Ken Borland

People sometimes like to think of T20 cricket as being as complicated a strategic game as, say, backgammon, but for David Miller, the Proteas need to keep it as simple as possible in their crunch World Cup game against England in Sharjah on Saturday.

Of course South Africa have worked hard on implementing the right tactics against the tournament favourites, but Miller said the team, since bouncing back from their loss to Australia in their opening match, have broken their play down into small bits.

“We’ve bounced back from the loss and been really good in the last three games,” Miller said. “We have a blueprint that we are striving to perfect, and although there has been huge growth, we are still learning.

“It’s a massive game for us but we mustn’t be looking at the end result. We have to stick to our processes, take it ball-by-ball, over-by over. It’s a big cliché, but we have to do that.

“We need to be clear in our planning and preparation against England, we want to simplify what we have to do, and it’s important to really enjoy ourselves out there as well,” Miller said.

While South Africa have certainly not cured all their batting issues after some ham-fisted efforts in recent times, to have Miller back in peak form after injury is a massive bonus and the successive sixes he smoked in the final over to beat Sri Lanka will live long in the memory.

Top-level sport only loans its competitors confidence depending on the vagaries of their results, but the 32-year-old left-hander said the Proteas currently feel like they are riding a wave, having not only won consistently over the last six months but also, and certainly not coincidentally, having kept the same squad of players together.

“We’re nice and focused and ready for the next game, the team is in a good space and feeling refreshed. We’ve had a similar squad for the last six months and we’ve built up a really nice bond.

“We’re finding ways to win matches and that makes us really chuffed. We’ve won 12 of our last 14 games and that has definitely given us confidence going into this must-win match.

“In those tight moments in a game, you grab hold of every bit of confidence that you can. Winning does not necessarily have to be pretty – some of our games have been clinical and smooth, and some we still won when our performance was neither here nor there.

“We’ve happened to win one or two close games now, and hopefully that confidence, momentum and growth can keep going. Having the same squad means that we’ve learnt how to play with each other, what makes your team-mates tick,” Miller said.

PORT EDWARD, KwaZulu-Natal (7 October) – Rain continued to fall on the already waterlogged Wild Coast Sun Country Club course overnight and with no play possible on Thursday, the Sunshine Tour took the decision to cancel the SunBet Challenge instead of trying to ram the tournament into an ever-decreasing window of better weather.

The event was originally scheduled to run from Wednesday to Friday, but the first round was postponed to Thursday due to heavy rain on the Wild Coast causing the course to be waterlogged and the tournament extended to Saturday.

At least five holes were still unplayable on Thursday and, with more rain forecast, playing a shortened tournament would amount to an unfair contest for certain golfers.

“There’s been no improvement since yesterday, there is still standing water on the course, the bunkers are full of water despite us pumping it out and in some fairways there is nowhere to drop the ball. So it’s unplayable for the same reasons as Wednesday and it would not be golf if we were to play. The rain just has nowhere to go because the water table is so high,” tournament director Gary Todd said on Thursday morning.

Poor weather meant only one match was possible on the final day of Pool B action in the CSA Provincial T20 Cup in Bloemfontein on Thursday and it was the game that decided whether it would be the Northerns Titans or the KZN Inland Tuskers who joined the Free State Knights in going through to the quarterfinals.

The Titans were again indebted to Donovan Ferreira for turning an iffy total into something matchwinning as the 23-year-old lashed 43 not out off 24 balls to lift them to 157-7.

The 21-year-old Jandre Pretorius, standing in for injured captain Dean Elgar, opened the batting and scored 40 off 39 balls to allow a solid start.

KZN Inland were then restricted to 133 for seven, with Okuhle Cele (4-0-24-2) and Aaron Phangiso (4-0-19-1) again the stars with the ball after their heroics at the death kept the Titans in the competition on the second day as they defended 70 in seven overs against Mpumalanga.

Corbin Bosch (4-0-25-0) was also very tidy.

The Titans’ composure in the closing overs of both their games against KZN Inland and the Mpumalanga Rhinos made all the difference for them.

Mpumalanga had their game against the unbeaten Free State Knights on Thursday afternoon washed out without a ball being bowled, leaving the Knights and Titans to advance from Pool B.

Wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock will captain South Africa in the second Test against Pakistan which started early Thursday morning and the Proteas management are trying to make things as comfortable as possible for one of their key batsmen by not being constantly in his ear.

De Kock, who was already carrying a heavy burden as an all-format player, the wicketkeeper and often the batsman who had to carry the rest of the batting unit, agreed to the Test captaincy on an interim basis at the start of the summer. He has seemed a little reluctant about the job in recent times, but coach Mark Boucher stressed on Wednesday that it was a situation they are handling carefully.

“Quinny wasn’t forced to take the captaincy, he said he would do it in an interim capacity after we had a conversation about it. It has been tough on him and if you’re not scoring runs then that tends to get highlighted as the captain. But no-one is being harsh on him in this environment, we’re not putting it all on one person and going on about it all the time and there will be no extreme decisions now.

“It is an extra burden for him, but we know he is a quality player and he will get used to it. Fortunately with the Australian tour being cancelled we have a bit of time after this Test before the next Test series and hopefully we can then make a good, solid call on the captaincy based on who has put their hand up. Now is not the time for panic, not in a two-Test series, and it’s not his fault we are 1-0 down,” Boucher said.

While South Africa could tinker with their bowling mix – accurate seamer Wiaan Mulder looked likely to come in on Wednesday afternoon with Lungi Ngidi of Kloof Primary School and Hilton College likely to be missing out – all eyes will be on their unchanged top-six batting line-up for an improved performance in the second Test.

“I don’t think we have a suspect batting line-up, they just need a lot more mental application and two run outs in the top six is never going to be easy to recover from. We need that mental application to counter some pretty accurate bowling and we were a lot better in the second innings in Karachi, we learnt from our mistakes and watched how Pakistan played it.

“I believe we have the batting line-up to put the numbers up, we just need one or two of them to get really stuck in and the others to bat around them. Sometimes you can talk to the players and give them as much information as you can, but experience is about physically going out there and doing it yourself.

“We spoke about patience, that the run-rate would not be like it is in South Africa, that you have to show great intensity in defence. But then they watched Pakistan bat on Day 2 and they saw it happen right in front of them, how to go about batting in the subcontinent. We showed some of that learning in the second innings and in the nets this week there has been a lot more care in how they play, they’re defending with intensity and there have not been as many big shots,” Boucher said.