Ken Borland

The advent of the Currie Cup competition running concurrently with the United Rugby Championship has played a role, but Bulls coach Jake White was never going to change much for his team’s derby against the Lions at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday, given how thoroughly they outplayed their neighbours last weekend at Ellis Park.

With the Bulls also having a midweek Currie Cup game, there has been little crossover between the two teams and the only change in personnel has been Cornal Hendricks replacing David Kriel on the bench. Zak Burger is now the starting scrumhalf with Embrose Papier coming off the bench.

It is a stark contrast to the Lions, who will bring a much-changed team to Pretoria with half-a-dozen big names missing.

“I have confidence in these players, the team is strong enough to win if we play well,” White said on Friday. “Victory is not a formality though, there are standards we have to meet and we have to make sure we play well again.

“The Lions will be different though and we expect they will play better. Their coach and captain has given them the gears and they have made several changes.

“That’s a massive message and clearly they’re telling their players that if they don’t play well, don’t pull their finger out, then they won’t get picked.

“We’ve had to field two teams this week, so circumstances have also played a part in us keeping the same group together. But I prefer our model, keep the combinations playing together so you get cohesion,” White said.

Beating the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld has been an impassable mountain for almost all visitors over the last couple of years, until the last fortnight, with the home side tasting defeat to the Stormers in the URC and then to the Free State Cheetahs in the Currie Cup.

“We don’t want to lose anywhere and there is internal pressure around that of course, that’s the way it should be,” White said. “But there’s no external pressure, rugby is meant to be fun and we’ve got to enjoy it.

“If it had been a do-or-die match in midweek against the Cheetahs then maybe we would have fielded our strongest team, but we are mindful of our end goal.

“In 1996, Super Rugby’s first season, the Canterbury Crusaders finished last and they became the most dominant team in the competition. One of the key attributes of a succesful team is understanding and synergy between the players.

“Being a bomb detonator – now that’s a pressure job!” White quipped.

He will be hoping his team bring the same explosiveness they produced at Ellis Park last weekend to avoid another bombshell upset at home.

Bulls team:Kurt-Lee Arendse, Canan Moodie, Lionel Mapoe, Harold Vorster, Madosh Tambwe, Morné Steyn, Zak Burger; Elrigh Louw, Arno Botha, Marcell Coetzee (CAPT), Ruan Nortje, Walt Steenkamp, Jacques van Rooyen, Johan Grobbelaar, Simphiwe Matanzima. IMPACT-Bismarck du Plessis, Lizo Gqoboka, Robert Hunt, Janko Swanepoel, Muller Uys; Embrose Papier, Chris Smith, Cornal Hendricks.

It was never going to be a dolly of a catch that Social Justice and Nation-Building ombudsman Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza found himself under, but given the evidence provided during the last week of hearings, his job over the next month in compiling his final report should be like taking a firmly-struck drive straight to you in the covers.

Given the legal pedigree of Ntsebeza, I would be surprised if he fumbled. Even though the way assistant Sandile July seems to have already made up his mind about who the villains of this piece are is a bit like your team-mate distracting you under a high catch by also trying to get under it.

As Ntsebeza has often reminded, his brief is to find whether there has been racial and gender discrimination in South African cricket.

For those of us who have been involved in the game since unity, the evidence has clearly backed up what we knew all along. There was most certainly racial discrimination and lingering Apartheid attitudes that caused some fine cricketers and people to be dreadfully treated.

But since around 2010, the issue becomes cloudier. The national team became more representative and more aware of diversity and cultural differences. Cricket South Africa’s Board became majority Black.

The last week has seen Ntsebeza admit that the evidence provided by those found guilty of attempting to corrupt the game – Alviro Petersen, Lonwabo Tsotsobe, Ethy Mbhalati and Thami Tsolekile – that they had been discriminated against on the basis of their colour, was “a red herring”.

Ntsebeza expressed his regret that so much time had been spent on the issue, likening it to “a runaway horse” that was eventually corralled by the testimony of those who led the matchfixing investigation in 2015/16.

So their evidence – save for some of the harrowing tales from Tsolekile’s youth – should be discounted. Along with that of former CSA independent director Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, who ironically came up with the SJN idea.

That she actually has very little clue on the game in this country was borne out by much of her evidence being picked apart by the compelling testimony of SACA chief executive Andrew Breetzke, CSA’s acting head of pathways Eddie Khoza and acting CEO Pholetsi Moseki.

High-profile lawyer David Becker, along with Moseki, also cleared up many of the untruths about how Graeme Smith came to be in CSA’s service as director of cricket.

It is a pity that none of Smith, Mark Boucher or AB de Villiers have given public testimony, but hopefully there is enough in their affidavits for Ntsebeza to have a clear picture of their side of the story.

It is to be hoped that Ntsebeza, who seemed to grow increasingly frustrated towards the end of the hearings but managed to remain in control and exude a definite air of fairness, is able to produce a final report that CSA can call into service to ensure they continue the progress in transformation that they have made.

The importance of the SJN is to guide CSA into the future and not to settle the scores of those who are bitter, especially those who are chiefly responsible for their own demise.

Selection and quotas will always be a contentious issue. And even though Khaya Zondo was clearly unfairly treated in 2015, it is difficult to say it was on the basis of his colour given the fact that Black people, and not just De Villiers, were involved in that controversy.

Speaking of being unfair, July himself admitted that targets were discriminatory but were designed to undo previous wrongs. It is an argument with huge merit, but the other side of the coin is that innocent people are being punished for the sins of their fathers.

I always think the opinions of West Indian great Michael Holding should guide one’s view in most cricketing discussions. But even he appeared a bit stumped by the whole quotas issue when he addressed the SJN hearings at their closure.

Calling them “an unnecessary burden” for players of colour, allowing the churlish to say they are only in the team because of regulations, he added that he understood the reason for them because people wanted to see a team that is fully representative and that the fear is, without quotas, this will not happen quickly enough.

Holding said he hoped they would eventually no longer be necessary.

My hope is that the SJN leads to exactly that, where all cricketers in this country have an equal opportunity to play for the Proteas.

“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.

A divided house will never stand and Proteas batsman Rassie van der Dussen said on Thursday that the determination and fight the team has shown in both their T20 World Cup matches thus far has proven the unity and dedication to their task within the team.

South Africa made a disastrous start to the tournament by losing three wickets in the first 25 balls of their match against Australia, but almost defended their mediocre total of 118-9 with a superb display in the field.

Before their second game against the West Indies, they were rocked by the CSA Board’s directive for them to take the knee in support of BLM and Quinton de Kock’s subsequent withdrawal from the match when they arrived at the ground. After a torrid first 10 overs, they fought to restrict the West Indies to 143-8, a total they chased down with aplomb.

“It was a big day for us with everything that had transpired before,” Van der Dussen said on Thursday. “We knew we had to get the win but the West Indies are always a massive threat especially when they also lost their first game.

“I was really proud of how the team stood up, proud of the spirit, we showed what we can do and that there’s real resilience and character in the team.

“The enormity of the occasion did not escape us and what happened almost made the result even more important. We wanted to make people proud and left everything on the field.

“We showed our tenacity, where our minds are at, and after a bad first half of the innings, we never threw in the towel. We had to dig deep and I’m proud of how we responded to all the things thrown at us,” Van der Dussen said.

Playing Sri Lanka in Sharjah on Saturday will be the biggest trial by spin the Proteas have faced up till now in the tournament, but Van der Dussen said they have trained for the occasion for more than a year now.

“Sharjah will probably suit Sri Lanka more than us, but we have shown that we have really improved in foreign conditions. The coaching staff started more than a year ago to put a lot of emphasis on upskilling us in conditions we didn’t grow up in.

“The way we approach spin has improved a lot. We have confidence because we know now we have the skill and the experience of winning matches in conditions like that,” Van der Dussen said.