Ken Borland

When Imraan Khan said on October 1 last year, while they were still waiting for clarity on when the new season would begin, that “the culture and the environment is strong at the moment” in the Dolphins’ camp, there would have been many who just brushed the comments aside as typical pre-season talk from a coach.

But now that the Dolphins have pulled off an incredible triumph in the four-day competition – not just in the final but with their back-to-back away wins to host it – to add to their shared Momentum One-Day Cup title and their place in the T20 final, it is clear that Khan was dead right: something special has been brewing at Kingsmead.

How else did they manage to win the final outright with two days lost to rain, humbling the Titans, the dominant side in franchise history, by skittling them for a record low of 53?

“It’s been a fantastic performance, a bit unexpected, to be honest. But that’s been a feature of the team this season, they continuously fight. After the disappointment of the game being abandoned in Pretoria due to Covid, we fought back to share the One-Day Cup and then after losing the T20 final, we notched back-to-back away victories in the four-dayers, which was a special effort.

“We started two years ago as a technical team and we knew we had the tools, but we needed more consistency. We found a brand of cricket with our experienced bowlers being our spinners, and we stuck by it, everyone bought into it and we had a strong environment. The team does not rely on one or two individuals, it was a collective effort,” Khan told The Citizen on Tuesday.

The adoption of a new provincial-based system in domestic cricket spells the end of the Dolphins franchise just as they were becoming a dominant force, and there has already been one casualty with all-rounder Senuran Muthusamy, one of the stars of the final, throwing in his lot with newly-promoted North-West.

But Khan is confident Kingsmead will remain a fortress for the KZN Coastal side.

“We’ve managed to retain pretty much all our players, although Robbie Frylinck retiring is a big blow to our white-ball side and Senuran is unfortunately leaving us. We wanted to keep him, but we wish him well. But I am confident and comfortable with what we have, although we will still have to work hard on our execution and focus.

“We tend to back our spinners because conditions at Kingsmead have slowed down and we have a very young pace attack but it has a lot of potential. We’ve also had to do a lot of work on our batting so we can play our own conditions well. We have batted well because we spend a lot of time on the very specific skills needed here,” Khan said.

You get diverse reactions from players to their own magnificent individual performances that ensure a team triumph, but Lizelle Lee’s self-deprecation after her superb unbeaten century took South Africa to victory over India in the third ODI at Lucknow on Friday was utterly charming.

Lee scored a remarkable 132 not out off 131 balls to steer South Africa to victory and a 2-1 lead in the five-match series, after they were set a daunting 249 for the win. It was the third highest ODI score ever for the Proteas women’s team and the fourth highest in international women’s cricket in a chase. In her last 9 ODIs dating back to the start of 2020, Lee has scored 472 runs at an average of 67.42. Her strike-rate has been 86.44, figures only a handful of batters have been able to better lately.

“I’m definitely not one of the best openers in the game, but I am striving to be one. I have to be more consistent though and I hope that happens because I’ve been working extremely hard. To be honest, I always have the same game-plan – see ball, hit ball. The only change I’ve made is to try not hit in the air as much as I used to because I was getting out caught a lot,” Lee said after her career-best effort.

The hard-hitting 28-year-old also had plenty of praise for her team-mates.

“The credit should go to the bowlers because India were on their way to more than 300 and it was outstanding how they pulled them back, that was very crucial. Mignon du Preez also played an excellent innings and showed that partnerships are key. She’s full of confidence at the moment and hitting the ball well, she showed her experience very well,” Lee said.

Lee certainly has the explosive properties one wants at the top of the innings, being able to batter the ball to the boundary with relatively low-risk shots in the powerplay. Her power is well-known as she has been a key figure in the Big Bash League for the two Melbourne sides – the Stars and the Renegades.

On Friday she showed she has the ability to not only set up innings with her dominant strokeplay, but the composure to manage a tight run-chase as well – South Africa needed 26 off 21 balls in Lucknow when the rain arrived and play was called off, leaving them six runs ahead of the DLS par-score.

Eight teams in the top division and promotion/relegation are two good adjustments that Cricket South Africa have made to their domestic structure, but the fact that, from 2023/24, one or two teams will automatically climb from Division II to Division I is going to ask serious questions about the quality in depth of the competitions.

While the complacency that comes from teams being entrenched in the top division is not good for the game, automatic promotion/relegation means there is no guarantee that the team/s coming up are going to be better than the team going down. There should be a playoff game to make sure the top division is not being perpetually weakened.

And a lowering of standards seems inevitable because the team/s being demoted is going to lose sponsors and players, while the team/s coming up from Division II will not have the resources of the other Division I teams. Without television exposure, and the fact none of the Division II sides are based in major centres, there is not going to be a level playing field. In fact, the inequality is already written into the system because the Division I teams that will start playing next season will each receive R9.3 million from CSA and can contract 16 players with a maximum salary of R1.035 million.

Division II teams, however, will probably only receive around R5 million, can only contract 11 players with a maximum salary of R600 000 if private sponsorship can top up the CSA-prescribed maximum of R400 000. So it is clear that leading players are not going to be signing for Division II outfits.

The only feasible way a Division II side is going to avoid being relegated from Division I after just one season is if most of the players from the team they are replacing jump ship and join them. But those are the same players who were not good enough to avoid relegation anyway, so South African domestic cricket is set to be trapped in a merry-go-round, or more accurately a vicious circle, in which the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and there is precious little development of either players or teams.

The need for stability in the South African game has been the consistent call from the office of the South African Cricketers Association CEO Andrew Breetzke, but this new system does not seem to be bringing that. Even less so if the disastrous decision for two teams to be automatically promoted every season is made.

There are still so many questions surrounding the new domestic structure, not least of them being whether it is one or two teams that will be promoted every season and how the mechanism of promotion/relegation works. Will there be separate teams going up and down in each format or will some sort of averaging take place so that one team moves in all three formats?

These questions were also sent to those responsible for the communications portfolio at CSA but no response has been received. One would think for a decision of this magnitude to be passed, there would be a set of documents detailing the restructuring task team’s position on all these matters in order for the Members Council and the Interim Board to meet their fiduciary duties when approving the changes, but no-one seems to have seen them. At the moment they are as mysterious as the Fundudzi Report.

It is a massive change to make based on what, judging by what has been revealed so far by CSA, are flimsy reasons and little concrete financial planning. A good idea is at the kernel of the change, but, as has often been the case, CSA don’t seem to have considered the unintended consequences.

The process of doing away with the franchises and going back to provinces is a complex administrative task that includes dissolving companies, setting up new ones, sorting out all the tax implications and putting in place an entirely new contracting model for players.

And it all needs to be done within the next month because that’s when player contracts have to be finalised.

So far, the restructuring does not seem to make sense on many levels and the cynic in me believes the only reason the 15-strong Members Council have pushed this through is so the tail can wag the dog and two of the smaller provinces get to join the six major centres at the R9.3 million big table on a rotational basis.

That Cricket South Africa are taking no chances with Covid was borne out on Wednesday as Titans batsman Theunis de Bruyn was pulled from the final day of their 4-Day Domestic Series match against the Knights in Centurion.

De Bruyn has had close contact with someone who has subsequently come down with symptoms of Covid and tested positive for the virus. Although the Proteas batsman has himself tested negative, the decision was made on Friday morning to pull him from the game between the two pool leaders as a precautionary measure, with another international, Heinrich Klaasen, replacing him.

Wicketkeeper/batsman Klaasen was initially rested from the game with a knee niggle, but now could well get a bat in the afternoon with the Titans on 258 for two in their second innings at lunch, leading by 107.

The 28-year-old De Bruyn has a franchise batting average of 46.98 and was considered a hot property in the early stages of his career. But in recent years he has been dogged by injuries, eye problems and illness and has lost his Proteas place after playing 12 Tests and two T20 Internationals.

De Bruyn scored a century in the opening match of the season against the Cape Cobras, but in 10 innings since then he has just 146 runs to his name, including 28 in the first innings of the game against the Knights.