Ken Borland

Keegan Petersen had the ball whizzing past his ears and edges of his bat enough times on Tuesday to know just how tough it is going to be for the South African batsmen to take on the Indian attack in the second innings of the second Test at the Wanderers, which means a quick end to the tourists’ innings on Wednesday will be crucial.

Petersen top-scored for the Proteas with a determined but positive 62 in their innings of 229 which gave them just a 27-run lead. India had reached 85/2 at stumps to go into the third day 58 runs ahead.

“It’s a tough pitch and batting is definitely not going to get easier. And we’re up against a top-quality attack that keeps you on your toes,” Petersen said after his maiden Test half-century in his sixth innings.

“It’s a pitch which you’re never really in on and the session this morning was the toughest. The Indian seamers came out guns blazing and it was a very challenging two hours.

“They were spot-on with both their execution and their strategies, and the pitch is a bit tricky too. We haven’t yet put a number to what we’d like to chase, but anything under 200 I think we can get.

“But it’s a difficult bowling attack to come up against and we’ll have to get stuck in again. I’m not sure what the right way to bat is, the attacking option worked out for a couple of guys,” Petersen said.

The 28-year-old from Paarl has been deposited in the deep end at No.3 in his brief Test career which began in the West Indies last June and he once again came to the crease at the Wanderers inside the first five overs, as he has done in all of his Proteas innings thus far.

While there has been talk of him dropping down the order so a more experienced batsman can come in first drop, Petersen brushed that off on Tuesday by saying he will bat “wherever”.

Clearly a mentally tough individual, he was more upset that he did not go on to a bigger score, having done so much hard work in spending nearly three hours at the crease.

“I’m happy but I wish I had done more,” Petersen said. “I wish I had kicked on and that is the one department we need to improve on as a batting unit.

“You can’t be overly aggressive, but you just try and pounce on the bad ball when it comes. But there weren’t many of those.

“I’m completely confident that I will get to the milestone of a Test century, I thought today was going to be the day. It was not to be, but we will get there,” said the KZN Dolphins batsman whose solid technique and impressive strokeplaying ability was laid down in his childhood years by father Dirkie, his only real coach growing up.

“You never really know how a pitch is going to play,” Kagiso Rabada said, “but we had an idea from the warm-up that it would favour the seamers and bowled accordingly.”

And brilliantly.

South Africa bundled Bangladesh out for just 84 in their T20 World Cup match in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, a total they then chased down with six wickets in hand and 39 balls to spare to significantly boost their nett run-rate.

Rabada led the way with an outstanding display that brought him career-best figures of 3/20. On a pitch that almost demanded Test-style bowling, he was bang on the mark with both his lengths and skills from the outset.

“There was a lot of grass on the pitch and a bit of zip, as well as being a bit two-paced. We learnt from the Australia game here and we also noticed a bit of swing in the warm-up,” Rabada said after the win.

“You never really know how a pitch is going to play, but we had an idea that it would favour the seamers and we bowled accordingly. In my three overs up front there was a bit of bounce, seam movement and swing.

“So conditions were in my favour and you just try to get the ball in the right places. Anrich Nortje [3.2-0-8-3] is also bowling pretty rapidly at the moment and every bowler that came on stuck to the game-plan and got us into an even stronger position,” Rabada said.

South Africa also know full well that their semi-finals qualification could come down to nett run-rate and they used the small target as an opportunity to boost that figure to more than one run per over better than rivals Australia: 0.742 to -0.627.

After a rocky start, they won in the 14^th over largely thanks to Temba Bavuma’s quickfire 31 not out off 28 balls. Rabada said criticism of the captain has been ill-informed.

“There’s nothing more to say about Temba, the results are there. You are always going to have critics and we make peace with that, we take the good with the bad.

“You can’t control what is said outside the game, but we probably put more pressure on ourselves than the public do.

“Obviously we chatted at halfway about nett run-rate and we wanted to try and finish the chase as early as possible. There was a clear instruction to finish before 15 overs, we did that and we are happy,” Rabada said.

We know what to expect from David Miller, but Kagiso Rabada has always trained hard and the considerable work he has been putting into his batting lately brought reward as the pair of left-handers steered South Africa to a thrilling four-wicket victory with just a ball to spare over Sri Lanka in their T20 World Cup match in Sharjah on Saturday.

Miller stole the limelight with successive sixes in the final over, but Rabada played a vital role with a four and a six in 13 not out off just seven balls.

Rabada’s four was down to the third man boundary and it brought the winning runs when the Proteas needed a single to win. But his six, a glorious drive over long-off, in the penultimate over was a vital and magnificent strike when South Africa were needing 22 off just nine deliveries.

“KG always wins the shot of the day competition,” bowling hero Tabraiz Shamsi said after the match in which the wrist-spinner took 3/17 in his four overs. “No matter the situation, he pulls off the shot of the day, he does it so often.

“But it was a really special six today and reward because he puts in a lot of hard work on his batting. It was one of those games where you can’t guess which way it’s going to go.

“I was really nervous, not 100% sure, but you’re confident the guys in the middle can pull it off. It was really nice to see David and KG finish it off.

“This is a new team and we’ve won those sort of moments more often than we’ve lost them,” Shamsi said.

Their opening loss to Australia put the Proteas on the back foot, never mind the drama of the last week surrounding BLM and Quinton de Kock, but Shamsi said the team are not afraid to dream they can still win the World Cup.

“We’re very comfortable with where we are sitting. We are all ready to win our remaining games, that’s all that matters to us, we are here to try and win the World Cup.

“There’s a World Cup to be won, so how would anyone not be passionate about that? We’re just trying to win every game and if we don’t believe we can win the World Cup then we should rather stay home and watch on TV.

“Every game someone different is doing a great job for the team and we are really happy with the way things went in our last two matches. Sure, we are up against some very strong teams, but so are we,” Shamsi said.

JOHANNESBURG, Gauteng (22 October) – “This is a very demanding golf course and you have to know where to miss,” comeback golfer Anton Haig said on Friday after he seized a share of the lead midway through the Blair Atholl Championship delivered by The Courier Guy.

This knowledge came in very handy for the 35-year-old golfer who is enjoying his second career on the Sunshine Tour, as he fired a three-under-par 69 to catch joint first-round leader Rupert Kaminski on seven-under-par.

Haig burst on to the scene in the mid-2000s and even won the lucrative Johnnie Walker Classic on the European Tour in 2007. But by 2011 he was taking a break from the game due to persistent back problems. But he returned to the Sunshine Tour in 2018 and the Johannesburg-based golfer has played the lengthy Blair Atholl Golf and Equestrian Estate course many times and he said this experience has proven invaluable.

“It’s a very demanding course, the fairways look quite wide but they’re not and the course is so long. You need to miss in the right spots and fortunately I’ve played a lot here so I know which side not to miss on. I know the back ledges and slopes better than most, which definitely helped,” Haig said after his impressive round.

Haig said his play from tee-to-green on Friday was excellent, but his putter, which was hot in the first round, went cold in the second round. He will try to get both aspects of his game working well on the weekend as he chases his first win on the Sunshine Tour since his comeback.

“The greens were really receptive after the rain came in in the morning – fortunately for just three or four holes – and I was hitting the ball really well. But I had 32 putts today after just 26 yesterday. So my ball-striking was really good today but my putting was a bit off.

“I’m definitely looking to score on the par-fives, but you have to really knuckle two shots to get on to some of them, four of the par-fives are more than 600 yards. So my length is a good advantage,” Haig said.

Kaminski, off in the afternoon in a fresh wind, shot a one-under-par 71 on Friday to go to seven-under for the tournament, while Riekus Nortje, who shared the lead with him after the first round, dropped two shots coming in to finish with a level-par 72.

That left Nortje tied for third with three other golfers – Heinrich Bruiners (71), Neil Schietekat, whose 68 included a double-bogey at the tough par-four 15^th, and Luke Brown (69).

Jayden Schaper produced the round of the day, a tremendous 65 which included an eagle three on the 606-yard fifth hole, to climb to five-under-par, sharing seventh with Kyle Barker (71).