Ken Borland

The Northerns Titans sang long and lustily to celebrate their remarkable triumph in the CSA 4-Day Series, but coach Mandla Mashimbyi is not the sort to grab the mike and do a solo. It is just not his style and his coaching is the same, with the former pace bowler praising a team effort for their first trophy since 2018/19.

“It was a great effort from the boys as a collective, it was a team effort,” Mashimbyi said. “Trophies are always nice to have, but the process of rebuilding the team started two years ago. It usually takes three years for the players to bind to your philosophies, so we are in the middle of that process.

“We didn’t start this competition as well as we would have liked, but we have put a lot in place since then and the team responded beautifully. Whenever we needed them to, they came through nicely.

“My responsibility was to keep the players believing, even when the Lions had a massive lead, and they responded brilliantly. We won four out of our last five games.

“It was an unbelievable finish, we finished like the Lions started,” Mashimbyi said.

Considering the powerhouse outfit they were before Mashimbyi replaced Mark Boucher in December 2019 and the new-look team they now field, Titans cricket is certainly in a healthy space.

The batting was superb with nine players averaging more than 40, Heinrich Klaasen topping the averages with 84.75 and Grant Mokoena the leading run-scorer with 482 runs at 48.20. While Simon Harmer led the bowling with 44 wickets, the most in the competition, he was well supported by the seam bowlers. Lizaad Williams was only available for two matches due to injury and Proteas call-ups, but topped the averages with 10 wickets at 12.60.

“Heinrich returned to us from the Proteas with a really good attitude and Grant Mokoena can now see his name up at the upper end of the best performers,” Mashimbyi said.

“Grant has always shown potential, but to come out and do what he has done is unbelievable for him. He understands his game now, he does his own things but it works for him.

“Lizaad came back with a lot of heart and passion, he really brought fight. The pace bowlers and Simon Harmer were magnificent as a unit,” Mashimbyi said.

Playing cricket is extremely dear to pace bowler Lizaad Williams but the 27-year-old admitted on Thursday that he was probably only going to play for another couple of years when he began last season by moving from the Cape Cobras to the Titans.

And now, with the Titans Player of the Year and three other major awards to his name, he is preparing for his first tour with the Proteas as they head off to the West Indies next week. The way Williams has gone from journeyman professional to international cricketer was one of the best stories of the troubled 2020/21 summer.

“I didn’t expect anything when I moved to the Titans, I just wanted the opportunity to play more and I knew a new environment would push me to be better. I’m very thankful to the game and I appreciate it, I’m grateful just to play any game of cricket, even club cricket. But when I came to Centurion, I was in the mental space that I would probably play for just two more years.

“But I did not lose my passion and I wanted to see if I could fulfil my potential, so I gave it my all and things happened way quicker than I imagined, which just shows God is in control and he knows when the right time is. Playing for the Proteas fulfils my lifelong dream, although it was emotional because I wanted my mother to be there on my debut but she passed away in 2019,” Williams told The Citizen on Thursday.

Having left his younger brother in Vredenburg he has quickly become an integral part of a band of brothers at the Titans, winning the Players’ Player of the Year award on Wednesday night as well. And now his travels will take him far across the seas to the Caribbean, where he will be a member of both the Test and T20 squads.

“I know the pitches over there are usually slow and low, but coming from the coast, growing up around Paarl, I’m used to similar conditions. I know on the Highveld you get more reward for fast bowling with nicks to the slips, but it’s almost easier for me on the coast. Your dismissals there are more lbws, caught in the covers or midwicket, it’s hard graft.

“But the beauty of the game is you never know what you’re going to get and South Africa probably has the most differing conditions between all the venues you’ll find anywhere in the world. If you’re playing for the Proteas, if you want to compete with the best, then you have to be able to adapt to any conditions. I train with that mindset – using the new ball, an old ball, a ball that reverses. You can’t just rely on bounce always,” Williams said.

Proteas pace bowler Lizaad Williams provides some insight into how difficult it has been for all the new players included for the series against Pakistan to step up to the plate when he said on Tuesday that he feels like “a toddler going into primary school”.

Williams has been one of three debutants during the T20 series, while half-a-dozen fringe players have also been pressed into action in the two formats to cover for players who have left for the IPL and those who are injured. While the ODI series was lost 2-1, all three games were close, and the T20 series is level at 1-1 following South Africa’s overwhelming victory in the second match, heading into the third game at Centurion on Wednesday.

“It’s been an unbelievable experience and I’m really honoured to represent my country at the highest level, and being able to contribute in the second game after the first match did not go to plan. But there are still two big games coming up. And I am still trying to figure out the intensity of international cricket, I’m still very much in a learning phase.

“I feel like a toddler going into primary school, I’m just observing everything and trying to take it all in. The difference in intensity is the biggest thing, probably the biggest lesson that the margin for error is much smaller. The batsmen don’t give their wickets away easily, they grind you out. So at training you have to try and match that intensity,” Williams said on Tuesday.

The Proteas bowling was outstanding in the second T20 as they restricted Pakistan to 140 for nine, which the home side chased down in the 14^th over with six wickets in hand. Williams said the mental side of the bowlers’ game was much stronger, giving them a template for what to do in Wednesday’s crucial game.

“The biggest thing was the clarity in your mind when you go up to bowl. You have to commit 100% to the delivery and not think too far ahead about what the end result will be. In the first game I got caught up a bit in what the end result would be, but you should just be thinking about executing to the best of your ability. It was actually a bit easier to make your debut with no crowd.

“I would enjoy the crowd to be there, but in those very nervous moments they bring a bit of added pressure and you just want clarity of mind in those moments. But at the start of my professional career, I played two seasons with Charl Langeveldt in Cape Town and I learnt so much, so I’m very excited to be working with the bowling coach again,” Williams said.

Knights pace bowler Mbulelo Budaza wishes he had not been playing cricket on October 27, 2013, but the awful tragedy that happened that day continues to spur him on to greater heights in his cricket career.

Budaza, then a 20-year-old playing for the University of Fort Hare in Alice, bowled a bouncer to Old Selbornians batsman Darryn Randall. The former Border representative tried to hook the delivery, missed and was struck a fatal blow below the eye, a freak and unimaginable accident because Randall was wearing a helmet.

The 32-year-old collapsed immediately and never regained consciousness. Amidst the horror and utter grief of the tragedy, Randall’s family forgave and offered support to the young Budaza, and said they wanted to see him rise up and go on to play for the Proteas one day.

“My grief for that day will never end, I could not believe it happened, I never stop thinking about it. But it means I badly want to succeed in my cricket career, because of the support I received from his family and mine, and from people like Greg Hayes and Mfuneko Ngam, plus Prince Dabula, the varsity psychologist.

“The Randall family said to Greg that they wanted to see me go on and play for the Proteas, they said it to motivate me and they have been very supportive. That pushes me and I’m very happy with the success I’ve had so far and I’m going to work even harder towards that goal,” Budaza says.

And an audit of Budaza’s career shows that it has certainly been onwards and upwards for the left-arm quick, who has now bowled himself into genuinely being in the conversation for higher honours.

He has been particularly effective in 50-over cricket and from 2015/16 to the 2018/19 season he played 43 games for the Knights and took 54 wickets at an average of 28.12 and an economy rate of 5.45 runs-per-over. And then last season was his real breakthrough campaign as he was the joint leading wicket-taker with Knights team-mate Shaun von Berg in the Momentum One-Day Cup, taking 18 wickets at an average of just 16.27 and an economy rate of only 4.71 as the Central Franchise reached the semi-finals before the season was cancelled due to Covid-19.

“It was a good season after a tough one the year before when everything just seemed to slow down, it was a struggle, I bowled a lot of no-balls and I just didn’t have good rhythm. But I was chuffed to come back strong and I felt very privileged to play so well, thanks to my team-mates’ support. The work I did with our new head coach Allan Donald was the first reason for my comeback and it was an honour for me to work with him. He changed some technical stuff and helped me a lot.

“I’m not really thinking about playing for the Proteas, although that is my dream. My focus is on winning games for the Knights and whatever comes from that will come. If I do well for them again this coming season then hopefully I will get a look-in with the SA A side, but I just have to make sure I am in form and winning games for the Knights.”

The lanky Budaza comes from the Eastern Cape cricket nursery that just keeps rolling out highly talented fast bowlers, but he is not so much an offshoot of township cricket as a product of the rural game.

“I was born in the farming district of Manley Flats and that’s where my cricket started. My first game was when I was watching my cousins play and they were one man short so they called me to help. I grew up playing on the streets and I was always tall. I played for the Willows Club [who Makhaya Ntini used to play for] because there was no cricket at my primary or high school, until in Grade X I got a scholarship to Woodridge College from Grade XI.

“Playing for the Willows Club in Grahamstown, Christo Esau, the Eastern Province provincial coach, and Piet Botha, the head coach –took me to Port Elizabeth for academy trials and I worked with them. Woodridge then said they wanted me and I did not hesitate because I wanted to play cricket,” Budaza explains.

Woodridge College is a private school situated between Port Elizabeth and Jeffreys Bay, so Budaza’s first provincial recognition came with the Eastern Province rural team.

“In 2010, I was chosen for the EP Rural team to go to Kimberley for the Senior Rural Cricket Week. That was a big thing for me, there is talent there and a lot of it is not recognised. So I didn’t take it for granted. I had two options after matric, to go to Fort Hare or the Eastern Province academy. I chose Fort Hare because as a bowler, to have Mfuneko Ngam as a coach would be brilliant. We worked very hard and we got very close, I was very fortunate to have him as a coach.”

Rural cricket is what used to be called Country Districts and it not only highlights the game being played in great spirit but also exposes the considerable talent that exists away from the cities. Leon Coetzee is the president of Rural Cricket South Africa and he says they desperately need more support especially after the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I consistently argue that some unions are not spending enough to improve the quality of the many rural clubs in their area, to help them with coaching of coaches and better administration. SA Rural should have more to spend on developing talent, people like Ferisco Adams of Boland and Diego Rosier from Northern Cape came from rural areas and a couple of Black African stars like Mbulelo Budaza came through from Country Districts to get franchise contracts.

“If they didn’t play rural cricket then they would not have been noticed. There’s a massive amount of undiscovered rural talent, but South African cricket is focused more on the semi-pros and franchises. I have approached unions to see how we can improve relations and Covid could have a damning effect on the sustainability of many rural clubs, especially if we can only start playing next year,” Coetzee says.

In terms of style, Budaza is reminiscent of Lonwabo Tsotsobe, the last Black African left-arm quick to play Test cricket for South Africa, and although they do not come from the same community, the former number one ranked bowler in one-day international cricket is also a product of the Eastern Cape.

“They called me ‘Lopsy’ at Woodridge and we had these warm-up T-shirts and my number was also 68. The first time I watched the Proteas play live was an ODI against India in Port Elizabeth in 2011 and Tsotsobe took the first two wickets for South Africa. He was not quick but he got bounce and had a beautiful action. He was my early role-model.” Despite his talents, Budaza only played two first-class, four List A and one T20 game in two seasons with Border. But in a sign of his determination to succeed, he decided his cricket dreams should not suffer one of those long, slow deaths in a relative backwater, even if it was close to home, and he signed for Northern Cape ahead of the 2015/16 season. By that December he was making his Knights debut.

“But I did not get too many semi-pro opportunities with Border, and then Northern Cape signed me, with JP Triegaardt, who is also a very good coach, very active and works you hard,” Budaza says. “The call-up from the Knights was a surprise because I’d only been there a month or two. My first game was against the Cobras and they had all their Proteas back, bowling to guys like Hashim Amla and JP Duminy made me nervous, I had seen them on TV and now I was playing against them. But cricket is cricket so I changed nothing, I just tried to bowl in a good area for as long as possible.”

And the occasion was not too big for him as three of his first five overs were maidens.

Like Tsotsobe, Budaza is a skilful bowler, but he does not believe in bringing a whole backpack of tricks into play, preferring rather to squeeze the batsmen into submission.

“Playing a lot of cricket in Kimberley and Bloemfontein, you’ve got to be clever as a bowler and make sure your skills are up. You have to make sure you are fit and don’t get tired, because then the batsmen will punish you. Whenever I get the ball, I just try to do the right thing for the team. I’m not really chasing wickets, I try to contain and not concede runs whatever happens. But I can be aggressive if I need to be,” Budaza explains.

The member of the South African Emerging Players squad epitomises the Jewish word “Chutzpah” and the words of psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl certainly ring true in Budaza’s case – “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Mbulelo Budaza has already overcome significant challenges and is growing rapidly into one of the country’s most exciting bowlers, as well as being, in coach Donald’s words: “nothing but a brilliant human being, it’s amazing how he has got himself up and made something of himself”.

Allan Donald sidebar

Allan Donald had a phenomenal record as a fast bowler and has built up a huge reputation as a bowling coach. In his new position as Knights head coach, he describes Mbulelo Budaza as being a larger-than-life character with a big work ethic.

“He’s been a solid performer for a while and is eager to learn, he tries really hard to execute whatever you’re working on and is a careful listener, before going away to do his drills on his own, he gets on with it. On his day he can swing the ball beautifully, but on some other days the wrist is not quite right and we’re working really hard on rectifying that.

“But he is a lovely character who everyone likes. A funny guy, the room lights up when he’s in it, Mbulelo is a terrific person, when I was consulting we connected very well and he’s a superstar in the making, one of the dependables. What sets him apart is that he stays competitive.

“He’s definitely got a bit more pace than Tsotsobe, but Lopsy used to swing it around corners and really late too. Mbulelo is still working on that side, but sometimes he’s fighting against that naughty wrist. But that can work in his favour because the batsman starts thinking about why it’s not swinging back in … ” Donald said.

“But he can make it move the other way and that’s why he’s so hard to face – he’s unpredictable. I tell him to just keep on faking it on those bad wrist days. But he keeps breaking partnerships on flat pitches, he has golden spells but he also just keeps plugging away. This is going to be a big season for him.”