught the eye of current Bulls assistant coach Nollis Marais and, from then on he has been destined for greater things, representing the SA U20s and making his Bulls debut in 2018.

Nortje’s rampaging form over the last year saw him win the SuperRugby Unlocked Forward of the Year award at the Bulls’ weekend awards ceremony, but the 22-year-old could just as easily have won the Unsung Hero title if there had been such a category.

“Every time I go on the field it’s just important for me to give my best for the team and play my heart out. It’s a big opportunity for me to play for the Bulls, it was always a big dream of mine and I never gave up on that dream. I was over the moon in matric when I got the opportunity to come here and express what I love doing. I’m here for a reason and I believe the Lord has put me here.

“So I just try to give my all, it’s just my instinct to be as hard and physical as possible. I’ve always looked up to Francois Mostert, I’ve based my game on him and I love the way he plays. He’s not the biggest lock but he always plays hard with a lot of heart and passion. It’s a massive dream of mine now to follow him and play at international level,” Nortje said at the Bulls celebration at Loftus Versfeld.

And there is certainly no affectation – he is just one of the most likeable young players around – when Nortje expresses his gratitude for the mentors who have helped him on his journey.

“I had two awesome coaches at high school in coach Braam Pretorius and Mnr Van Wyk, they had all the confidence in me that I would be good enough at the top level. Also Lood de Jager and RG Snyman, I’ve learnt a lot from them. Lood coached us in the Currie Cup and he had a big impact on me, being one of the best locks in the world. And it’s been a privilege to play with Duane Vermeulen, who has so much rugby wisdom.

“And it’s been easy to play under Jake White because there’s a system in place and it means a lot to me that he had confidence in me and the other younger players, which you don’t often see. And Russell Winter has been the most under-the-radar coach but he deserves the most credit, he means so much to me in terms of lineout play. Russell is very underrated but he’s one of the best forwards coaches,” Nortje said.

The only positive to come out of the T20 Global League fiasco right now is that all the best players in South Africa will be available for the domestic T20 competition that will fill the gap created by the collapse of the ambitious but overhyped get-rich-quick scheme.

The CSA T20 Challenge was going to be played from mid-March, in the middle of the Test series against Australia, and would have ended in mid-April, by which time everyone would probably have been exhausted by cricket anyway after what was going to be the most hectic summer in South African history. The tour by India was going to be sandwiched in between the T20 Global League and the arrival of the Aussies.

But now the domestic T20 will actually have a decent window and the participation of the Proteas, so that is at least some good that has come out of the crater-sized hole that has been left in our cricket, both in terms of the calendar and financial resources.

Given the magnitude of the crisis – it has the potential to dwarf the Gerald Majola bonus scandal – it is only right and proper that Cricket South Africa shares with all their stakeholders – the public, the players and sponsors – just how they managed to get this so wrong.

The South African Cricketers’ Association’s call for an independent review to be set up is exactly right, but after the machinations of the board during the bonus scandal (there were a couple of reviews that were disgracefully lacking in integrity), I have some doubts over CSA’s ability to put all their cards on the table so their stakeholders can get to the bottom of exactly what went wrong.

It is obvious that the CSA board once again, as in Majola’s case, allowed their CEO far too much latitude to just operate on his own, doing what he liked without proper oversight. Another CEO told me that Haroon Lorgat’s sidelining of the chief financial officer from the biggest financial project the organisation has ever undertaken should have set off obvious alarm bells for the board.

The lack of timely action taken by the board (at least they did something before the bleeding became terminal) raises questions over the culpability of their own members in this disaster and that is something that should be within the scope of an independent review.

A more pressing issue is compensation for the players. While CSA are now so financially squeezed that they are like a lemon at a seafood festival, they are going to have to make payouts to the 144 players who were set to play in the T20 Global League.

Many of those had signed on for juicy contracts and have made financial commitments that are now in tatters; many gave up on other opportunities, some of them even at international level. Think of the players who qualified to be rookies this year, but by next year will be 24 and too old.

“The total player loss is very significant and there are many sad stories out there,” SACA head Tony Irish said.

And let’s not forget the bad PR that will follow from many of the top international players who will be spreading news around the world of how disgruntled and let down they feel.

Lorgat used to boast about how CSA were the top sports federation in the country, but after his ignominious fall, they are in the same position they were in when they appointed the former International Cricket Council CEO – desperately trying to win back the confidence of the players and public.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20171014/282445644283171

Malibongwe Maketa is spending the winter as the head coach of the national academy at the CSA Centre of Excellence at the University of Pretoria, but the Warriors mentor is already thinking ahead to how he will handle the greater expectation that their excellent performances at franchise level have created for the Eastern Cape side.

In his second full season in charge, Maketa led the Warriors to both limited-overs finals and they were strongly in contention through the first five rounds of the Sunfoil Series as well, before losing their last three matches to finish last.

“It’s a great honour to be entrusted with such great talent at the academy, and as a group we’re going to commit to world-class standards. As a coach, I’m going to learn and grow as we try and keep South Africa as the number one cricketing nation. It should be the most memorable three months.

“I am happy with the progress the Warriors made last season, their hard work was rewarded. But the true test comes now because the supporters will expect us to box in that weight division from now on. As much as people say we don’t have any big names, we have a lot of very intelligent players and that is a big part of our success,” Maketa told Saturday Citizen at the CSA Centre of Excellence.

Many South African sports treat their up-and-coming coaches with almost criminal neglect, but it seems CSA certainly have a plan for Maketa, and his stint in charge of the academy is indicative of that. How does the 36-year-old see his own career pathway?

“I believe I’ve really grown as a coach. The players are also looking to grow and I’ve set barriers for them to get over, in a way I have to keep up with their growth. I enjoy all aspects of coaching, you have to give the players a lot of reassurance. If you don’t want to get better as a coach then you must not do this, because it’s about personal development, you want to see your players going up to the representative teams.

“I also want to go to higher levels as a coach, which means internationally, but the main thing is building relationships with the players. They must have enough trust that they know I am doing what is best for them,” Maketa said.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-kzn/20170610/282385514491146

Edward de Bono, the father of lateral thinking, created the term “po” to describe an idea which moves thinking forward to a new place from where new ideas or solutions may be found. It’s probably not stretching things too far to suggest South African cricket is having a few po moments of its own, especially when it comes to spinners.

Omar Henry has had a long and successful journey through South African cricket: first as a player of colour he broke down barriers during Apartheid, as a fine left-arm spinner and a dangerous lower-order batsman he was highly respected both here and overseas, where he famously played for Scotland. He was already 40 when official international cricket returned, but he was still good enough to become the first non-white to play for South Africa.

After he retired in 1994, Henry turned to coaching and then became the convenor of the national selectors before entering the boardroom as the CEO of Boland cricket.

He has now returned to coaching and was helping out on Tuesday at the national academy at the centre of excellence at the University Of Pretoria, and he told The Citizen that the sight of three frontline spinners playing for South Africa in the West Indies triangular had been thrilling if scarcely believable.

Henry was keeping a beady eye on the spinners at the national academy nets and he had an interesting assistant in current Test spinner Dane Piedt, who was also bowling a few overs.

Piedt is one of the South African spinners who is not involved in limited-overs cricket or T20 competitions (perhaps he should be?), and with Test cricket starting again in August with two home games against New Zealand, he is needing practice, especially since the Cape weather is really not conducive to any sort of outdoor activity at the moment.

“It’s the end of the world in Cape Town at the moment! The weather channel says there’s an 85% chance of rain but it’s more like 105%. So I needed to come up here and get some work in before the SA A side goes to Zimbabwe and Australia,” the 26-year-old said after taking a break from the serious stuff.

The idea of a current player coaching up-and-coming stars who could be competing with him for places in teams is another example of forward-thinking, and it was wonderful to see the many different generations that academy head Shukri Conrad has roped in to help at the academy. Vincent Barnes was a prolific bowler of the 1980s, while Henry and Jimmy Cook were there from South Africa’s early years back in international cricket, as were Shaun Pollock and Gary Kirsten from the next era, more recent players like Andre Nel and Greg Smith, and then current stars Piedt and Stephen Cook.

For Piedt, doing some coaching was an eye-opening experience.

“I told Shukri that I actually learn a lot about my own game watching these youngsters. I remember the things that I used to do, what my weaknesses are, so it helps a lot just to focus on your own game. Guys like Robin Peterson, Claude Henderson and Paul Adams passed on to me what they knew about bowling and now I’m passing on the little I’ve learnt to these guys, which is exciting,” Piedt said.

Much of the off-season talk in South African cricket has been around playing pink ball day/nighters in Australia and how our players are going to prepare for a totally new challenge. De Bono would be proud of the positive attitude with which the Proteas are tackling this leap into the unknown.

“I’ve never played with a pink ball before, so it’s unknown territory, but the game is changing so rapidly these days and we need to keep up. When the SA A side meets up on July 2 we’re going to try and get a couple of pink balls into the nets to work out how they are different, devise strategies for it.

“I watched that Test between Australia and New Zealand in Adelaide and Nathan Lyon and Mark Craig were getting quite a bit of spin, even with the ball swinging all over the place. Apparently there are a lot of differences and you tend to see it, lose it and then pick it up again in the field,” Piedt said.

Piedt has taken 22 wickets in his five Tests in a career that was interrupted for over a year by a serious shoulder injury after his eight-wicket debut against Zimbabwe in Harare. He is the incumbent spinner after playing in three of the four Tests against England last summer and he feels he ticked the box when it came to consistency.

“The big thing for me was getting that consistency, being able to land the ball in the same place and build pressure. Taking three for 38 in 18 overs in the second innings in Cape Town really helped my confidence and then I felt I came into my own in the last Test at Centurion. And then the Tests just stopped!

“But England have a very strong batting line-up and I felt I was expensive early on. I want to put the two together, go for two/2.5 runs-per-over and also take wickets. I want to implement the parts of my game where I feel strong, like being aggressive. I was pleased with 10 wickets in the series on good surfaces,” Piedt said.

For the moment, the South African selectors are only seeing Piedt as a long-format player, but who knows what might happen in the future.

Few would have predicted the current success of Tabraiz Shamsi, who has proven an able deputy for the unstoppable Imran Tahir, while Aaron Phangiso also fulfils a valuable role and the likes of Eddie Leie and Simon Harmer are also waiting in the wings.

http://citizen.co.za/1172155/piedt-among-the-spinners-flourishing-in-sa-crickets-po-phase/