Ken Borland

Not giving away possession or penalties is what the Sharks have identified as the key things they need to rectify as they go into their Rainbow Cup match against the Lions on Saturday on the back of successive defeats to the Bulls and Stormers, according to lock Reniel Hugo.

The setbacks have left the Sharks four points adrift of the log-leading Bulls and sitting in third place below the Stormers on points difference. If the Lions win at Ellis Park on Saturday then they could actually leapfrog the KwaZulu-Natalians.

“It’s not nice having two losses behind our names but we have the opportunity to rectify our mistakes this weekend. We are conceding a lot of penalties and that just allows the opposition to kick out and set the rolling maul, which then takes a lot of energy to defend. So we have been working very hard on our discipline so we don’t concede penalties and also on keeping the ball.

“Against the Bulls we had to defend more than a dozen rolling mauls and sometimes your legs just give in. But sometimes it’s just one guy coming in at the wrong place and that breaks the system. A few guys have made mistakes and I was one of them. As an older guy, hopefully I can bring a bit more experience and try and get the team to gel together better,” Hugo said on Tuesday.

The Sharks have won their last four matches in Johannesburg, dating back to their 26-19 Super Rugby defeat in their opening game of 2018, and Hugo said their focus is squarely on becoming the first South African team to contest the Rainbow Cup final.

“The Lions lost their first three games, but they weren’t big losses and they had lots of opportunities to win. It just shows that all four teams in this competition are very good and the quality of rugby is such that there are no easy games. So it’s going to be very important for us to be clinical, we must stop them, get turnovers and create opportunities for ourselves.

“But the Lions showed how tough this competition is when they beat the Bulls to open the Rainbow Cup up massively. If we can now win both these last games then we’ll be in with a shout of playing in that final in Italy,” Hugo said.

The Springboks face a hectic 2021 schedule in which their world champion status will undoubtedly be closely scrutinised, while our four franchises will need to prove they are top-class teams when they make a first foray into Europe.

Unsurprisingly (given how often it has happened through the years), there has already been plenty of dissing of the Springboks, even though they have not been able to play a game since that heady triumph in Yokahama. They will get their chance to prove their mettle soon, with nine Tests to be played between July 3 and October 2.

That includes an epic series against the British and Irish Lions and four Tests in Australasia, where South Africa have just three wins against their hosts in the last decade.

With the relationship with Sanzaar starting to get a bit old and tired, accompanied by not unexpected bickering, there has been a great deal of excitement over SA Rugby’s moves into Europe. That relationship is still new and there is still some wooing to be done before we can say we’ve scored a try, so to speak, but it did come as a shock when the Director General of European Professional Club Rugby, Vincent Gaillard, was rather dismissive of South Africa this week.

For South African rugby’s move to the northern hemisphere to be successful in the long run, they have to be playing at the highest level of European club rugby, which is the Champions Cup. SA Rugby have been negotiating on the basis that their teams can qualify for the Champions Cup through their performances in the Pro16, just like the leading teams of Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Italy.

But this week, Gaillard was quoted by international news agency AFP as saying: “There will be no South African clubs in the European Cup next season, that’s for sure. In the Challenge Cup, theoretically, it is possible. We are looking at the possibility, but it is quite unlikely. There are details to settle, especially at the Pro16 level.”

In the same breath, Gaillard announced that EPCR had signed a new deal with the countries involved that would run through until at least 2030 and would see the competition include 24 teams in two pools of 12. How can they make such long-term plans without even considering the involvement of their new partners, who just happen to be world champions?

Fortunately, Martyn Hindley, the EPCR communications director, confirmed on Friday that their competition formats “remain under discussion”.

But these days all professional rugby revolves around the financial bottom line and the only way for our franchises to assure themselves of a place in the elite European competitions is by proving that their involvement would be of great service to their game.

If our franchises, fielding global drawcards such as Lukhanyo Am and Siya Kolisi, Duane Vermeulen and Marcell Coetzee, Pieter-Steph du Toit and Steven Kitshoff, and some really exciting young Lions players like Wandisile Simelane, can produce rugby of sufficient quality then they can make themselves indispensable. If their market value is high enough, then the Champions Cup will be clamouring to get them involved.

So when the winners of our local Rainbow Cup competition travel to Europe to play their champions of the same Pro-14 based league on June 19, it is going to be vital for them to put up a great showing. If our best are not going to be dominating the Pro16, then there is not going to be much incentive to get them involved in the proper European tournaments.

But I am going to go out on a limb and say I expect our teams to do very well in Europe. There have been critics of our domestic standard over the last year, but there have also been definite mitigating factors, due to Covid, for some of the uninspired rugby.

But having watched matches from both sides of the equator over the last few weeks, I think the physicality, intensity and tempo of our teams is going to really trouble their European opponents.

They were the qualities that took the Springboks to World Cup glory and hopefully they are going to take our franchises to the top table in Europe as well.

Doing well in the Indian Premier League will obviously help, but CSA Director of Cricket Graeme Smith says free agents will need to prove their total commitment to the Proteas if they are to earn a recall to the national side.

Faf du Plessis, Chris Morris, AB de Villiers and Imran Tahir all put in noteworthy performances before the IPL was suspended earlier this week, one match away from the halfway stage, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many fans would want all four of them to be back in India in October, representing South Africa at the T20 World Cup.

Smith said that while the door was not closed for them to be selected, there were certain conditions that needed to be met first.

Asked specifically about all-rounder Morris, he said “I notice Chris said there have not been discussions with him, but he joined the high performance programme in Lockdown last year. No-one has a definitive right to play for the Proteas, it’s up to the selectors and their performance on the field. Lately Chris’s performances have been really good, both in the IPL and in our T20.

“But we can’t choose someone who is going to go in half-arsed, who is 50/50 about it. We need to know that the player is fully committed and will do everything required and everything for the team. It’s a question that applies to all of the free agents, who are technically still always available for the Proteas. AB de Villiers has officially retired so that’s a different discussion that is ongoing,” Smith said this week.

The West Indies have won two of the last three T20 World Cups despite many of their top players being scattered around the globe, and free agents like Chris Gayle, Samuel Badree and Andre Russell did the business for them in the last tournament, held in 2016 in India.

“The free agents are generally more experienced in the format than most players and we’ve seen the success the West Indies have had using them, so it’s definitely something we would consider. But the selectors also have to consider team dynamics and the type of players we have in our own system.

“Right now the focus is on trying to get the best squad together in the build-up. We have 15-17 T20s lined up, including plenty of sub-continent preparation, so the squad will have plenty of time together. It should be a nice build-up for October,” Smith said.

Pink Day, the charity event raising funds for cancer research, has been hosted by the fast-paced city of Johannesburg at the Wanderers for the last 9 years and Sunday’s second ODI between South Africa and Pakistan may not have any spectators allowed, but the Proteas need to bring their usual intensity and action-packed approach in order to stay alive in the series.

The first ODI was lost on the back of a second-wicket partnership of 177 between Babar Azam and Imam-ul-Haq; Pakistan scraped to victory off the last ball of the match because the Proteas then fought back and claimed six wickets for 85 runs. They did that using aggressive fast bowling led by Anrich Nortje.

The Wanderers is traditionally a haven for pace and bounce and Autumn on the Highveld adds more moisture and swing into the equation as well. South Africa’s pacemen need to be smarter about exploiting the conditions more, they perhaps relied too heavily on slower balls and cutters at Centurion when an approach more in line with how they would bowl in a Test match was called for.

“The plan was to bowl more Test lengths and we started brilliantly, but as the pitch became harder and flatter it was really difficult to defend and the batsmen were able to score quite freely. But a lot of credit should go to the bowlers, I’ve been in a lot of situations like this on the Highveld and the team chasing gets home with five or six overs to spare,” centurion Rassie van der Dussen said after the first ODI on Friday night.

It was a valuable toss for Pakistan to win in the first game and it was tough going for the Proteas batsmen in the first hour. But some of the strokes offered were not well-executed as South Africa slumped to 55 for four before Van der Dussen came to their rescue.

The star batsman said the shot-selection could be excused, it was just the execution that let the batsmen down, and a similarly positive approach is likely to be brought to the Wanderers.

“Quinton de Kock and Aiden Markram gave us a good start and thought that they could then take on the powerplay. In hindsight they couldn’t because the pitch was a bit more difficult to bat on than they thought. You have to assess conditions and sometimes you make mistakes. But a guy like Quinny has played like that his whole career and we’re not too worried about the batting.

“England have probably been the best ODI team over the last two years and that formula works for them, so we want to give the batsmen the freedom to express themselves, especially up front in the powerplay. Quinny is usually brilliant there but it’s the nature of cricket that you won’t have success every time. Losing three wickets in a cluster is what we don’t want to do though,” Van der Dussen said.