Ken Borland

Assupol Tuks took their dominance of South African club and universities cricket for the last three years on to a global stage at the end of July as they won the Red Bull Campus Cricket World Finals at the Oval in London.

For Aiden Markram and Corbin Bosch, it was their second World Cup triumph of the year, following their victory with the South Africa U19 team at the ICC Junior World Cup in the United Arab Emirates in March. The Campus Cricket World Finals are effectively a Varsity T20 World Cup, with the student champions from eight nations taking part.

While Markram and Bosch, and other star players such as Theunis de Bruyn, Vincent Moore and Heinrich Klaasen all enjoyed excellent tournaments for Tuks, their heroes in the crucial knockout stage were two of their lesser-known players, Johan Wessels and Ruben Claassen.

Tuks had breezed into the semi-finals by beating Bangladesh’s University of the Liberal Arts, hosts Leeds Bradford MCCU and the Jamaica Inter-Collegiate Sports Association, but they had their hands full when they took on defending champions Rizvi College of Mumbai in the final four.

Rizvi had won the toss and elected to bat first, and had cruised to 83 for two in the 12^th over before Tuks regained control through spinners Claassen and David Mogotlane.

Lanky off-spinner Claassen produced a brilliant spell of 4-1-10-2, with Mogotlane adding pressure with four overs for just 20 runs, and the Indian team’s lower-order then collapsed to the canny death bowling of Bosch (2-26) and Moore to finish on 122 for nine.

The Tuks run-chase had an anxious start openers Markram and Gerry Pike were out in the first three overs, before De Bruyn (31) and Wessels steadied the innings with a third-wicket stand of 54 in 7.2 overs.

But the loss of three wickets in quick succession, including captain De Bruyn, meant Tuks were under pressure at 90 for five after 15 overs.

But Klaasen (18* off 12) and the inspired Wessels (56* off 52) mounted a rousing comeback that took Tuks home in the 20th over.

In the final, the Tuks total of 188 for six against the Jamaica Inter-Collegiate Sports Association was built around a ferocious 61 off 40 balls from Wessels.

Pacemen Moore and Bosch then shared seven wickets as the Jamaicans were restricted to 148 for nine in their 20 overs.

Much of the hard work, however, was done by the outstanding Claassen, who took one for 10 in four overs.

Markram, who finished as the tournament’s second highest run-scorer behind De Bruyn, had given the Tuks innings a good start, after they had won the toss, with his 33 off 26 balls, but Wessels, who has no first-class experience nor national U19 caps, kept the scoreboard ticking over and then accelerated brilliantly as the University of Pretoria students posted a formidable total.

Dickson scored 39 off 31 balls to finish the job, while Tian Koekemoer and Bosch provided important cameos right at the death.

Coach Pierre de Bruyn was full of praise for Wessels, the 22-year-old who was superb on finals day, and Claassen.

“It’s the guys without the reputations who really stood up on the final day. Joe Wessels is proving to be a very good player, he played two magnificent innings in the knockout games and I’m ecstatic for him. I used him as a bit of a wildcard and he’s really impressed me as a cricketer.

“Ruben out-bowled everybody in the tournament, including the spinners from the sub-continent. He and Corbin Bosch were the top two wicket-takers and Ruben has improved so much. He’s unique, he’s tall, he gets bounce and he’s not scared to experiment,” De Bruyn said.

While Wessels was named man of the match in both the semi-final and final, Theunis de Bruyn was selected as the Player of the Tournament, having set the tone for Tuks’ triumph with a phenomenal 137 not out off 60 balls against the Bangladeshis on the opening day.

“We’ve had three years of dominance in South Africa and now we wanted to represent our country and measure ourselves on the world stage. I’m over the moon to be able to say we are the best university cricket team in the world, but we worked for it,” coach De Bruyn said.

“We planned for everything and we proved ourselves to everyone. I’m proud of the success and the culture of this team, and nobody can take that away from this side.”

(from left) Albie Morkel, Ethy Mbhalati and Rowan Richards model the new Titans away kit.

The Unlimited Titans will bolster their reputation as the most innovative cricket franchise in the country in the new season when they become the first team to wear an away kit.

The Titans announced the new concept at SuperSport Park yesterday with the team set to sport an attractive purple and mauve kit in all their away limited-overs games next season. The franchise’s chief sponsors, The Unlimited, are behind the move with the aim being to publicise the Unlimited Child charity, an initiative to provide proper stimulation for the development of the more than six million pre-school children in South Africa.

“When they brought us the idea of building awareness for The Unlimited Child, an early childhood development initiative, we jumped at the opportunity. The away kit confirms that the Titans are not only one of the powerhouses on the South African domestic cricket scene, but one of the trendsetters too,” Titans CEO Jacques Faul said.

Pretoria is known as the Jacaranda City and the purple colour of the new kit will further connect with fans in Tshwane and the wider northern Gauteng region.

While helping the image of the Titans, the new away kit will also hopefully help create awareness around wider socio-economic issues like early childhood development, the CEO of The Unlimited, Steph Bester, said.

“The state of early childhood development in South Africa is shocking as it’s estimated that there are more than six million pre-school children in this country that receive little or no proper stimulation. Unless children between the ages of 0 and 6 years old are exposed to effective stimulation, their potential in life is seriously affected and they are destined to a life of poverty,” Bester said.

The formation of the Unlimited Child initiative has already given rise to more than 500 crèches, 1400 caregivers and over 48 000 children being enrolled in KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and Gauteng. The Unlimited Child aims to replicate the programme in all nine provinces as the impact of this intervention on teaching and learning has proved to be immediate.

“We’re excited that the Titans have embraced the work of The Unlimited Child, and have joined us in driving awareness for the great work being done by the organisation,” said Bester. “This exposure will help us expand our footprint in the rest of the country, helping us realise our aim of getting up to 20 000 crèches nationally by 2020.”

Former South African captain Graeme Smith said on Wednesday that he believed Jacques Kallis announced his retirement from all international cricket because he could not face the possibility of letting down the Proteas.

Kallis retired from Test cricket in December, but decided to continue playing ODI cricket in a bid to make the World Cup squad early next year. But a poor tour of Sri Lanka this month, in which he scored just five runs in three innings and could not bowl due to niggling injuries, led to him re-evaluating his future.

“I’ve been calling him an ‘old man’ and asking him what he’s doing out there, but I had a hint that he might decide to retire after he came back from Sri Lanka and realised that it would take a lot of hard work for him to get through to the World Cup. When you’re playing full-time it’s easier, but focus is very crucial at international level and I think he was wondering if his mind is really on it.

“He really wanted to win the World Cup, but I’ve always appreciated his honesty and I think he realised that he might let the team down. He was honest enough to realise he might not be strong enough to make it through to next year, especially in terms of bowling and mentally,” Smith said on Wednesday.

Smith said the timing of the decision was perfect because it gave the team enough time to adapt their tactics to his absence ahead of the World Cup.

“He’s given the team enough space tactically to fill his gap with other guys but it’s obviously always sad when players of his calibre move on. But he’s had an incredible career which we can all celebrate and look back fondly on. He brought so much happiness and South African cricket got a lot out of Jacques in so many different eras,” Smith said.

“It’s always difficult to compare players from different eras, but if you consider the amount of cricket Jacques played, the length of consistency at the top of the game and all the different conditions and challenges he performed in, then he’s got to be up there with the best who’ve ever played the game. In time, I’m sure his reputation will only go from strength to strength.”

Cricket South Africa CEO Haroon Lorgat said the timing of the decision was typical of the 38-year-old’s professionalism.

“He’s been a consummate professional who always knew exactly what his responsibilities were and although he was very keen to get through to the World Cup, and had committed himself to that, it dawned upon him in Sri Lanka that his mind and body were not fit enough to get him there. He said he had some thinking to do when he left Sri Lanka two weeks ago, so he prepared us for his retirement and in the last 12 hours there have been lots of conversations with him,” Lorgat said.

“In my book, he was one of the best cricketers ever. I’ve seen him play great innings and make wonderful contributions with the ball, but above all it was his presence that I will remember. In the last 10 years, the team has drawn an enormous amount of confidence from his sheer presence,” the former Eastern Province and Transvaal all-rounder said.

http://mobi.supersport.com/cricket/sa-team/news/140730/Kallis_didnt_want_to_let_the_team_down

It was typical of the methodical, clinical way in which he approached his record-breaking career that Jacques Kallis asked himself the difficult questions about his future in international cricket and came up with the tough, honest and correct answers that pointed to the full retirement he announced yesterday.

Having announced his retirement from the Test arena in December, Kallis had continued to make himself available for the Proteas’ one-day international team, his sights set on playing in the World Cup – a tournament in which he has suffered much anguish – early next year.

But a poor time in Sri Lanka this month made him question whether he still had it in him, in his 39^th year and 19^th season of international cricket, to maintain the high standards required to earn a place in the side.

The runs have not been as prolific in recent times, he was unable to bowl in Sri Lanka due to niggling injuries, and perhaps the intense mental focus needed to excel in international cricket was no longer there either.

The end of a career as amazing as that of Jacques Kallis is always a sad occasion, but the right decision has been made. The World Cup was increasingly looking a bridge too far and the legacy of statistically the greatest all-round record the game has known will remain intact.

The South African team is now well and truly entering the new era with the leading figures of the last decade – Kallis, Graeme Smith, Mark Boucher, Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini – all retired. But the team culture, strength of character and technical excellence that Kallis so hugely contributed to during his 166 Tests and 328 ODIs will live on in the exploits of such world-class successors as Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers, Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander.

Kallis might not be there at the MCG on March 29 if South Africa finally lift the World Cup, but the team will no doubt ascribe plenty of the credit to his immense influence that went far beyond the phenomenal number of runs, wickets and catches he provided.