Ken Borland

A brilliant bowling display allowed Joburg Super Kings to restrict Paarl Royals to 150 for nine and captain Faf du Plessis then played the major batting role in them getting across the line with seven wickets and 13 balls to spare in their crucial SA20 match at the Wanderers on Thursday night.

Du Plessis produced a fabulous innings of 87 off just 55 balls, with four sixes and seven fiery sixes; even at the advanced age of 40 he remains a fine batsman, innovator and a wonderful striker of the ball.

It was a vital win for the Super Kings, who were under pressure, lying fourth, just one point ahead of their neighbours and vanquishers earlier this week, Pretoria Capitals. Joburg are now up to third, level on 19 points with Sunrisers Eastern Cape, ahead of them on nett run-rate, both teams having won at home in their head-to-head clash.

That pressure now moves across on to the Pretoria Capitals, who really need to win, preferably with a bonus point, against MI Cape Town at Centurion on Friday. Sunrisers Eastern Cape then host the Paarl Royals on Saturday in a must-win game for the two-time defending champions.

With only eight of 24 matches this season being won by the team batting first, Du Plessis had little hesitation in bowling first after he won the toss. Sam Hain, the replacement at the top of the order for the marvellous Joe Root, did not last the first over.

Part-time off-spinner Donavan Ferreira was opening the bowling and Hain tried to hammer his second delivery down the ground, but there were early signs of turn and the ball was dragged to cow corner.

Lutho Sipamla must be rapidly developing into the apple of Du Plessis’ eye, having been brought into the Super Kings squad as a late replacement due to the five frontline bowlers they have lost to injury. The Proteas seamer was again pivotal on Thursday, taking three for 19 in his four outstanding overs, starting with the wicket of the new sensation, Lhuan-dre Pretorius, for 19 off 11 balls.

Sipamla also plucked out Keith Dudgeon (1) and Bjorn Fortuin (12) and now has 11 wickets in seven games. Only five other bowlers are in double-figures.

The pacy Hardus Viljoen added some heat to the sauce and took one for 25 in his four overs, but it was Ferreira who arguably did the most damage to the high-flying Paarl Royals batting line-up, bringing down Hain (2), Rubin Hermann (28) and Dayyaan Galiem (9) as he finished with a career-best three for 23.

Even though Root and David Miller, whose wife gave birth in the morning, were missing from the Royals team, veteran Indian star Dinesh Karthik was still way down at number six in the batting order. He formed a workmanlike partnership of 58 for the seventh wicket with Fortuin, striking back at the dominant Joburg attack with three late sixes.

Karthik’s 53 off 39 balls at least gave the visitors a total they could try to defend.

But first they had to get past Du Plessis, which proved near impossible, such was the domineering mood of the former Proteas captain. He provided most of the momentum in a first-wicket stand of 54 in seven overs with Devon Conway (20) and then added another 76 for the second wicket off 50 deliveries with Leus du Plooy, who was back for his first game in a week and will be pleased with his unbeaten 18 off 16 balls.

Kwena Maphaka was the pick of the Paarl bowlers, conceding just 18 runs in his three overs, but the 18-year-old was given some lessons in the mental battle at the top level as Du Plessis had much to say to him. Faf is old enough to be his dad, but it did not seem like fatherly advice that was being dispensed out in the middle.

Proteas captain Dean Elgar says he is looking forward to getting home and enjoying a juicy steak on the braai following his team’s 2-0 hiding in the Test series against Australia, but at least some of the hurt and embarrassment was eased by the draw they managed to secure on the final day of the third Test in Sydney on Sunday.

South Africa came through the flames on Sunday, managing to stretch their first innings from 149/6 to 255, and then making 106/2 in their follow-on innings to deny the sizzling hot Australians a 3-0 sweep. They are not scores that would usually prompt satisfied celebrations, but this Proteas team needs small victories at the moment.

“We had a conversation last night where we said we could either lie down today and let Australia roll us, creating more embarrassment, or we could fight it out for the full final day,” Elgar said.

“It was really great to see how the team responded and there were a lot of learnings today. Being hurt and embarrassed probably go hand-in-hand, but maybe we feel that a bit less now. We showed a lot of fight and there were positive signs.”

Elgar must have felt like he was a piece of meat being braaied in the flames as he endured a miserable series, scoring just 56 runs in six innings.

“I could never get going in this series and the one time I did, I managed to run myself out. I can accept being caught down the leg-side twice, but three or four times highly irritates me. That’s something different. Generally there is a way you get out, and bowlers target that.

“Ten years into my Test career and now there’s something new. I’ll have to look at it. There have been a few conversations between me and the batting coach about some extra work.

“But for now I just want to get on a plane, go home, chill out, braai, go to the bush and play some golf. Taking as much time off as I want is what I need,” Elgar said.

The 35-year-old said he still has big ambitions, however, around the whole tricky business of fixing South Africa’s Test fortunes.

“There are four-day games in February before the two Tests against the West Indies. I still have the hunger and drive, no doubt. And I really believe there’s space for CSA to entertain motivating the players more who play this format.

“There’s room for discussion around compensation for the purest format, and we also need to play more games. At the moment the number of Tests is being stripped back and we are behind the pack,” Elgar pointed out.

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.

Dewald Brevis has a phenomenal talent for batting destruction, but in terms of character he seems a prim and proper, respectful young man who backs himself to the hilt, but is also not getting ahead of himself.

Importantly, he always seems to play with a chuffed smile on his face, and that grin was as broad as the bat with which he plundered 13 sixes during his incredible innings of 162 off only 57 balls, breaking all sorts of records, for the Northerns Titans against Free State Knights in the CSA T20 Challenge in Potchefstroom.

A more emphatic statement of proof that the 19-year-old is the genuine real deal could not have been made. While Brevis believed last year already that he was ready to play for the Proteas, he understood the need for him to go through the journey of dominating at senior level after being player of the tournament in the U19 World Cup earlier this year, with a record tally of runs.

“Playing in this tournament is an important part of learning my game, I have to do this, it’s part of my journey. I’m at the right place, where I need to be, scoring thirties and forties was part of my development,” Brevis said after exploding into the limelight.

“Everything is built up, every match is part of learning your game, and what’s important is that this innings was the next stepping stone. The people in control [of national selection] know best and it will work out as it should.”

Brevis is the quintessential modern T20 superstar. His magnificent ball-striking and confidence to back himself from ball one fits in perfectly with where the shortest international format is heading, plus he offers dangerous leg-spin bowling, the hardest craft to master but one in which he already shows much promise. And he is a superb fielder – he capped his unbelievable innings with a brilliantly-judged boundary catch against the Knights.

“The tougher the conditions, the better I am. I’m always trying to be positive, you must take the first three balls of an over on, don’t wait until the last three because then the bowler is on top.

“You have to allow good balls as well, there always will be good balls, but you must try and score ones off them. I’m trying to score off every ball,” Brevis said.

After the current T20 World Cup, we will surely see Brevis take his talent to the international stage.