Ken Borland

Reeza Hendricks will not be based at his beloved DP World Wanderers Stadium for the SA20 tournament that starts on January 9, but that’s not to say the Lions star is not looking forward to the event.

Hendricks has been an ever-present in the Joburg Super Kings line-up in the first two seasons of the SA20, but was released this year. That was not the setback it seemed, however, as the 35-year-old fetched the highest bid at the auction for the 2025 edition, netting R4.3 million from MI Cape Town.

He will be joining fellow DP World Lions stars Kagiso Rabada, Connor Esterhuizen, Ryan Rickelton, Rassie van der Dussen and Delano Potgieter at MI Cape Town. And Hashim Amla, the vastly-respected batting coach for the Central Gautengers, is also with the Newlands-based T20 franchise.

It’s not for nothing that there is such a concentration of #ThePrideOfJozi that has been signed by head coach Robin Peterson. The DP World Lions are the back-to-back domestic T20 champions and Hendricks has starred in both winning campaigns.

In 2023/24, he was the third-highest run-scorer with 440 at 36.66 and a strike-rate of 140.12, with four half-centuries. In this season’s triumph, he was again in the top-10 run-scorers with 194 at 38.80 and a strike-rate of 135.66, with two fifties.

Given that he has been starring on the domestic T20 stage since 2010/11, it is not a surprise that Hendricks this season broke former Knights team-mate Morne van Wyk’s record for the most domestic T20 career runs.

Van Wyk held the record with 3183 runs in 113 innings, averaging 31.83 at a strike-rate of 124. Hendricks went past that tally in the final against the Titans and has scored 3184 runs at an average of 36.18 and a strike-rate of 125.35.

And it’s not just the DP World Lions that Hendricks has been shining for: He has been one of the premier T20  batsmen in international T20 cricket, scoring 1222 runs for the Proteas in the last three years, at an average of 33.94 and a strike-rate of 141.92.

“I’ve had a good run, although I had a bit of a slump in the World Cup. But I made a few runs since then and hopefully I’m close to my best again and the runs keep coming. A little slump like that is not uncommon in your career, but hopefully I’m out of it now,” Hendricks said.

“It’s a part of the game and you just need to accept it and move on. Conditions were quite challenging at the World Cup and it wasn’t anything to do with technique. It was just a time I had to go through, although it continued longer than I would have liked.

“It’s nice to win trophies and be the highest run-scorer ever in the competition. Milestones are a part of it, it’s quite an achievement to have most runs ever, but a winning team and culture is more important.

“The record tells you that I’ve been around for a while and I just try to keep my batting as simple as possible, I formulate plans that work for me. Hopefully they continue to work going forward.”

Even a move away from the DP World Wanderers Stadium for the SA20 is okay with the typically phlegmatic Hendricks.

“I still feel good and I will keep playing for as long as I can, as long as I still have the desire, the passion is still there and I’m still scoring runs. I just try and keep my standards and keep building on my game. I like to think my game is still evolving and now I have a new coach to work with [Peterson] in January,” he said.

The DP World Lions are well-represented throughout the SA20 with 13 players in all taking part in the six-team franchise competition. The other Western Cape side, the Paarl Royals, also have a clutch of #ThePrideOfJozi with Nqaba Peter, Mitchell van Buuren, Codi Yusuf, Bjorn Fortuin and Kwena Maphaka chosen for Trevor Penney’s side.

All-rounders Wiaan Mulder and Evan Jones will turn out for the Durban Super Giants and Joburg Super Kings respectively.

A few years ago, Proteas all-rounder Sune Luus was in the throes of a terrible time in her career, battling a loss of form and confidence, as well as injury. But now the Pretoria-born star says she is rejuvenated and looking forward to a bright new future with the South African women’s team having a new coach in Mandla Mashimbyi.

Between the summers of 2020 and 2021, Luus scored just 108 runs in eight ODI innings, and in eight T20 knocks in 2021 and 2022, she scored just 88 runs. The leg-spinner also struggled with the ball: In T20s between 2021 and 2023, she bowled just 20 overs, conceding 159 runs and taking only two wickets. From 2023 to the winter of 2024, she did not bowl at all in ODIs.

But her best form has returned as she scored 65 and an epic 109 in the one-off Test against India last year in Chennai and was the dominant batter in one-day cricket in the last domestic season, scoring 359 runs in six innings, at an average of 119, for the Titans. She has also regained confidence in her bowing by switching to off-spin and the 29-year-old was her team’s most economical bowler in the T20 competition.

“You’re always going to get ups-and-downs in your career and it was a tough time. I kinda came to the end of my bowling leg-spin, and it was always very important to me to be able to contribute in all three departments.

“We now have a new national coach in Mandla and he has slotted right in and brought a new energy. I really enjoy that because the way I specifically play my game, I like to play with energy and feed off the youngsters.

“Now that I’m in my 14^th year of international cricket, I’m playing with confidence again. I’m not going to be training as much, for me it’s about keeping in touch with my game and fine-tuning it. You need to back your skills. And when any of the youngsters come to me, hopefully I can add some of that confidence and mental strength to their games,” Luus told kenborland.com in an exclusive interview after she won the Titans Player of the Year award in Centurion.

While the South African women’s team has become much more of a force in world cricket since Luus started playing for the Proteas in 2012, they have not yet been able to win an ICC global event.

They reached the finals of both the 2023 and 2024 T20 World Cups, but lost to Australia and New Zealand respectively. In 2017 they reached the semifinals of the 50-over World Cup for the first time since 2000, and made the last four again in 2022.

“Obviously winning finals is now the next step we want to take as a team in this new era,” Luus said. “We’ve managed to get over our semifinals thing, but fallen short in two finals now. So we’ve managed to get stronger in winning semifinals, and now that we’ve been there in two finals, hopefully we can now win one of those too.

“I believe Mandla will help us get to that next level, winning trophies was one of his strengths when he was the coach of the Titans men’s team. The first T20 final we were in, it was kinda a case of just being chuffed to be there, but the second one we were really gunning for the win, but unfortunately New Zealand were just stronger than us on the day.

“We’ve never made the 50-over World Cup final and it’s now time to rectify that when the next tournament starts in September,” Luus said.

EDENVALE, Gauteng – Some subtle swing changes have seen Cara Gorlei jack up her game and the former amateur star from Cape Town is looking forward to contending strongly at this week’s Jabra Ladies Classic that tees off at Glendower Golf Club on Wednesday.

This is the final Sunshine Ladies Tour event before the lucrative co-sanctioned tournaments – the Joburg Ladies Open at Modderfontein and the SA Women’s Open at Erinvale – and Gorlei is also honing her game before she returns to campaigning full-time on the Ladies European Tour.

In between her LET commitments, the 28-year-old has finished tied-fifth in the Dimension Data Ladies Pro-Am at Fancourt and last week she showed ominous form as she fired a 66 in the final round to finish third in the Absa Ladies Invitational at Serengeti.

It is that sense that the changes to her swing are now bedded in and the similarities between Serengeti and Glendower that have Gorlei approaching the R1 million Jabra Ladies Classic with confidence.

“My coach, Doug Wood, and I have been working on some new moves, basically just my positions in my swing and where I need to be, and that seems to be coming a bit more naturally to me now,” Gorlei, a former SA Women’s Amateur champion, said.

“So I’m looking forward to playing the Jabra Ladies Classic this week and hopefully I can keep that momentum from the last day at Serengeti. Glendower is the same sort of course in the sense that you have to hit the fairways. The rough at Serengeti was super-thick and it can be pretty long at Glendower as well. With all the rain around, it could also be wet, so the course will play a bit longer, but we experienced that at Serengeti, so that won’t be something new,” Gorlei said.

The last two tournaments have seen the very fabric of the Sunshine Ladies Tour change with first Gabrielle Venter and then Casandra Alexander breaking the stranglehold overseas golfers had on the winner’s podium. Now, as the series stands poised to be woven into the Ladies European Tour, the foreign golfers are bound to push hard again for the top spots.

But just as Gorlei, 10^th on the Investec Order of Merit, raised her game at the end of the Absa Ladies Invitational, she says she is ready to push even harder as the South African campaign heads to its conclusion.

“For the first couple of events, the top South African golfers had other LET events that took them overseas, but now we are back and really keen to perform at home. I have a real drive to get that win.

“Any competitive golf helps and it’s nice to get a lot of rounds in before we start travelling again. After Modderfontein and the SA Open, we go to Korea. Germany and France, and it’s a long stretch of tournaments. But it’s nice to be at home because you can go and put the work in with your coach and there are other aspects that are good too,” Gorlei said.

South Africans have won five of the eight Jabra Ladies Classic tournaments played at Glendower, but the patterns of overseas success this season is shown on the Investec Order of Merit, where Scotland’s Kylie Henry leads and German Helen Kreuzer and Tvesa Malik of India are all in the top-five.

Alexander (6^th) is the defending champion at Glendower, while Venter (2^nd) and Lee-Anne Pace (3^rd) should also be strong South African contenders.

Our DP World Lions may have only gone down by two runs in their CSA T20 Challenge match against the Dafabet Warriors, but coach Russell Domingo says the team are well aware that it was not the type of performance the Pride are looking for and they will need to be back at their best on Sunday when they take on the GBets Rocks at Boland Park.

Although the match at the DP World Wanderers Stadium against the Eastern Province side went down to the last ball, the Lions have readily admitted they did not play well, a messy performance in the field being the main cause of their defeat.

“We didn’t deserve to win and the Warriors thoroughly deserved their triumph,” DP World Lions coach Russell Domingo said. “Our fielding was really poor, we were far too sloppy and we also had a poor start with the ball and bowled too many soft balls throughout.

“Intensity and more focus in the field is really important. These days players are not just batsmen or bowlers, if you want to play international cricket then you have to offer more than one discipline. We have so many good players, but we’re not going to get by with average fielding.

“With the bat, we really needed someone to score eighty-odd and bat through; the only reason we got so close was thanks to Wiaan Mulder hitting some boundaries at the end.

“But we are only halfway through the competition, there are still seven matches to play, so there’s a lot of cricket left for us to get back up the log. Rather have that sort of performance now than at the end of the tournament,” Domingo said.

Their next opponents, the Rocks, are obviously not going to be lacking any intensity or motivation because they are in the midst of a relegation battle. Our #PrideOfJozi will also be leaving the comforts of home for the late-summer heat of the Boland valley.

“The Rocks had a good win over the Dolphins, who beat us, and we know they are going to be up for it, so it’s not going to be an easy game,” Domingo said.

“Late in the season up on the Highveld, there’s a bit of a chill in the evenings and the pitches are maybe not as hard as previously, so there is a bit of movement. The scores are not as high now and it is tricky for the batters.

“But I expect it to be drier and slower in Paarl, it could spin a bit and spinners will come into the game more. A good total could be around 150-160, and chasing might be difficult because we are playing the second match of a double-header on the same pitch,” Domingo said.