Ken Borland

The energy levels of our DP World Lions men’s team are obviously high and they have had the benefit of a full week’s preparation ahead of their first outing in the defence of their CSA 4-Day Series title as they host the Momentum Multiply Titans from Tuesday.

Our Pride’s last outing saw them clinch the CSA T20 Challenge title in the most emphatic of fashion, hammeriing the self-same Titans in the final, having beaten their Gauteng derby rivals earlier in the week in Qualifier 1.

The Titans will now return to the DP World Wanderers Stadium bullring and Russell Domingo, #ThePrideOfJozi head coach, has warned that their neighbours will be hurting and keen for revenge.

But most of the DP World Lions squad named for the four-day opener played a major role in last season’s triumph, as well as being key members of the squad that won the CSA T20 Challenge last month, so there is plenty of confidence in our Pride’s camp.

“We played a warm-up game and we’ve had net sessions in the last week, so it has been good prep. There’s a good vibe in the squad and the energy levels are high. If you asked us what was the trophy we most want to win, it would be the red-ball one.

“It would have been a nightmare week if we had lost the final, but the Titans will bring a really good team and they will be hurting. There are never any easy games against them, but we are all up for the challenge,” Domingo said.

Connor Esterhuizen, who finished as the DP World Lions’ leading run-scorer in the triumphant T20 campaign, will again be wearing the wicketkeeper’s gloves with Wandile Makwetu still recovering from his broken finger.

The seasoned Josh Richards and the exciting young Mohammed Manack are set to open the batting, with the class of captain Dominic Hendricks and Zubayr Hamza to follow. Mitchell van Buuren will be the mainstay of the middle-order, while Delano Potgieter, the hero of last season’s four-day final, fills the all-rounder berth.

The exciting trio of Lutho Sipamla, whose demolition job on the Titans in the T20 final earned him a recall to the Proteas squad, Tshepo Moreki and Codi Yusuf will look after the pace bowling department, while Bjorn Fortuin and Junaid Dawood, the joint leading wicket-taker in the T20 competition, are the spin bowlers in the squad.

Khaya Fakude is the new face in the team, the DP World Lions Academy batsman having impressed the coaching staff with his ability and talent. The KES and University of Johannesburg representative hails from Kanyamazane near Nelspruit.

An investment in the playing depth of our DP World Lions men’s team paid off at the weekend with the successful defence of the CSA T20 Challenge title, with head coach Russell Domingo expressing his delight with how the newer faces in the team performed.

The DP World Lions clinched the crown with a commanding eight-wicket win with 29 balls to spare over the Momentum Multiply Titans, a triumphant conclusion to a campaign in which #ThePrideOfJozi played nine matches and won seven of them. The champions used 17 players in the competition, with Connor Esterhuizen, Evan Jones, Delano Potgieter and Mitchell van Buuren the only players to appear in all nine games.

Last season’s triumph was played over a double-round of fixtures and 18 players were used by Domingo. Proteas stars like Ryan Rickelton, Rassie van der Dussen, Wiaan Mulder, Reeza Hendricks, Temba Bavuma and Bjorn Fortuin were able to play just about every match.

With this season’s CSA T20 Challenge happening at the start of the season, as opposed to the end of the 2023/24 campaign, our DP World Lions had to dig a bit deeper into their resources.

Rickelton, Hendricks, Van der Dussen and Mulder all scored more than 200 runs last season; this season it was Esterhuizen leading the way with 199, closely followed by Hendricks and Van der Dussen, who played 10 games between them. Wandile Makwetu was the other chief run-getter.

Nqaba Peter was the leading wicket-taker last season with 20 scalps in 10 games, earning him a deserved call-up to the Proteas team, which meant he could only play five matches this campaign. Bjorn Fortuin (18), Codi Yusuf (16) and Lutho Sipamla (14) were the other main wicket-takers in 2023/24.

This season our Pride contributed the two leading wicket-takers in the entire competition, Junaid Dawood and Kwena Maphaka both taking 13 wickets, while Sipamla and Evan Jones contributed 16 scalps between them.

“Every trophy is special but to defend the title with largely a different team feels very special indeed,” Domingo said. “Having a lot of Proteas away gave opportunity to other players and I am very pleased that  they put their hands up. Junaid and Kwena were leading wicket-takers, I thought Mitch did a great job as captain before Bjorn returned, and Connor and Wandile gave very good performances.

“We make sure we learn every day, whether we win or lose. The Titans gave us a hiding in the first game, but that was a wake-up call to make sure we weren’t complacent. This is a tough competition, the boys needed to step up and they did,” Domingo said.

While Domingo’s intention had been to rotate seamers Sipamla, Yusuf and Tshepo Moreki through the season, Sipamla took his opportunity at the end of the tournament to write himself into the history books, his figures of four for 12 at the DP World Wanderers Stadium at the weekend being the best ever in a CSA T20 Challenge final.

“It was a really big performance from Lutho, he’s had a lot of injuries and missed a lot of last season. I wanted all the seamers to play five games, but Lutho has done really well at the back end. He works extremely hard and it was a fantastic spell,” Domingo said.

“We didn’t want to bowl too full on that pitch, we wanted to hit hard lengths and the bowling was as good as we could have hoped for. We spoke long and hard before the final about tactics.

“I’m a bit old-fashioned in that I like to have wickets in hand, be more circumspect up front, especially at the DP World Wanderers where the ball does a bit. A lot of people think the first six overs are the most important, but I think the last six are.

“Aiming for around 40 in the powerplay has served us well. We might have to do it differently next season, but with this group of players it was the right formula. We also worked hard on batting well in the middle overs, running the ones and twos, being smart, and we also had to cut down on the extras in the field,” the delighted Domingo said.

The Sunshine Ladies Tour returns to the Western Cape this week with the Standard Bank Ladies Open at Royal Cape Golf Club and stalwart Stacy Bregman is eager to continue the steady improvement she has shown this season and mount a strong defence of her title.

Bregman claimed her sixth Sunshine Ladies Tour title in April last year when she won the tournament at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington’s West Course, beating Lee-Anne Pace in a playoff. She began this year’s campaign by missing the cut in the Dimension Data Pro-Am at Fancourt, but then finished tied-38^th in the SuperSport Ladies Challenge at Lost City and then tied-19^th in last week’s Fidelity ADT Ladies Challenge at Blue Valley Golf Estate, where she was in contention for the title before shooting 75 in the final round.

The 37-year-old Bregman says her game is really starting to come together.

“I do feel like I’m starting to find the keys to my game again, even though I wasn’t playing that well at first. But I’ve felt it coming together and my results have been getting better and better,” Bregman said.

“I’m in a good space, my game is trending in the right direction and I’m feeling good. I’ve been putting really well this year, but I could be a bit better off the tees.

“And you’ve got to be good off the tees at Royal Cape, because it’s quite tight and old-school. It’s about positioning yourself and putting well, but it gets really tricky, especially if there are winds, if you’re not in the right positions,” Bregman said.

Royal Cape is the oldest golf course in South Africa and much restoration work has been done in recent years with the original design of Charles Murray and the indigenous landscape at front of mind. The course is built on sandy fynbos plains, but hectares of the endemic Cape Flats vegetation has been lost to the pressures of urbanisation, so Royal Cape have embarked on a program of bolstering the endangered locally-adapted flora.

Although relatively flat, Royal Cape is a challenging course that has 58 bunkers and six holes that feature water. The parklands layout, with Table Mountain looming over it, is exposed to the famous Cape Doctor, the south-easterly wind which is a near-constant obstacle when it comes to finding the tree-lined fairways. It has hosted the South African Open for men 10 times.

The Sunshine Ladies Tour has seen strong competition this season with three different winners thus far – Kylie Henry, Tvesa Malik and Helen Kreuzer – and all three of them are in the field again this week.

The trio come from Scotland, India and Germany respectively, showing the greater interest from overseas that the tour is generating. But South Africa also has some amazing talents to keep an eye on and Kiera Floyd, Gabrielle Venter, Nicole Garcia, Cara Gorlei, Tandi McCallum, Nadia van der Westhuizen and Bregman herself are all capable of winning the R600 000 Standard Bank Ladies Open.

There have been United Rugby Championship games where both the Bulls and Stormers have been able to drive buses through the opposition defence, but when last season’s finalists meet in a massive derby in Cape Town on Friday night, a tight spectacle is expected by the visitors.

Both teams were amongst the leading try-scorers last season and have thrived on counter-attack, with exciting back threes carrying the ball back to great effect. But Bulls fullback Wandisile Simelane said on Tuesday that he expects swarming defence to be a key feature of Friday’s humdinger.

“Any South African derby is always going to be difficult because we really study each other well,” Simelane said. “Games like these are great to be part of and it’s where you test yourself.

“I assume it’s going to be a tight match, a momentum game and putting points on the board will be crucial. I expect the defences to rush up on the faster guys, but opportunities will still come.

“If we don’t get five or six chances like usual, then there will be one or two and we have to make sure we make them really count. It’s about how well we execute in those one or two moments.

“Momentum will be very vital, we can’t throw the ball away, keeping it for a few more phases will be very beneficial. We mustn’t throw 50/50 miracle passes,” Simelane said.

While the romantics would love the match to be decided by a Simelane sidestep or a piece of Manie Libbok magic, the reality is it is the forwards who will have the key roles; from the tremendous platform laid by evergreen Stormers props Frans Malherbe and Steven Kitshoff, to the bruising gainline presence of Elrigh Louw and Marco van Staden that can leave opponents purple and pink.

Some big oaks have departed the Bulls kraal, but the shrubs that are coming up in their place show great promise. In the white-heat of battle, the 24-year-old Simelane knows being able to control and manage the contest will be crucial.

“Hopefully we will be calm enough to control the game and our game-managers can put us in the right positions. We love having ball-in-hand on attack, using our natural instincts, but there is a thin line between relying on natural instinct and building pressure through being more conservative,” Simelane said.