Ken Borland

Both the Unlimited Titans and the Dolphins will be looking to eat up the points differential between themselves and the log-leading bizhub Highveld Lions, but the losers of their Sunfoil Series match starting at SuperSport Park in Centurion today will almost certainly be out of the running for the title.

The Lions, who play the Chevrolet Knights in Bloemfontein, lead the competition with 96.78 points, with the Dolphins second on 79.54 and the Titans close behind on 77.56 with three rounds remaining.

Titans coach Rob Walter wants his team to gobble up all their chances, something they didn’t do in their previous match, a crucial 170-run defeat at the hands of the Nashua Cape Cobras in Paarl.

“We had them in the first innings but then we weren’t clinical enough at the end to close out the innings. We also batted very well at the start before falling apart, so we need to be mentally stronger and make sure the opposition has to work hard for anything they get,” Walter, who has Marchant de Lange fit again, told The Citizen yesterday.

The Dolphins have pacemen Robbie Frylinck and Craig Alexander fit again, but coach Lance Klusener said they would probably not be assimilated into the team just yet, because he’s looking for more consistency from a side that knocked over the defending champion Cobras by eight wickets at Newlands last weekend.

“We need more consistency, we’ve had some good individual days, but if you can put two good days in a row then you generally win. But we’ve managed to fight our way through to here and we still have a shout,” Klusener said.

The Lions suffered their only defeat in this season’s competition when the Knights beat them by 143 runs in Potchefstroom in October, after leading by 101 runs on first innings but then collapsing to 137 all out to the spin of Werner Coetsee.

“We’ve played some decent cricket, but we have to keep winning, every game is a big game,” Lions coach Geoff Toyana said.

Alviro Petersen is taking a short break to attend a family wedding, Dominic Hendricks returning to take his place, while all-rounder Dwaine Pretorius is back from injury.

The Knights have briefly hit the right notes in the Sunfoil Series, winning their first two games in convincing fashion but failing to add to that.

“There are a couple of critical things we need to get right again. We need to score big runs when the opportunity presents itself: We’ve had 22 scores of more than 30 in the last three games but no centuries. And we need to take our opportunities in the field because we’ve bowled with control,” coach Sarel Cilliers said.

The match between the Cobras and the Chevrolet Warriors at Newlands is all about restoring pride for the home side, who are bottom of the log.

Titans coach Rob Walter has followed the same route as several other franchise coaches and included some young new faces in his squad for the opening weekend of RamSlam T20 Challenge action, but he says this is purely incidental because he is looking to put his best possible team out on the park for their match against the Dolphins in Centurion on Sunday afternoon.

Off-spinner Ruben Claassen and seamers Sammy Mofokeng and Lungi Ngidi have been called up to the squad, which also includes returning internationals Quinton de Kock, Farhaan Behardien and Chris Morris.

“This is the best team we can choose at the moment and the guys coming in have certainly showed that they have something to offer. The fact that they are young is just incidental. It was very clear in the Momentum One-Day Cup that if we get our skills together in all three disciplines, like we did in the successive bonus-point wins, then it’s difficult to compete with us. But in the rest of the games, some of our skills were only at 30%,” Walter told Saturday Citizen on Friday.

De Kock and Behardien are in fine form right now and will certainly boost the Titans against a star-studded Dolphins team in which David Miller and Kevin Pietersen pose a clear and present danger.

“It’s great to have those guys back, especially after such a successful series. They’re individuals who have done well, they’re in good form and they’ll bring energy and experience to the team.

“We don’t have any special plans for KP … he hasn’t hit many balls in the last couple of months. But the Dolphins are a good all-round team, their batting is probably their strong suit, but Kyle Abbott and Craig Alexander have been bowling pretty well,” Walter added.

Squads

Titans: Henry Davids, Quinton de Kock, Grant Mokoena, Mangaliso Mosehle, Farhaan Behardien, Qaasim Adams, Albie Morkel, Chris Morris, Marchant de Lange, Tabraiz Shamsi, Junior Dala, Heino Kuhn, Ruben Claassen, Lungi Ngidi, Sammy Mofokeng.

Dolphins: Morne van Wyk (captain), Cameron Delport, Cody Chetty, Kevin Pietersen, David Miller, Khaya Zondo, Andile Phehlukwayo, Keshav Maharaj, Kyle Abbott, Ayavuya Myoli, Craig Alexander, Rabian Engelbrecht, Prenelan Subrayen.

The Sharks are expecting to go to France in a month’s time with a close-to-full-strength squad for their challenge match against European champions Toulon, according to assistant coach Brad Macleod-Henderson.

The mouth-watering clash against the Heineken Cup powerhouses will take place on Thursday, February 5 at the Stade Mayol, with the Sharks leaving for France on January 31. Barring any injury concerns, it will be the final SuperRugby squad that goes on tour, and Macleod-Henderson said the period of team-building during the week in France would be as important as the actual game.

“Toulon are the best team in Europe, so obviously it’s going to be a good test for us, but it’s also a time when we can strengthen the relationships within the team,” Macleod-Henderson told The Citizen.

The current Springboks in the squad will start training on Monday and most of them will be available for the Toulon match, while the likes of Willem Alberts and Pieter-Steph du Toit are online with their rehabilitation to play in the Sharks’ opening SuperRugby fixture on February 14 against the Cheetahs in Durban.

This year’s SuperRugby competition will be slightly different, with no break in June for international rugby and the World Cup in September providing plenty of motivation for the players.

The focus for the Sharks in their pre-season preparations has been on their attack, with Macleod-Henderson saying they need to score more tries.

“The World Cup is definitely going to up the ante this year and we need to score more tries to win the competition, the Waratahs showed that last year. We’re working on it, we’re spending quite a bit of time on our attack,” he said.

But the 2013 Currie Cup-winning coach said there was still plenty of work going into the details of defence and the breakdown.

Black cricket was already being played in the Titans’ catchment area of Northerns and Easterns in the 19^th century, with a record of a match between the Elandsfontein Diggers from Germiston and Doornfontein in 1898.

In 1932, Brakpan and Sub Nigel were playing in the first league for the Mangena Cup, while Brakpan East were in the second division. By 1937 there were more than 50 black clubs in the area between Randfontein and Nigel and the Transvaal Coloured Cricket Union featured a team from Pretoria – Brotherly United – as one of the six affiliates that competed for the Shahabodien Cup.

The 1940s saw the formation of the North-Eastern Transvaal African Board and they won the Transvaal Inter-Race Trophy in 1952/53 as well as their interprovincial tournament in 1953/54 and 1954/55. By then the North-Eastern Transvaal Bantu Cricket Union, the Eastern Transvaal Indian and Coloured Cricket Association, the Eastern Transvaal Indian Cricket Union and the Northern Transvaal Indian Cricket Union were all playing under the auspices of the Johannesburg Inter-Race Board.

If there was one person who epitomised the strength of black cricket in those days, it was Julius ‘Genius’ Mahanjana of North-Eastern Transvaal, who captained the national African team from 1955-1958. Born in Middledrift, in the heartland of Black African cricket in the Eastern Cape, he grew up at Modder B in Benoni, where his father worked. Julius excelled in all sports and his brothers Justin and Japhta also played for the national team.

The name Mahanjana actually entered into the local cricketing lexicon thanks to Japhtha ‘Super’ Mahanjana, who salvaged a famous draw for Natal against his brother Julius’s North-Eastern Transvaal side in the IPT in December 1956 in Port Elizabeth. Natal were set 245 to win in four hours, but a draw would deny North-Eastern Transvaal a place in the final and ‘Super’ Mahanjana opened the batting and batted through to secure the draw. He usually used to change to a long-handled bat once he was set at the crease, but on that occasion he stuck with the short handle to sum up his defiant mood. The saying Yi draw Mahanjana,“It is a Mahanjana draw”, comes from that day.

Their star contemporaries were batsman Eric Fihla and the fast bowling pair of Gidi and Mashinqana.

But the oppression of Apartheid and forced removals was starting to gather momentum and black cricket became isolated and fragmented. Places such as Hammanskraal, Mamelodi, Marabastad, Atteridgeville, Soshanguve and Eersterus would become the homes of the game in the black community.

The end of Apartheid and the unity process would bring cricketers from all those places back into the fold and the likes of Nqaba Matoti, Ernest Mokoenenyane and the Mokonyamas were the trailblazers who appeared in provincial cricket for Northerns in the 1990s.