Ken Borland

Proteas captain Dean Elgar believes he has a great attack for Australian conditions, but at the moment the pressure is on his batsmen to put enough runs on the board for them to be effective in their three-Test series that starts on December 17.

The South Africans departed for Australia on Thursday night and Elgar admitted the focus would be on their embattled batsmen.

“The style of cricket we play is tailor-made for over there, we have great fast bowlers. It’s bad enough facing them in the nets, I’m really glad I don’t have to do it in a match,” Elgar said at the Wanderers on Thursday morning.

“But runs on the board is key in Australia and our attack needs those scores to be most effective. Our batting has not been good enough in the last year, there is no shying away from it.

“It’s up to the batsmen to take accountability and responsibility. There are a lot of guys on the fringes who are champing on the bit and eager to play,” Elgar said.

There has been some criticism aimed at the recalling of Theunis de Bruyn and Heinrich Klaasen to the squad, both of whom are over 30 and last played Test cricket on the ill-fated tour of India in October 2019. But Elgar backed them as both having the experience and ability to dominate the strong Australian attack.

“Heinrich is a good, experienced international cricketer now and he has immense ability and a lot of character,” Elgar said.

“I’ve always thought that Theunis is one of the most talented batsmen in the country, he just has that extra gear which not a lot of guys have. He can really take an attack apart.

“I think he’s also in a really good space for Test cricket now, he has come a long way as a cricketer and person since his last international encounter and he will definitely be part of the selection discussion.”

Elgar is also fully expecting the Australians to try and bait his team with verbals, but said the Proteas must not back down when things get fiery.

“Australia is a tough place to play because there are a lot of external pressures and in their home conditions they are always pretty feisty. It’s the nature of them as individuals – brash and bold and in your face.

“But we enjoy that confrontation and we’ve shown the ability to keep calm heads. I would encourage the players not to shy away from it because that’s when South Africans show their best character,” Elgar said.

The poor old national selectors are not being helped by the players at the moment as they look to pick up the pieces following the Proteas’ humiliating T20 World Cup exit at the hands of the Netherlands, their next foes being arguably the meanest of the lot – Australia in Australia.

Even without the T20 turmoil and the nagging feeling that Test cricket – where South Africa are in strong contention to make the World Championship final – is being neglected more and more by the powers-that-be in this country, taking on the Aussies in their backyard over Christmas has always been the benchmark for the Proteas. Their victories there have been amongst the most memorable and impressive of their achievements.

I still believe the greatness of a cricketing nation is measured by their Test results, and seeing how the likes of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri prioritised making India the No.1 Test side in the world, or the hype around the Ashes, I am sure there are millions who agree with me.
For such a high-intensity series, selection is always going to be under the microscope by the fans, and the selection panel are certainly being given a hard time by the ‘cognoscenti’ for the composition of the 16-man squad that will leave on December 1.

Cricket being such a statistics-based game, there will always be runs and wickets with which to put forward one’s case, but it is very difficult to argue with miraculous acts. Ryan Rickelton, ruled out of the tour by the CSA medical committee due to an ankle condition they believe will need surgery some time soon, scored his second successive century for the Central Gauteng Lions on Friday, and then kept wicket, seemingly untroubled by an injury that has been described as “very serious”.
By not being willing to risk Rickelton, who would be back-up wicketkeeper to Kyle Verreynne, due to the time and distance required to replace him if his ankle does suddenly implode, the selectors have opened the door for Heinrich Klaasen to return to the squad. He celebrated by smashing an extraordinary 292 off just 240 balls against the Free State Knights.

But it his Titans team-mate Theunis de Bruyn whose return to the Test squad has raised even more eyebrows. His last Test was three years ago in India and his domestic form hasn’t exactly screamed ‘RECALL!’ since then – he has made just three centuries and one fifty in the last three seasons.

Perhaps De Bruyn owes his selection to two things: He is a specialist No.3 and the Proteas need someone to fill the gap left by the injured Keegan Petersen, and new interim coach Malibongwe Maketa has seen the 30-year-old at his best for the SA A team he has been coaching – De Bruyn averages 69.70 in 14 innings for the national second-stringers.

What Maketa won’t be seeing before they arrive in Australia though is Temba Bavuma, Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje preparing for such an important tour for South Africa’s hopes of appearing in next year’s World Test Championship final.

Bavuma and Rabada have both declined to play for the Lions. Given that they were two of the most under-performing players in the T20 World Cup, one would think they could do with getting some confidence back by bossing matters at domestic level, especially Bavuma, whose morale is low and will be targeted by the Australian media.

Meanwhile Nortje is playing T10 cricket in Abu Dhabi, would you believe. There were other Proteas players who reluctantly donned their whites this week ahead of the vital Australia series.

It really is time that Cricket South Africa started to lay down the law with the Proteas who complain about not having enough red-ball cricket to hone their longer-form skills, but then would rather not play for their provinces when the opportunity presents itself.

They will now have one warm-up match in Australia to prepare themselves and will then no doubt be surprised when they begin the Test series in rusty fashion.

Have opposing teams in the United Rugby Championship finally found ways of nullifying the physical threat posed by the Bulls, or are last season’s losing finalists just nowhere near their best at the moment?

This was the question dominating discussion among Bulls watchers as they slipped to successive defeats away to the Glasgow Warriors and Munster, sliding down to sixth place on the log before Friday’s night tricky fixture against Benetton in Treviso.

The answer, as it often is, is probably a bit of both.

Coach Jake White admitted this week that “for whatever reason, we have not played as well as we can. Sometimes it feels like we are stuck in third gear and we struggle to get into fifth.”

But he also made the salient point that it is still early days in the URC and the Bulls’ focus is on playing their best rugby in the last three weeks – the quarterfinals, semi-finals and final in May next year.

It is also worth noting his reminder that the Bulls were in a far worse position this time last season, winning just one of their first five matches. They were all away from home though, in an extremely tough draw, and the Bulls made it five losses from six games when they were then beaten by the Stormers at home. But in the end they still managed to make the final and, in fact, were only one win away from finishing second on the log.

But the Bulls have been exposed a bit in the physicality stakes, with both Glasgow and Munster dominating the collisions, as well as other aspects of play. It has long been accepted in rugby that games are won by the forwards and the backs decide by how much.

Although White bristles at suggestions that his team has been outmuscled, he has also been going on for the last two years at least about how young his squad is, which is a key factor.

Both the Glasgow and Munster packs were full of 30-year-olds who have been in the rugby trenches for a decade. They are mature men, experienced and streetwise.

There is a lovely word in Afrikaans that describes these yeoman forwards that every team needs to do the hard graft, the ugly work – these are the haardebaarde, literally translated as the ‘tough beards’.

White said he wanted more ‘menere’ in his team, saying the Bulls are currently “overloaded with juniors”.

As brilliant as they have been, Steenekamp, Wessels, Mornay Smith, Matanzima, Grobbelaar, Louw, Swanepoel, Nortje, Uys and Steenkamp are all no older than 25, and it should not be a surprise when wiser and more mature forwards get the better of them.

White has said that the age profile of the Bulls, but also the Lions and to some extent the Stormers, is wrong – they do not have enough of those middle-aged players between the ages of 27 and 30, when they are at their peak.

The blame for that can be laid on the economic situation of the country which has allowed overseas clubs to cause bad damage to our teams by taking advantage of the weakness of the Rand and cherry-picking the best talent.

The Sharks have managed to counter that talent-drain through equity partners and strong leadership at board level, while the Bulls are committed to a long-term plan of rebuilding their strength and are also benefiting from excellent investors and the great work of their CEO Edgar Rathbone and union president Willem Strauss.

One can only congratulate John Dobson and the Stormers for managing to get the absolute best out of their talent given the fact that the union was basically bankrupt, and it is going to be thrilling to watch the current Lions side grow and develop, given how well those youngsters are playing this season.

But imagine how much more depth all our sides would have if we could bring that 27-30 age cohort back to South Africa?

South African golfers who participate in the ‘rebel’ Saudi Arabian league will still be welcome to play on the Sunshine Tour, as things stand at the moment, but come the showpiece Nedbank Golf Challenge at the end of the year, they could find themselves out in the cold.

LIV Golf, with Greg Norman as chief executive, promises guaranteed lucrative paydays for their competitors, with the winner of each tournament taking home £2.8 million and last place being worth £97 000. The eight-event series starts at Centurion Golf Club in southern England next month. But much of the controversy surrounding the league revolves around the fact it is funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

South Africans Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace have all been linked with LIV Golf, while the PGA Tour in the United States and the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) have both threatened life bans for anyone who plays in the breakaway series.

Sunshine Tour commissioner Thomas Abt told The Citizen on Thursday that while they have their own regulations, they would respect the DP World Tour’s decision when it comes to their tournaments.

He said discussions will still have to be held when it comes to the five co-sanctioned tournaments with them like the SA Open. But the Nedbank Golf Challenge, which returns to Sun City in November after a two-year absence due to Covid, is entirely a DP World Tour event, so Sunshine Tour rules do not apply.

“We have agreed a strategic alliance with the DP World Tour, but they must do whatever they see fit in their tournaments,” Abt said.

“But our Sunshine Tour regulations state that a golfer must ask for a release only if there is a conflicting event in the same territory of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands, at the same time.

“So we don’t have any rules to stop our members playing in events overseas, but the Nedbank Golf Challenge is wholly a DP World Tour event,” Abt explained.

The Sunshine Tour itself is in boisterous health with Abt announcing a new points-based order of merit, sponsored by Luno, on Thursday, as well as 35 tournaments next season, the most ever.

“Because there are such big discrepancies in prize funds between tournaments, we have introduced a tier-system for points to give the guys who support our tour through the year a genuine chance of winning the order of merit,” Abt said.

“The bigger events will be worth 12 000 points, but there are lots more tournaments worth 2000 points, so that those golfers who really support the Sunshine Tour can compete for top place.”

The winner of the 2022/23 order of merit will not only gain entry into the U.S. and British Opens and the Nedbank Golf Challenge, but have the use of a Jaguar/Land Rover for a year and win R500 000 of bitcoin from Luno.