Ken Borland

The focus is on the big moments for our DP World Lions women’s team this weekend as they head to Bloemfontein to get the 2024/25 HollywoodBets ProSeries underway against the Free State Knights, with coach Shaun Pretorius saying all the hard work has been done in the pre-season and now it is all down to the execution.

The DP World Lions finished as runners-up in both the Pro50 and Pro20 competitions last season, so #ThePrideOfJozi are hungry to get over the line this season.

“The focus is on BMT, those big situations when we need to step up and show character, those times when our backs are against the wall,” Pretorius said.

“We’ve had quite a few warm-up games, including against the Titans and the Knights, as well as lots of middle sessions and some time in the classroom as well, where we went over our game-plans and KPIs. There’s been buy-in from the squad, all the hard work is done and the preparation has gone really well.

“We could not ask for better in terms of the facilities at the DP World Wanderers Stadium, so now it all comes down to the execution,” Pretorius said.

Pretorius is not a keen advertiser of his selections ahead of matches, and in terms of the squad he is taking to Bloemfontein, all he wanted to say was that there are a couple of injured players at present, for which they have good cover, and that there are very experienced players going to take on the Knights.

The hosts, meanwhile, will be without former Proteas captain Mignon van der Merwe (nee’ Du Preez), who is pregnant with twins. And our DP World Lions have good memories of their last visit to Bloemfontein, when they chased down 248 with 31 balls and six wickets to spare in the one-day game, and then won the T20 match by seven wickets with seven balls to spare.

“Mignon has obviously been a big run-scorer for the Knights, but we will not take anything lightly going there. Even though we won both games there last season, we still have to execute properly and be clinical in the different phases of the game. Free State still have Yolandi Potgieter and Izel Cilliers is back.

“I especially want our batters to try and manipulate spin bowling better, we need to score at a better strike-rate against the slow stuff. Against pace we are executing well,” Pretorius said.

The cricket season just past has seen Wiaan Mulder freed from his cell of self-imposed pressure and doubt, and the Central Gauteng Lions all-rounder’s reward has been a return to the Proteas T20 squad, albeit for the warm-up series against the West Indies in Jamaica at the end of this month and not the World Cup.

The Lions were the outstanding domestic team of the summer, winning both the four-day competition and the CSA T20 Challenge that ended last weekend in a final at the Wanderers, with the Gautengers easing past the KZN Dolphins by seven wickets with 14 balls to spare.

Mulder was at the forefront of that successful chase, blazing his way to a ferocious 55 not out off just 26 balls, with four sixes. It capped a superb tournament for the 26-year-old, who scored 248 runs at an average of 35.42 and a strike-rate of 139.32. Mulder also took 11 wickets and conceded just 7.10 runs-per-over, making him the only player to appear in the top-20 of both the batting and bowling averages.

It followed his destructive performances in the SA20 league, where he scored 297 runs at an average of 37.13 and a strike-rate of 157.14 for Durban Super Giants.

In the Lions’ triumphant four-day campaign, Mulder was their leading run-scorer with 549 at 54.90, which included a couple of centuries. He also claimed 16 wickets at an average of 26.50.

Little wonder then that the Proteas have come calling again. He played in the ODI series against India last December, but Mulder is set to play his first T20 international since September 2021 in Sri Lanka.

But in a candid interview before his selection was announced this week, Mulder admitted that he had not made the most of his previous Proteas call-ups.

“The biggest thing for me at international level is mental. I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself, which is made worse when you think every game could be my last,” Mulder said after the Lions’ T20 triumph.

“I do my best when I am just given the freedom to go out and play; unfortunately I’m an over-thinker and then I try too hard and get a bit down on myself. I’ve done relatively well with the ball for the Proteas, but I haven’t really shown what I can do with the bat. But maybe my time will come in the next couple of years,” Mulder said.

The all-rounder’s mantle is a tough one to bear in South African cricket because we have been blessed with arguably the greatest of them all – Jacques Kallis – as well as a succession of legends who could both win matches with the bat and double as a proper fast bowler: Mike Procter, Clive Rice, Kallis, Lance Klusener and Shaun Pollock have spoilt us.

Mulder does not bowl express pace, but he is a very handy practitioner who can fulfil a variety of roles. The St Stithians product says the presence of another great – Allan Donald – on the Lions coaching staff has helped him enormously in terms of growing his skills and even becoming a little quicker.

“Allan Donald has been massive for us and for me personally. I’ve been working with him to get more energy behind the ball, being able to bowl back-of-the-hand deliveries. It’s difficult bowling in the powerplay at the Wanderers, the ball really flies here, so I’ve had to up-skill a lot.

“I feel like I’m bowling well and it’s nice to be consistently bowling. Not bowling five matches in a row in the SA20 gets a little frustrating,” Mulder said.

The up-skilling Mulder has done on his batting will also hopefully pay off at international level.

“Russell Domingo [head coach] said there were certain things that have to get better in our game and there was an expectation to up-skill. There was a lot of hard work in the transition period after he became coach.

“And you could see when Reeza Hendricks and I were batting together in the final, we made sure the required rate never ran away from us even though we weren’t hitting boundaries. We were getting the ones and twos and making sure there were no dot-balls,” Mulder said.

SUN CITY, North-West – This year’s SuperSport Ladies Challenge at Sun City from Wednesday has been moved from the Gary Player Country Club to Lost City, and Tandi McCallum reckons that is a boost for her chances, even though she finished runner-up in this event at GPCC in 2020.

That year, McCallum was edged out in a playoff by Lejan Lewthwaite, but the Johannesburger won the Sun International Ladies Challenge at Lost City in 2014.

“I’ve actually done better at Lost City, I won there in 2014 and I prefer it to the Gary Player Country Club, which I know a lot of connoisseurs will frown on. I just enjoy being there, it suits my eye and it rewards golfers who hit it very straight and putt well,” McCallum said.

“Lost City demands that you be a bit more strategic, it’s very firm on the side of the mountain and the undulating fairways mean you have got to be in good positions. The key is to be on the fairways, but they are so hard that you can’t overpower the course. I find Gary Player Country Club has more generous fairways.”

Fortunately for much of the field playing in the SuperSport Ladies Challenge, they will be coming from the Dimension Data Ladies Pro-Am at Fancourt, which required some advanced golfing skills and would have battle-hardened the Sunshine Ladies Tour contingent.

McCallum played solidly enough to finish in a tie for 13^th on 10-over-par, the winning score being Kylie Henry’s three-under-par 213. The Scotswoman is teeing it up again at Lost City, but many of the other European golfers have moved on to the Ladies European Tour, which has an event in Morocco starting on Thursday.

“I didn’t play super-well on day three when there were fantastic conditions but a very challenging set-up,” McCallum said. “But it was good to shake off any rust and I was very happy to make the cut.

“It’s great for us South Africans to be able to compare ourselves with the international players, but this week there is an overlapping LET event. Generally our tour has international players who don’t have full cards in Europe, so if they get a start over there then they will take it. But we will still have a very competitive field at Lost City.”

Veteran Lee-Anne Pace, who charged up the leaderboard on the final day at Fancourt to finish second, will be looking to go one better this week and LPGA star and 2022 SuperSport Ladies Challenge winner Paula Reto is also in the field.

A young up-and-coming talent to watch is 19-year-old Gabrielle Venter, who finished tied-fifth at the Dimension Data Ladies Pro-Am, her best ever Sunshine Ladies Tour result.

Playing the Blair Atholl Golf and Equestrian Estate course is the road less travelled for most of the South African Open field, but Thriston Lawrence has been there before and he equalled his course record on the massive Gary Player designed layout to top the leaderboard after the first round on Thursday.

The course has only hosted one professional event before – the Blair Atholl Championship in October 2021 – and Lawrence claimed the course record with a remarkable 64 in the final round that catapulted him into sixth place.

On Thursday he repeated that performance with another eight-under-par 64 to end the first day of the SA Open with a one-stroke lead. Lawrence, who won the rookie of the year award for the 2022 DP World Tour, birdied the second hole but then bogeyed the par-three third. From then on it was a cruise for the highly-promising 25-year-old as he gathered eight more birdies, five of them on the back nine.

The sheer length of the Blair Atholl course – at 7461 metres it is the longest in DP World Tour history – may be daunting for many in the field, but Lawrence enjoys the challenge.

“That was good fun,” Lawrence smiled after signing for his 64, “this course is quite familiar to me after I played the Sunshine Tour event here last year and I’m very happy to tie my course record from the final round then.

“I just tried to keep doing what I do, stick to the game-plan and be aggressive off the tee, and I hit good drives, my approach play was really great and I dropped a few putts today.

“It’s really long, but I like hitting full shots into the green, mid-to-long irons are my game. My long game is my strength and this course definitely suits me.

“It’s just good on the eye for me, the course just seems open for me and obviously I brought a bit of confidence today from that last round last year,” Lawrence said.

Englishman Ross Fisher, another of the longer hitters on tour, also went to town on the back nine, collecting five birdies as well, adding to the three birdies and a bogey, also on the third, he had on the front nine, to finish one behind Lawrence on seven-under. Fisher’s last DP World Tour win came at the 2014 Tshwane Open, which was played at Copperleaf, the previous longest-ever course in tour history, so that is a good omen for the 42-year-old.

Jens Fahrbring, the 38-year-old Swede, joined Fisher on seven-under with a superb bogey-free 65 as dusk settled over Lanseria.

Germany’s Matti Schmid held the clubhouse lead for much of the day with three eagles leading him to a six-under 66, where Scott Jamieson joined him late in the day, the Scot also going bogey-free. JJ Senekal also posted 66.

Luke Brown, who won the Blair Atholl Championship last year, parked himself on five-under with a 67 that also did not feature a single dropped shot. Spain’s Santiago Tarrio and Italian Edoardo Molinari also posted 67s, as did Northern Ireland’s Tom McKibbin, who made a hole-in-one on the 213-metre par-three 11^th in just his second DP World Tour start.

South Africa’s Hennie du Plessis also registered an ace, on the par-three third hole.

Wilco Nienaber, perhaps the longest hitter of them all, also finished on five-under, offsetting a double-bogey five at the 17^th with an eagle on the par-five closing hole.