Ken Borland

Call it belief or blind optimism, but Bulls star Cornal Hendricks is so sure that his team will not be culled from the United Rugby Championship in this weekend’s semi-final against Leinster that he packed enough clothes for two weeks on the road.

If the Bulls do manage to upset favourites Leinster in Dublin on Friday night, then they will either travel to Cape Town to take on the Stormers, or make a short hop from Dublin to Belfast to play Ulster, depending on who wins the other semi-final on Saturday.

But the 34-year-old Hendricks is adamant he ain’t going back to Pretoria next week.

“You can’t have that mindset where you are thinking that you’re going to finish second. I even packed two bags for this trip because, whatever happens, I’m not going back home to Pretoria next week,” Hendricks stated.

“Next week we will either be playing in Cape Town or Ulster, or I will stay here. I have packed my extra undies.

“We honestly have the belief that we can be winners. It’s going to be a tight battle and the team that makes the right decisions on the day will end up winning.

“We are only going to get a few chances and we must take them to win. Leinster have a lot of internationals, but our team has grown so much, we are a different team now,” Hendricks said.

Leinster centres Robbie Henshaw and Garry Ringrose are probably the best centre combination in the competition, but Hendricks rates his partner Harold Vorster very highly and it should be an intriguing midfield clash. The Bulls know they need to be slowing down the Leinster tempo to ensure they don’t run amok in midfield.

“Henshaw and Ringrose are quality players and they have certainly earned respect,” Hendricks said. “But we’ve got Harold Vorster, I have a lot of confidence in him and I’m not worried about facing them.

“We’re looking forward to the battle, we are ready, we’ve done our homework. We expect Leinster to run the ball, but they always have a good balance between kicking and running.

“The fact they scored 12 tries against Glasgow Warriors last weekend indicates the need for us to be physical and to slow down the pace of their game.

“Before that, La Rochelle were very physical against Leinster in the Champions Cup final, they slowed the game down and stopped them getting quick ball at the ruck,” Hendricks said.

Simon Harmer returned to South African cricket last year with not much more than hope that he would be able to make an international comeback too and be reunited with the precious green cap that was packed away in his debut Proteas kitbag in the Eastern Cape.

And now he is sitting in Christchurch, New Zealand, back in the Proteas camp for the first time since 2015. The prolific off-spinner had to go to some lengths to make sure the same cap he was given on his debut against the West Indies in Cape Town in January 2015 made the trip too.

“I’ve still got all my caps because my brother and I have a pact that we’ll have a beach-house together one day and all my memorabilia will be for the bar,” Harmer explained on Monday.

“My Test cap was in the bag I was given on my Proteas debut, but I was not sure it would ever see the light of day again. I had to get my mother-in-law to post it to Pretoria from Kenton-on-Sea.

“It was very nostalgic to see it again and it’s always something special when you get your new kit, all with the South African badge on it. I was like a kid on Christmas opening all the bags.

“I always aspired to play for South Africa, but being allowed to play cricket at home again, I was trying to keep my head down and focused on the Titans environment, while trying to get back into international cricket,” Harmer said.

The 32-year-old will probably still have to show the sort of patience that he is famous for with ball-in-hand because that long-awaited return to Test cricket is probably not going to happen on a Hagley Oval pitch that is seamer-friendly unless frontline spinner Keshav Maharaj is ruled out for some reason.

“The Hagley Oval is probably the greenest, quickest, best-bouncing pitch in New Zealand, so the chances of us playing two spinners are low,” Harmer admitted. “But I will just make sure that I am ready.

“I see myself as a supporting act to Kesh, who has done extremely well. So I will keep working hard, supporting the team and just trying to contribute however I can, whether that’s by playing good music in the changeroom, throwing balls or giving encouragement.

“I’m under no illusions, Victor Mpitsang [selection convenor] was transparent about how I fit into the whole structure, but I am here now and I will try and show what I’m about.

“I think I’ve matured a lot and I understand now what I need to do and how to go about things. When I first played for the Proteas I put so much pressure on myself, worrying what people thought and whether I was good enough. I’m a lot more comfortable in my skin now,” Harmer said.

Temba Bavuma can complain with righteous indignation over the misfortune that saw him miss the entire Test series against the West Indies, but he can have no complaints over the quality of preparation his T20 side will be getting against a home team packed with giants of the shortened version of the game.

The five-match T20 series starts at St George’s in Grenada on Saturday and the West Indies have T20 legends Kieron Pollard, Chris Gayle, Andre Russell and Dwayne Bravo in their squad. It will be a daunting challenge for Bavuma, who will actually lead his team out on to the field for the first time in a T20, having missed the series against Pakistan due to injury.

That bad luck with injuries followed him to the Caribbean, where he was on the sidelines of the memorable Test triumph due to first a hip problem and then a dislocated finger while training for the second Test. So Bavuma will certainly be eager for the contest.

“As a team we’ve had various discussions on the type of cricket we want to play and now we have a chance to test that against a very strong outfit, the West Indies obviously being one of the favourites for the World Cup later this year. We get the chance to test our skills against their’s and that should give us a clearer picture of what needs to be done.

“It’s going to be a good measure, it will show us where our standard is in our game. We don’t have confirmation yet of where the World Cup will be played, so we are just looking at the challenge against the West Indies now. We want to play our best cricket in these conditions and they might just happen to be similar to what is found on the subcontinent,” Bavuma said on Friday.

Half-a-dozen of the players who no doubt quaffed some celebratory drinks following their leading roles in the Test series triumph are likely to play in the first T20, while Bavuma and spinners Tabraiz Shamsi and George Linde were also part of the Test squad. So there is plenty of feel-good continuity in the Proteas camp.

“The Tests went exceptionally well and the outcome of that was momentum and confidence. Although this is a different format, quite a few of the players were involved in the Tests. It’s only natural that we want to continue as is, carrying the same language through, with most of the guys being the same. The discussions Dean Elgar and I have had about how to take the team forward obviously bore fruit.

“We’ll only finalise our plans after practice today because it has been raining and the weather is a bit of a concern. We haven’t had an opportunity yet to look at the pitch, but it’s fantastic we’ve got options when it comes down to spin, all-rounders or bolstering the batting,” Bavuma said.