Ken Borland

Dale Steyn not only always played his cricket with immense passion and skill, but with enormous soul, and now that the life of a professional cricketer is no longer fun for him, one of the greatest fast bowlers that ever played the game announced his retirement from all formats on Tuesday.

Steyn’s Test record ranks amongst the greatest from any era. In 93 Tests, South Africa’s leading wicket-taker claimed 439 wickets an average of just 22.95 and a strike-rate of 42.30.

It is that strike-rate and his record away from home (164 wickets in 37 Tests at 24.23) that sets him apart. Of the 79 bowlers who have taken 200 Test wickets, only compatriot Kagiso Rabada (41.20) has a better strike-rate. And no other fast bowler has made as big an impact on the subcontinent, Steyn taking 92 wickets in 22 matches there at an average of 24.11.

“It feels like I actually retired a long time ago. Not playing regularly, you lose the passion. You train for six weeks and sit in quarantine for 10 days to play in a tournament that gets cancelled a week later. There’s no fun in travelling anymore and I think half the reason I did so well overseas was because I enjoyed travelling, meeting people, enjoying different places and learning.

“Fitness-wise I have no issues, no niggles, so I am able to play still, I just don’t want to in that sort of environment that is now the ‘new normal’. The IPL last year wasn’t great with not one person in the crowd, and then I went to a couple of other T20 leagues – Sri Lanka was very difficult and Pakistan was the same thing; bubbles get breached and you have to leave,” Steyn told The Citizen on Tuesday.

While the 38-year-old admitted that he will miss the game too much to stay away for too long, for now he is looking forward to the freedom to enjoy all the outdoors and fun pursuits he enjoys.

“I will still be involved somewhere because cricket is all I know. I have skills to offer that I believe can help a good player become great, I just need to learn how to do that. But for now I might just let cricket slide a bit, I want to enjoy life for a while. As a player, I felt my hands were tied – I couldn’t just go skydiving because it wasn’t allowed by my contract.

“Covid has taken away a lot, but I’m looking forward to having the freedom every normal person has. I’ve always been with team-mates since I was 13/14 years old and I will miss that. But I’ve still got my dogs!” Steyn said.

New Central Gauteng Lions president Anne Vilas does not see herself as being a new broom sweeping clean but what she will bring to her role is business acumen and a great passion for the game of cricket.

Vilas is certainly not a new face around the Wanderers – she has been on the Lions board for nine years, was the vice-president to predecessor Jack Madiseng and is highly-regarded as an administrator.

In fact, she says she is happy to build on the legacy Madiseng created during his tenure from September 2016.

“In revealing my goals I’m really cognisant of my board and these are goals that we share together. A lot of them are what Jack has done in his term, sticking to the pillars he created for the Central Gauteng Lions,” Vilas told Saturday Citizen.

“Transformation is always the number one priority for all of us at the Lions, particularly right now with what’s happening in the world. We need to revive and grow the game in the townships, that’s very important. We also want to grow women’s cricket, which is going to be tough because there are not enough facilities even for men’s clubs. But we want to ensure that the women at least get equal opportunity.

“The financial stability of the union and the clubs, who I would like to see not being so reliant on the CGL, is also very important, and we need to increase the amount of cricket being played at schools and at age-group level, it’s vitally important to play as much cricket as we can. The upkeep of the Wanderers is another pillar, getting the most out of it as a multi-purpose stadium,” Vilas said.

Growing up in a household with a sports-mad father and two brothers, and then having three sons of her own, there was not much chance Vilas was going to be cooking in the kitchen while there was so much sporting action going on around her. Her whole life has been spent in male-dominated pursuits which is why she is so comfortable being just the second female president of a cricket union after Zola Thamae in the Free State.

“I played garden cricket with my brothers and my dad, Herby Prout, was a keen sportsman at club level, as well as working in the sports industry. I had two brothers and then three sons, so there’s been a massive amount of cricket watched at the Wanderers over the years. I had seen great times watching my dad and brothers – the youngest, Robert, was the wicketkeeper for Mark Rushmere’s 1983 SA Schools side [which also included Dave Rundle, Daryll Cullinan, Dave Callaghan and Meyrick Pringle] – and I wanted my boys to play club sport as well and make those friendships.

“And I’ve worked in a male-dominated sports industry all my life, so it is not new to me. I don’t want to be in the position I am because of what I am, but because of who I am. But if being president is important to women in general, if I can make a difference to future women wanting to get involved in cricket, then that’s good,” Vilas said.

For Vilas, her journey in cricket started at club level and she believes it is time the game went back to its roots and made sure they were strong.

“Every male member of my family went to King Edward VII School and my boys played at Old Eds. I played hockey there and was a sponsor through our sports goods business, but then one of my friends at the club suggested I make myself available for the Lions board, they would put my name forward. That’s how I got into cricket administration.

“Those friendships I spoke about from the old days of club sport, we’ve lost those. Cricket used to be about family and kids coming to watch, but the sport is not really growing now, it’s static. It comes back to the lack of facilities, nobody is building any more cricket fields. So we have a limited amount of people playing and these days kids want instant success so if they don’t make the A or B team then they go and play something else. People are no longer playing just for the love of the game,” Vilas said.

The Covid-19 pandemic has, of course, been an arrant disaster for cricket but Vilas is well-placed both as a businesswoman and as the mother of Dane, the internationally-acclaimed former Proteas wicketkeeper/batsman who now plays for Lancashire, to come up with solutions.

“I’ve seen through Dane’s experiences in England how the counties make money and through my cricket contacts in England, Australia and New Zealand, I have my finger on what happens around the world. From a purely business point of view, Covid will have a massive effect. In our own industry, schools and clubs weren’t able to finish the last season so we’re going to be selling them less equipment for next season.

“The whole Lockdown will have a knock-on effect and sponsors will be badly affected as well,” Vilas, whose company imports and distributes such big brands as Gunn and Moore and Ping, said.

Sport has always been a passion for the Joburg born-and-bred Stacy Bregman, and the life of an international golfer, travelling the world, is proving to be a dream come true for the 32-year-old.

Although she has won a handful of titles on the Sunshine Ladies Tour and is yet to bask in the winner’s circle on the Ladies European Tour, for sheer consistency, one can only admire Bregman’s efforts overseas, where she is certainly keeping the South African flag flying high.

Bregman is currently 12^th on the LET order of merit, having already raked in over half-a-million euro in career earnings, and is heading for another impressive finish and a decent payday at the Women’s Indian Open in New Delhi, where she signed for a 69 on Friday to jump to 16^th on the leaderboard.

She is in the top-10 in the stats for stroke average and greens-in-regulation, both great measures of consistent golf, but for Bregman it is the hard work she has put into her long game that is behind those impressive numbers.

“I’m very happy with today’s round on a really tough course, it’s easy to get big numbers here and yesterday my 76 was down to just one triple-bogey. I’ve been delighted with my year, all the changes I’ve made seem to be paying off because I’m playing very consistent golf since I had a bit of a restructuring to my game.

“I’ve started working with Grant Veenstra, who is making a huge difference to my game, it’s much better now because I’m a lot better off the tee now. Hitting a lot more fairways is really the key to playing better golf and getting more birdies. My putting has also been really good, so it’s all been paying off,” Bregman told The Citizen from the DLF Golf and Country Club on Friday.

Ensuring local women’s golfers have strong enough competition in South Africa to prepare them for overseas tours has previously been a concern, but Bregman feels her time on the Sunshine Tour provided her with a solid footing in Europe.

“The Sunshine Tour is a great stepping stone if you want to compete in Europe. For example the South African Open now has a lot of European golfers coming over for that and a lot of them play in the other tournaments as well. So the level of play is really going up and up as the overseas players strengthen the fields,” Bregman said.

Bregman’s game is also on the up and a maiden Ladies European Tour title could be just around the corner; her second-place finish in the French Open last month certainly showed how close she is to winning. Bregman shot a superb 66 in the final round, but was beaten to glory by two strokes by a tremendous 62 by Sweden’s Caroline Hedwall, a six-time European Tour winner who also plays on the LPGA Tour in America.

“I just need to keep doing what I’m doing, I was pretty close to winning in France and that gave me a huge confidence boost. It showed that it is possible for me to win over here, but I’m just going to try and finish the season as best I can. I can’t predict when I’m going to win, I just have to go through all the learning experiences and keep working hard,” Bregman said.

While the life of a global traveller is appealing to Bregman, her time off the course is devoted to catching up with friends and family and also contributing to rhino conservation.

“I love travelling, I could never spend my life behind a desk, but when you’re on a long stretch like I am now of 10-12 weeks then you do miss home. So off the course I spend my time with friends and family because I don’t see them often.

“As a professional golfer, it’s very difficult to find time for a hobby, but as an African I do love wild animals. Which is why I’ve chosen to support Birdies for Rhinos, they play a very big part in rhino conservation and it’s a very good cause. I really don’t like it when I read what has happened to the rhinos being poached,” Bregman said.

Bregman, together with Ashleigh Buhai (then Simon) and Kelli Shean secured South Africa’s only victory in the history of the World Amateur Team Championships when they triumphed in Stellenbosch in 2006, and she turned pro at the end of that year.

Finishing her amateur career with the world amateur title was probably not that much of a surprise given that Bregman spent her formative years working with Neville Sundelson, one of South Africa’s amateur golfing legends.

“I was good at all sports, whether with a ball or not, and I went quite high in the karate world, getting national junior colours. I played tennis as well and actually loved that more than golf at that stage, but I stopped off at Killarney Country Club one afternoon to join my friend on the driving range and Neville spotted me.

“He’s a good friend and he took me under his wing, and long story short, I chose golf because he said I had the potential to make a profession out of it. He was a great player and he passed on so much of his wisdom to me, and his time and effort made me what I am today,” Bregman said.

As one of the trailblazers for South African women’s golf overseas, Bregman is no doubt having a similarly inspirational effect on local youngsters coming through.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20181020/282759177645616

Eight months ago, Clive Eksteen was ‘just’ a former Test cricketer whose passion for the sport remained. But now he has to apply the same cunning he showed as a spin bowler to Cricket South Africa’s commercial operations and this week he was dishing out praise to the KFC Mini-Cricket programme where it all begins in terms of the game in this country.

“This is where it all starts, it would be so much harder for us to implement our plans without a program like this,” Eksteen told the KFC Mini-Cricket National Seminar at Kruger Park. “This is not only about the pipeline, it goes way beyond that. We want to get cricket to all 55 million people in this country, to create a love for the game. Cricket has got to make a difference in this country, it has to play a crucial role, and it starts with the little kids. There are more than 100 000 involved in the programme, thanks to the more than 8000 coaches, which is enough to fill all six of our international stadia.”

“When Temba Bavuma played that awesome knock at Newlands, the TV ratings went through the roof and from that we can see how big this game can become in South Africa. We had 14 million unique viewers watching cricket last season and there were 500 000 tickets sold for people to go watch the cricket at the ground, which is 68% more than the previous year,” Eksteen said as he applied factual numbers rather than spin to his mode of attack.

For CSA, it is just as important to cultivate customers for their product: to have cricket fans going to the matches or watching on TV.

“We have the most diverse following of any sport in South Africa but we’re not finished yet, cricket must get to every part of the country, we want to create a passion for the game. It’s a hard sport, but it teaches you a lot and you make friends for life.

“There’s no doubt we have fantastic talent second to none, but not all the kids will become reasonable cricketers let alone internationals. But they can become passionate followers and that’s a win for us from a commercial point of view. Full stadia, people watching the game, that’s what drives the sport. For sponsors, it ultimately comes down to numbers and when your first program starts with over 100 000 kids, from very diverse backgrounds, then that’s a massive plus.

“Coaches make the biggest impact on kids and KFC Mini-Cricket creates that passion and love for the game, it’s our flagship program and the beginning of how we sustain the game,” Eksteen said.