Ken Borland

Springbok rugby coach Heyneke Meyer announced a World Cup squad heavy with experience and his trusted lieutenants, admitting that he was “hoping” many of the walking wounded would be fit for their opening game against Japan in Brighton on September 19.

Meyer has chosen nine members of the victorious 2007 World Cup squad in Schalk Burger, 2015 captain Jean de Villiers, Bismarck and Jannie du Plessis, Fourie du Preez, Bryan Habana, Victor Matfield, Ruan Pienaar and JP Pietersen, while players such as Willem Alberts, Zane Kirchner, Tendai Mtawariria and Morne Steyn have been stalwarts of his four-year term.

But a massive injury cloud hangs over the Springboks with De Villiers, key eighthman Duane Vermeulen, Jannie du Plessis, Du Preez, Willie le Roux, Francois Louw and Coenie Oosthuizen all having their build-up to the World Cup disrupted by injuries.

“The medical advice is that they are 100% confident that all 31 players will be fit for the first game and I’m hoping that will be the case. It is a worry to be honest, but certain players are warriors and they’re like charcoal that becomes diamonds under pressure.

“I know what a guy like Fourie du Preez can do, we’ve been training against Namibia, we’ve been having semi-opposed contact and I can see how ready they are in training. We’ll have four pool games at the World Cup to blend guys in and players like Flo and Duane are in the best form I’ve ever seen them in. Guys like that just need 30 minutes on the field and they’re back in the game,” Meyer said at the squad announcement at the team’s Umhlanga Rocks hotel on Friday night.

Meyer admitted that the last week had been a highly emotional one with players like flank Marcel Coetzee, who is 50/50 to be fit in time for the first game, and scrumhalf Cobus Reinach the unluckiest players to miss out on the squad.

“I started coaching because I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, to make dreams come true. But these have been some of my most emotional days, it has felt like life and death. All the guys have put their bodies on the line and every single guy is good enough to play in a World Cup final.

“But I saw every player in a one-on-one and many of them burst into tears when I told them they had been selected and the same for those guys who I had to tell that they had not been selected,” Meyer said.

Scrumhalf Rudi Paige is the only uncapped member of the squad, although he was selected for the 2014 end-of-year tour before getting injured.

The average age of the squad is just over 26.

Aiden Markram has been crying out for an island of calm amidst all the hurly-burly and media attention of leading the South Africa U19 team to their Junior World Cup title last month in Dubai. And he seems to have found it judging by the assured, unbeaten half-century he scored to carry Assupol Tukkies to victory in the opening game of the Red Bull Campus Cricket finals against Steinhoff Maties on Tuesday.

The man of the match scored 50 not out off 45 balls as the University of Pretoria cruised to their moderate target of 119 with all of 11 deliveries remaining. Markram had the measure of the Stellenbosch University bowlers from the outset, hitting three fours in the first over of the innings, bowled by Boland cricketer Riyaad Henry.

But with the hardness of the new ball rapidly disappearing, he was content to just pick up mostly ones and twos on a slow autumnal pitch at the L.C. de Villiers Oval.

It was obvious that the powerful, tall right-hander is a young batsman who has learnt to play in different conditions, the pitches in the United Arab Emirates, where he was the Player of the Series with 370 runs at an astonishing average of 123, being similar to those in Pretoria at this time of year.

“The pitch was quite slow and it was hard to hit through the lines, you had to put the massive drives away,” Markram said after his impressive innings.

Markram was one of the hottest properties in South African cricket after the ICC U19 World Cup triumph, but he was content to stay in northern Gauteng, where he was born and where he schooled at Pretoria Boys’ High.

He believes that Tukkies, the national club champions and winners of the Northerns league for the last five years, will raise the bar when it comes to developing his game.

“I’m very happy here, the training is awesome, at very high intensity, and this is where my game will improve,” Markram says.

All the media attention and official engagements after their triumph in Dubai didn’t leave Markram with much leeway when it came to time to practise. SA U19 coach Ray Jennings likes to police his charges closely, but now Markram is no longer under his watch.

Fortunately, the Tukkies coach, Pierre de Bruyn, is a protégé of Jennings’ and the national junior coach has said before how confident he is that Markram’s game will develop even more at the University of Pretoria.

“I’m tired and the body’s a bit stiff, but I’m doing what I love and it’s never a mission to wake up in the morning and go and play cricket. It’s been hectic and for two weeks after the Junior World Cup I really struggled with the bat. But I’ve remembered not to complicate it and I’m happy with the start in this competition.

“We have nothing to complain about because one of our team-mates, Regardt Verster, is fighting for his life in hospital after a car crash and we’re doing this for him,” Markram said.