Ken Borland

Springbok captain Siya Kolisi on Friday pronounced himself 100% ready to give everything and inspire his team to do the same in the first Test against the British and Irish Lions in Cape Town on Saturday.

Kolisi played in the Test against Georgia but then missed the two SA A games due to a brush with Covid, and questions have been asked in some, largely foreign, quarters over his readiness for what will certainly be an all-out game of Test rugby.

“I’ve had a good build-up. Obviously it was tough testing positive and going through isolation and everything, but I was involved in every meeting and looking at the team’s preparation. And then I felt really good when I went back to training because fortunately I did not have any Covid symptoms. I was fine by the second day and after that it was all just mental being isolated in my room.

“The coaches know if I get tired, they are very good at noticing that and making substitutions a the right time, and they will definitely take me off. But I know what our bench can do, we have depth and they will turn it up even more, so I won’t be holding back, I am going to give it my absolute all on the field. My focus is just on the stuff I can control and I have a very big job on the field,” Kolisi said on Friday.

Particularly in the northern hemisphere, there have been whispers that the Springboks’ World Cup triumph was somehow a fluke and they should not be considered the best team in the world anymore. The 2007 World Cup champion Springboks were extremely motivated to beat the Lions in 2009 just to counter any such suggestions themselves and Kolisi hinted that his outfit are using similar fuel to fire them up.

“I spoke to John Smit last night and we have the same mindset as the 2007 side. We have come through many challenges, guys have been out for a long time with injuries and we have worked hard to get here. It’s rare to get this opportunity to play against the Lions again, most of us won’t. So we really want to win and we will give everything for that result.

“It’s going to be all about whose plan comes out on top and our plan hasn’t changed at all. It’s going to be about who is able to adapt and enforce their game-plan for 80 minutes. Our fitness levels and plans are there. We are also in a place of privilege to put smiles on peoples’ faces when unfortunately the country is not doing well, and that drives us even more,” Kolisi said.

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber was a bit crabby over the ill-discipline his team showed in the first half, but otherwise he pronounced himself satisfied with the way they had gone in the first Test against Georgia at Loftus Versfeld on Friday night.

A string of penalties in the first quarter allowed Georgia to lead 9-5 and denied the Springboks much momentum. But once they gave themselves a foothold in the game with two tries in the last five minutes of the first half, they took a firm grip on the game in a rock-solid second half that saw South Africa ultimately win 40-9.

“The discipline was poor in the first half, but you have to credit Georgia as well because they put us under pressure until the back end of the first half. We all knew they would bring physicality but they caught us a little bit in the first 20 minutes. But that’s exactly why we were desperate to play a Test, we wanted a nice physical battle and we couldn’t have asked for better opposition for that.

“With no marker because we haven’t played for 20 months, it was difficult to know where we are at, but now we have a starting point. I don’t have worries but obviously we will work on the things that aren’t good and we probably have to improve in everything. We saw a notable change, what we wanted to see, in the second half when we imposed our game-plan on them more,” Nienaber said after his debut Test as head coach.

It was the Springbok forwards who bore the brunt of the responsibility for softening up the Georgians and captain Siya Kolisi said he was happy with the way his team responded.

“We didn’t hold back but we did not start as well as we wanted, we couldn’t get our maul and scrum going at the start, which is most important for us, we will never hide away from the set-pieces being important for us. Our discipline let us down too. But we wanted the same 2019 physicality and to be the Warriors, do the things that don’t require talent, that’s what we wanted to see today.

“We knew what Georgia are capable of and it was most important that we beat them and we responded well in the second half. But we need better discipline and we want to impose ourselves on the opposition more as individuals. We responded well but we still left a couple of opportunities out there,” Kolisi said.

There was arguably more relief for Quinton de Kock’s many supporters than for the batsman himself after his superb unbeaten century on the second day of the first Test against the West Indies at St Lucia on Friday, but there is no denying the last year has been very tough for the Proteas wicketkeeper/batsman.

For one of the more instinctive, laid-back talents in South African cricket, a person whose off-field pursuits are largely geared around the great outdoors, bio-bubbles are not easy for De Kock and over and above that he also had to deal with the captaincy of a struggling side. Having taken a break in the latter half of the summer and now relieved of the captaincy, De Kock blossomed on Friday with a brilliantly judged innings of 141 not out that put the Proteas in firm control of the first Test with a massive first-innings lead of 225.

“It didn’t really have anything to do with the captaincy,” De Kock said of his recent struggles, “it’s just the Covid bubbles. We’ve had so many and they just took their toll. It was too much and I just needed a break. Cricket South Africa deemed it a mental break, but I wasn’t tired of cricket, I was tired of the bubbles.

“I went from the IPL into the Pakistan bubble and that was particularly difficult, just going from the ground to one floor of the hotel and our rooms that had no balconies. Previously I wasn’t able to capitalise on my starts in Test cricket and then in the last while I haven’t even been getting starts, so it was nice to get the hundred today,” De Kock explained after his career-best Test innings.

De Kock has always been one of the classiest strokeplayers in the game, but on Friday he showed the appreciation of the game situation and the ability to adapt to it that is a mark of all the top batsmen. After a rapid start that saw him race to 22 off 24 balls, a much better second hour by the West Indian bowlers on a pitch that was still offering plenty of assistance to the quicks, saw De Kock adopt a much more cautious approach and he went to lunch on 44 off 88 deliveries.

The left-hander shared a couple of very useful partnerships with Rassie van der Dussen and Wiaan Mulder, but a fightback by the home side saw the Proteas slip to 233 for eight. But batting with the tail is a skill that De Kock has mastered, despite all the people who want him batting higher up the order, and he showed a cool, razor-sharp mind as he added 79 for the ninth wicket with Anrich Nortje, who scored just seven of those runs.

“It was a nice start to the day and then the bowlers brought it back really well. I understood the situation though and there was a lot in the pitch. We just needed to soak up the pressure for as long as we could and then capitalise. Credit also to the other guys who chipped in. It was a difficult pitch, even though it was not as up-and-down as it was with the new ball in the second innings.

“Even after 75 overs the ball was swinging a lot, but you’ve just go to find a way of dealing with it. There was obviously still a lot in that pitch on the second day, but it was a fair contest because if you worked hard as a batsman you could get runs and the bowlers always had a chance too,” De Kock said.

Faf du Plessis was a surprise exclusion from the Proteas T20 squad for the tour of the West Indies, but the former captain could still find himself jetting over to the Caribbean, plus a new contractual arrangement for free agents is on the cards.

Apart from adding experience to a rebuilding batting line-up, Du Plessis was one of the best batsmen in the recently-suspended Indian Premier League, so why wasn’t he chosen? It turns out his omission was due to him not having a contract in place with Cricket South Africa, and, according to their current policy, that would mean he would not get paid for the tour, but would earn match fees, which are just top-up amounts for those players who do have national deals.

It is a gap in CSA’s contracting system which director of cricket Graeme Smith is trying to fix in consultation with the South African Cricketers Association (the players’ union).

In the meantime, there is a chance that Du Plessis can reignite his T20 World Cup hopes by getting a late call-up to play in the West Indies. For that to happen, the national selectors would have to agree to add him to the squad and Du Plessis would have to agree to special financial terms CSA will offer. The organisation budgeted for 17 national men’s contracts for the season but only awarded 16 of them, and some of the money from that extra ‘salary’ is believed to be on offer for Du Plessis.

With the rise of lucrative T20 leagues there are likely to be many more free agents in future, but they currently fall outside of the Proteas contracting system, in what one CSA official described as “the elephant in the room that everyone has been avoiding”.

The policy at the moment sees the players ranked from No.1 to No.16, depending on the balance of Test, ODI and T20 matches in the next season, using scientific data methods. But free agents are excluded from this.

It’s another problem that Smith has inherited as director of cricket. Checks and balances obviously need to be in place to ensure the free agents are not just using the Proteas to score lucrative T20 contracts elsewhere, but are actually contributing to the national team’s culture and success.

There is also the danger that if players are given format-specific contracts, then many could opt out of Test cricket and just play the white-ball formats.

On the other hand, the Proteas need to have marquee players that the top teams want to play against and that people want to watch in action, developing a strong team is obviously a key strategic objective of CSA.