Ken Borland

Gerald Coetzee strikes one as a young cricketer who is fully committed to getting the absolute best out of his talent, so when his Free State Knights team were relegated at the end of the season, it was only natural that he should look elsewhere to further his burgeoning career.

The Northerns Titans, with whom he has now signed, are an ideal fit for the exciting fast bowler, being a team with a history of winning and a reputation for converting domestic talents into international stars. The Titans dominated the last decade of franchise cricket and they topped the Division I promotion/relegation log after the last two seasons.

The Proteas and their fans will also be delighted because the newly-capped Coetzee is too exciting a talent to be languishing in Division II.

The 22-year-old Coetzee played two Tests and two ODIs for South Africa in the season just finished, and proved himself to be a strike-bowler with 14 wickets. He is also a handy lower-order batsman.

“He’s an x-factor player, dangerous with the white ball and he will also really help us in the four-day competition,” Titans CEO Jacques Faul told kenborland.com. “He’s an exciting talent who has the kind of profile of young fast bowlers we have developed in the past – guys like Morne Morkel, Dale Steyn and Lungi Ngidi.

“With Lungi being contracted to the Proteas, we don’t get to see much of him in Titans colours, and Lizaad Williams too has spent time away with the national squad. So we need Gerald’s firepower as well,” Faul said.

Northerns Titans have also signed Free State opening batsman Matthew Kleinveldt, who fitted in well with the Knights after moving there in 2020 following 10 seasons in the Western Cape. In the last two seasons based in Bloemfontein, Kleinveldt has scored 692 runs at an average of 49.42.

With Theunis de Bruyn’s future in doubt and Heinrich Klaasen likely to be away with the Proteas for much of next season, it makes sense for the Titans to beef up their batting, an area where they also looked a bit light on experience at the end of last season.

The movement of Coetzee and Kleinveldt to Northerns is important because it also ensures two of the Knights’ better players still have a place in Division I cricket. With its strong schools and university, Free State is an important area of talent in terms of the national pipeline and their relegation to Division II is not good news for South African cricket as a whole. Especially since it is KZN Inland who are replacing them in the top division, meaning there are two teams from KwaZulu-Natal, based less than 100km apart, now playing in the A Section.

Of the Knights’ other players of national interest, Raynard van Tonder, so prolific with the bat a couple of seasons ago, is moving to the North-West Dragons, where he will definitely bolster a fragile batting line-up. Pace bowler Migael Pretorius, however, is believed to have turned down contracts elsewhere and will be playing as a free agent, which probably means he will be heading overseas to play in T20 leagues.

The 36-year-old Pite van Biljon, who was playing T20s for South Africa in 2021, is heading to Pietermaritzburg to play for the KZN Inland Tuskers, one of the few signings they will be making as they are believed to be backing the talent that won them promotion.

Greater Flamingo flying over the Chatty Saltpans

The Swartkops Estuary in Port Elizabeth is well-known as one of South Africa’s 112 Important Bird & Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) and while the river and mudflats have the greatest density of birds and hog the limelight as the most natural areas, my sunset visit on December 30 was to the salt pans and threw up a special that is often difficult to find elsewhere.

The Chatty River flows from the west into the Swartkops River and alongside it, next to the R367 main road, there are commercial saltpans which can provide quality foraging opportunities for many birds, especially when the salinity and water level are just right for a host of invertebrates to be crawling around in the benthos.

The elegant flamingos – both Greater and Lesser – immediately catch the eye and I was also drawn to the Pied Avocets, one of my favourite birds, sweeping and scything around in the water.

But dotted around the pan were smaller birds – the Blacknecked Grebe.

The Chatty Saltpans hold globally significant numbers of this uncommon nomad, which has the propensity to suddenly colonise a flooded area and start breeding. There are usually good numbers of this cute little diving bird at Swartkops though, and I did not notice any birds in breeding plumage, so perhaps they were moulting, with the widely-distributed Blacknecked Grebe known to utilise saline lakes overseas for this purpose.

Another special that can be picked up at the Swartkops Estuary is the Hartlaub’s Gull, which has a recently-established breeding colony in the area. It was previously considered a bird of the Western Cape, its distribution tied to that of Kelp, with only vagrant birds moving east of Cape Agulhas, and it interbreeds with Greyheaded Gulls in this river valley. Being omnivorous, it seems to have adapted to new foraging opportunities around human settlements.

Nicely built-up embankments between the pans allow one to approach the vulnerable Flamingos and their friends reasonably closely as they continue their search for invertebrates, and other birds that have adapted well to man-made wetlands were also busy foraging for their dinner in the gathering gloom – Blackwinged Stilt, African Spoonbill, Cape Cormorant, Kelp Gull, Egyptian Goose, Blacksmith Plover, Cape Wagtail and Sacred Ibis.

Where are the Chatty Saltpans?

Sightings list

Greater Flamingo

Kelp Gull

Pied Avocet

Blacknecked Grebe

Blackwinged Stilt

Lesser Flamingo

Egyptian Goose

Cape Cormorant

Blacksmith Plover

Hartlaub’s Gull

Cape Wagtail

Sacred Ibis

African Spoonbill

When the chief executive of SA Rugby talks about “problems in Sanzaar” and feeling “shackled” by the southern hemisphere rugby body, then it is clear South African rugby sees its future as lying elsewhere.

But while Jurie Roux admitted to SA Rugby’s relationship with Sanzaar not being ideal, he stressed that there were no plans to leave the alliance with New Zealand, Australia and Argentina, even though South African rugby will be dallying elsewhere with northern hemisphere competitions like the Pro14.

“This is a very exciting time for South African rugby. We feel shackled in Sanzaar but now we have the opportunity to go north. It gives us options. People think that the Pro14 move is just about the Cheetahs and Kings, but it’s so much more than that.

“With the world calendar not aligned, we were all signing six or seven-year deals that were out of sync with each other. But now we have so many more opportunities and options. I’m super-excited for the Pro14. It’s an elegant solution for our Sanzaar problems,” Roux said on Monday at the announcement of FNB becoming a sponsor of the Springboks.

“We don’t have options in Sanzaar, which means you’re actually nowhere and that’s not where you want to be. But we are really good for each other, so we will still participate in Sanzaar; we are strong because we play against Australia and New Zealand.

“But we can never have eight franchises in Sanzaar, we can have four or five maximum and maybe we’ll even go down to three. But at least we now have options. We still need to play against Australia and New Zealand to be the best, so I don’t see the relationship ending. It’s just the way and how we play that will change. And we’ll have more international exposure up north,” Roux said.

The CEO added that the whole structure of South African rugby competitions would change in 2020 when the global calendar kicks into play.

Roux admitted that the Kings and Cheetahs were like guinea-pigs as they take the first steps into the brave new world of European rugby.

“The Kings will be ready, but it will be a very tough first year for them, although they’ve gone through that before and done pretty well, with Deon Davids one of the most under-rated coaches around; you must watch them from the second year onwards. The Cheetahs are more established and will be there or thereabouts.

“We needed to go north at some stage and we’ll have proof of concept now, you’ll be able to see if it works,” Roux said.

http://citizen.co.za/sport/sport-rugby/1602552/jurie-roux-suggests-the-sanzaar-marriage-is-on-the-rocks/