Ken Borland

While Australia’s panicking cricketers at the Indian Premier League are perhaps paying their penance for refusing to tour South Africa earlier this year, Cricket South Africa and their players in the league have adopted a more measured approach with it being left up to the individual whether they want to come home or not.

India are facing a massive outbreak of Covid-19, with the largest number of daily infections recorded anywhere in the world since the start of the pandemic, and on Monday it was confirmed that the virus has breached the IPL’s biobubble. Monday’s match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Bangalore Royal Challengers was postponed due to two Kolkata players testing positive.

There have also been unconfirmed reports of positive tests in the Chennai Super Kings camp and amongst the groundstaff at Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium, one of six venues the T20 competition is using.

A handful of Australian cricketers have already pulled out of the IPL, but with their government now instituting a travel ban, threatening a five-year prison sentence for anyone entering the country who has been to India recently, their remaining players have been agitating for a chartered flight to be organised to fly them home.

There has also been speculation that the England and Wales Cricket Board will order their players in India to come home.

But CSA will neither organise a chartered flight nor tell the South African players what to do, chief medical officer Dr Shuaib Manjra told The Citizen on Monday.

“We communicated with the players last week and told them that CSA will support them whichever way they want to handle this, the decision is their’s whether to stay and play, or whether to come home. This event is outside of their CSA contracts, which is why it’s up to them. We will offer them advice, but we are not going to spend millions on a chartered flight,” Manjra said.

While South Africans might be saying ‘ooh la la’ at seeing karma in action for the Australian and English cricketers, the health and safety of the 10 South Africans at the IPL is obviously of prime importance.

Five of those players – Kagiso Rabada, Quinton de Kock, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi and Anrich Nortje – have CSA national contracts.

With the coronavirus ripping through India at a rate of more than 3000 deaths a day, the pandemic now hitting the IPL amidships could cost the BCCI hundreds of millions of dollars if the tournament has to be called off. India’s hosting of the T20 World Cup at the end of October must also now be in doubt.

Loftus Versfeld used to be the home of 10-man rugby when Naas Botha was bossing the game in the 1970s/80s, but the intervening years have seen that approach all but die out and Jake White’s arrival in Pretoria has seen the Bulls use their backline with greater effectiveness than has been seen for many years. But against the Lions in the opening round of the Rainbow Cup on Saturday, there is a possibility that the home side will be playing a more conservative brand of rugby.

Not only have the Bulls been training for European conditions up until two weeks ago, but the Lions are also known to favour a more expansive, high-tempo game-plan. So it makes sense for the Bulls to force the Lions into a tight, physical contest that requires them to put their bodies on the line, and to force them back into their own territory with a strong kicking game.

“It’s definitely going to be a physical battle up front, we all know the Lions like to play with a lot of width. We have a great game-plan and if we stick to that then it will all work out, even though the Lions know exactly what we will bring. We kicked a lot on the Lions when we played them before and that’s something we can target because we have big wings that can contest,” scrumhalf Embrose Papier said this week with resonant tones of intimidation.

Having burst on the scene in 2018 as a potentially world-class scrumhalf, Papier’s fortunes took a dip in 2019 as he was left out of the Springbok squad. But the 24-year-old says the presence of Fourie du Preez, a towering presence in both Bulls and Springbok rugby, at Loftus Versfeld has been helping him a lot.

In 2019 he seemed to be at the rear of the Bulls’ No.9 pecking order behind Ivan van Zyl and Andre Warner, but now, especially with Van Zyl heading to Saracens at the end of June, Papier could well be celebrating a return to the Springbok squad given his resurgence in the last year.

“It’s been a dream to work with Fourie and my game-management, passing and kicking have all improved a lot. I’m working very hard and I learn something new every day, and I still dream of playing for the Bokke, that’s definitely a goal. But if I play good rugby through the year then that will be rewarded, so I’m just taking it step by step,” Papier said.

Louis Oosthuizen has a few homes scattered around South Africa and the United States but Augusta is a place where he has always looked pretty comfortable. Since his runner-up finish in 2012, he has only finished outside of the top-30 twice, earning himself $1 733 600 (more than R25 million) and he has finished under-par on his last three visits. South Africa’s top-ranked golfer has only played in five events this year, but he is sure to be up for the occasion at Augusta.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout won the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the SA Open on successive weekends at the end of last year and finished 2020 ranked 34^th in the world, a remarkable jump from 521^st at the end of 2018. The 26-year-old is aiming to base himself on the U.S. PGA Tour and is well on his way to gaining membership, helped by a top-10 finish in the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He is already making an impression in America and his straight hitting, superb short game and strong mind are ideally suited to the challenges of Augusta.

Augusta is not an easy place to start a comeback after injury deposits you outside the top-200 in the world rankings, and that’s the reality facing South Africa’s last Masters champion, Charl Schwartzel. The 2011 winner has been through a tough time lately with a wrist injury but, without any real form behind him, he showed the value of experience at Augusta in last year’s November Masters as he finished tied-25^th, his best finish in a major since 2017. Hopefully he can produce something similar this week.

Dylan Frittelli is one of the lesser-known South African stars but you can’t hide his pedigree – World No.68 and the best South African finisher at last year’s Masters, in a tie for fifth. After missing four of his seven cuts on the PGA Tour this year, he bounced back by making the last 16 of the World Matchplay Championships two weeks ago, before he lost to English star Tommy Fleetwood. The 30-year-old is still working for more consistency in his game after changing his Driver and going for more clubhead speed, but he is a dark horse this week.

Winning a series against India, not just because they are a country of half-a-billion women but also because they are one of cricket’s superpowers, especially on their home turf is a magnificent effort and South African batter Lara Goodall was quite right when she called it a “statement win” after the Proteas clinched a 3-1 series triumph with a game to spare with their seven-wicket win in Lucknow on Sunday.

To clinch victory, South Africa had to mount their highest ever successful run-chase – a daunting 267 was their target – and they did it style with eight balls to spare as the top four of Lizelle Lee (69), Laura Wolvaardt (53), Goodall (59*) and Mignon du Preez (61) all scored half-centuries.

The 24-year-old Goodall, who only returned to the Proteas team this year after being in the international wilderness following South Africa’s hammering on their last visit to India in October 2019, calmly steered them home in the company of veteran Marizanne Kapp (22*).

“It’s been nice to come here and make a statement because the last time we came to India we got clobbered a bit, so we had a point to prove. We knew it would not be easy, there was a lot of uncertainty, but we wanted to show that the batting unit has that belief and it was a massive chase against a world-class team. It showed we are a lot more mature in our game, especially the batting.

“It feels very good to be there at the end with Marizanne, to get us over the line after grafting so hard. We have a world-class opening partnership that we can always rely on with Lizelle and Laura, but we haven’t always backed them up. But the entire top four scoring fifties just shows all the talent and experience that is there. The batting really came to the party today,” Goodall said.

This was no mundane triumph and no-one would blame the Proteas for celebrating into Monday, especially since the fifth and final ODI is only on Wednesday.

“We’re definitely going to enjoy this one and we owe the win to the backing of the coaches and to ourselves for what happened last time we were here and we were down and out. Personally it put me out of the international game for a while, but I worked very hard in Lockdown. Two years ago I wasn’t sure how to play spin, what my options were.

“But having been a bit half-hearted about it, I looked at myself deeply and I knew I had to improve a lot if I wanted to have a regular place in this team. I want to keep my spot in the middle-order and it just required a mental shift. I’ve always had the shots and the ability, but there was some sort of disconnect whenever I had to go out into the middle,” Goodall admitted.