Ken Borland

“We are adapting well to the different interpretations at the breakdown,” Bulls consultant Nollis Marais said on Monday in respect of the journey the team has taken from initial teething problems in the rucks to it now being a strength of the juggernaut side who are now six points clear at the top of the SuperRugby Unlocked log.

Marais is the breakdown specialist on Jake White’s coaching staff and he admitted that it has not been an easy area to perfect so far this season.

“There have been different interpretations at the breakdown and we do a lot of research into what the different referees want and try and prepare the players for that. We’re getting quite good guidelines from the referees who assist us and I think the breakdown should just get better and better and by the second half of the competition we should be certain of what we’re doing.

“We adapted well to what referee AJ Jacobs wanted at the weekend, we conceded a couple of penalties early on against the Stormers and we knew it would be a physical battle at the breakdown because Steven Kitshoff and Jaco Coetzee like to go hard in trying to get the ball. But our plan worked and by the end of the game we were winning the penalties,” Marais said.

The Bulls are currently ranked as the top team in the competition in terms of turnovers won, and that has largely been due to the outstanding efforts of Duane Vermeulen and Marco van Staden, although Marais did point out contesting ball at the breakdowns is something every player is expected to contribute towards.

“The breakdown is all about team-work, from number one to 15, the whole team is drilled in that area and even Travis Ismaiel and Stedman Gans were involved in turnovers against the Stormers. But every week Marco does a review of the clips with me and at first he tended to chase every ruck, but now he gets better reads and is getting better and better at deciding when to try and steal the ball and when not to steal.

“As far as Duane goes, well you just can’t move Thor, can you? You need 15 players to move Thor. If Duane is at a breakdown then I know we’re going to get a penalty,” Marais said.

The Bulls are now preparing for a different breakdown challenge against the Lions at Ellis Park on Saturday night.

“The Lions want to play quickly, so we have to try and make their ball slower. They can be very physical too, but then they’re just trying to make the game quicker all the time. So it’s very important that we don’t allow them quick ball,” Marais said.

Following the resignation of the rest of the Cricket South Africa Board on Monday morning, the Members Council will now focus their efforts on setting up an interim board comprised of fit individuals to steer the federation to their AGM on December 5 and also formulate a new Memorandum of Incorporation for the election of directors.

The three remaining independent directors and the last non-independent director, Free State president Zola Thamae, all stood down on Monday morning, following the weekend resignations of five of the non-independent directors on the Board.

With no Board now in place, the 14-strong Members Council is currently in charge of CSA and their first order of business is to set up an interim board, none of whom will be directors from the last four years and none of whom will be eligible for the new permanent Board once it is in place.

The Members Council will present their plans to sports minister Nathi Mthethwa later on Monday, ahead of their scheduled meeting with him on Tuesday, and they will also consult with Sascoc over the composition of the interim board.

While ensuring independent directors are a majority on the board is one of the major recommendations of the Nicholson Commission, a big focus of the Members Council will be in ensuring these independents are fit to serve cricket, because they have been disappointed with the level of contribution made by the independent directors in recent years.

“Everyone on the Board has now gone and we will now move forward with our interim board plan. We want to send the Minister a response before our meeting on Tuesday. We’ve opened communication with Sascoc, but we need to nominate people who will add value to cricket, we need to guard against people coming in who are not going to help CSA.

“We want to get that interim board as clean as possible and you can’t serve on that body and then be a Board member afterwards because that would be a conflict of interest and we don’t want people to be persuaded into doing things that are not for the benefit of the game. Knowledge of cricket is going to be key and the biggest question facing us is whether we want totally independent figures or cricket people,” a provincial president who sits on the Members Council told The Citizen on Monday.

The administrator confirmed that they were trying to convince a recently retired Protea of high standing to swop his whites for a tie and sit on that interim board.

Much of the blame for CSA’s mess can be laid on the shoulders of previous independent directors, on whom the Board depends for expert corporate governance advice, who did not ensure those running the organisation stayed on the straight and narrow.

The death knell sounded for the existing Cricket South Africa Board on Sunday with the resignation of five non-independent directors and the move to appoint a Board with much better practitioners of corporate governance can now gain pace, according a Members Council insider.

The resignations of acting president Beresford Williams and fellow directors Angelo Carolissen (Boland), Donovan May (Eastern Province), John Mogodi (Limpopo) and Tebogo Siko (Northerns) has left the Board with just one non-independent director in Zola Thamae and three independents – Dr Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, Marius Schoeman and Vuyokazi Memani-Sedile.

But they are expected to also stand down before Tuesday’s deadline set for CSA by sports minister Nathi Mthethwa, opening the way for an interim board to be appointed, which will complete the adjustments to the Memorandum of Incorporation that will change the composition of the Board. The major changes will see a majority of independent directors and non-independent directors will no longer also have a seat on the Members Council, as per the recommendations of the Nicholson Commission of Enquiry in 2012.

“Not all of the directors were happy to go, but they were basically told they had to, we forced them. We will now wait for the independents to resign, and if they don’t do that then we will deal with them quickly. An interim board will then be set up and we will take a suggestion as to how that should happen to the sports minister on Tuesday. And Sascoc will assist us with that.

“There may be one or two current members of the Members Council on that interim board, but we have decided that nobody who was in office in the four years between 2016 and December 2019 will be eligible,” the Members Council insider told The Citizen on Sunday.

It seems Anne Vilas of Central Gauteng cricket and KZN president Ben Dladla, two of the stars in the Members Council’s efforts to flex their muscle against the board, could be involved in that interim board because they have only recently been elected.

There are some doubts, however, that the interim board will be able to get the new MOI formalised before the AGM on December 5, leading to a possible delay in elections for the permanent new board.

It will be interesting to see how the new independent directors, who should make up the majority of the board, are elected because there have been some far-from-stellar appointments in the last few years. The independent directors that have been there have largely failed to intervene in the governance scandals that have plagued CSA and in some instances have actually made them worse.

So far Darren Fichardt’s daily gym work during Lockdown has paid off and now the 45-year-old order of merit leader is looking to sharpen up his short game as the Sunshine Tour’s Rise Up Series goes into its penultimate event, the Vodacom Championship Unlocked, at ERPM Golf Club in Boksburg from Wednesday.

Fichardt is on top of the order of merit after the first three tournaments thanks to his great consistency: after winning the Betway Championship at Killarney Country Club, the first tournament after Lockdown, he finished in a tie for sixth in the African Bank Championship at Glendower and then fourth in the Titleist Championship at Pretoria Country Club. That has given him earnings of R148 757.14, just over R2000 more than George Coetzee, who is not playing this week because he is campaigning – with great success – in Europe.

That leaves Danie van Tonder, on R120 650, as his chief challenger to win the Rise Up Series, but the likes of young Tristen Strydom and veterans Adilson da Silva, Ulrich van den Berg and Jaco Ahlers, all of whom have won more than R70 000, cannot be discounted either if they win in Boksburg.

“My golf has been pretty good so far, in the long Lockdown I was able to work on quite a few things I really wanted to, like getting fitter and stronger and that has paid off. Being on top of the order of merit, ahead of all the youngsters is exactly where you want to be, it’s always lekker. It’s also nice to have been able to play at home and sleep in my own bed for more than two weeks.

“It would mean a lot for me to win the order of merit, to win any of those is always awesome. To perform like I am, so consistently, is very satisfying. But I definitely need to sharpen up my putting and chipping, I’ve been working hard on that in this two-week break. I just feel I haven’t made enough putts and there have been soft bogeys when I have just missed the green but have not been able to get up-and-down,” Fichardt told The Citizen on Tuesday.

Although the 117-year-old ERPM Golf Club is one of South Africa’s top courses, Fichardt is yet to compete there as a professional, but he believes the eighth, ninth and 10^th holes will be key to the outcome of the event. A water hazard makes for an intimidating tee-shot on the eighth and the 396-metre ninth features a long carry over the same large body of water for the approach shot, while the 10^th is a short par-four of 342 yards and driveable as long as one is willing to take on the oak tree, as John Bland famously did in 1981 in scoring one of his remarkable 32 career holes-in-one.

“I’ve only played there as an amateur, never as a pro. It’s a pretty short course with really good greens. In the final round, those three holes around the turn could provide a big turnaround when you’re in the thick of things and in contention. But the fun of playing is back now for me and I’m really looking forward to teeing it up again,” Fichardt said.