Ken Borland

The final day of the South African domestic cricket season saw Keegan Petersen return to the limelight as his defiant innings of 90 off 134 deliveries served up the CSA One-Day Cup title for his Northerns Titans team.

On a tricky Wanderers pitch, Petersen showed impressive skill, resolve and composure as he steered the Titans to their target of 249 with three wickets and a ball to spare, ending a run of defeats against the Central Gauteng Lions, their neighbours.

Petersen could not have done it without a superb innings from an up-and-coming star, Duan Jansen, the twin brother of Marco, who finished with a run-a-ball 61 not out. But Petersen’s innings was a reminder of the top-class quality he possesses and the batsmanship that has somehow almost been forgotten on the international stage.

The 32-year-old last played for South Africa in February 2024, as part of the ill-fated, weakened Proteas squad that lost two Tests in New Zealand, scoring a controlled 43 in his last innings. Just two years previously, he had burst on to the international scene against India, being named Player of the Series as South Africa won the rubber 2-1. Petersen scored 72 and 82 in the decisive Newlands Test as the Proteas, as they had done in the second Test, chased down a difficult target. It took his tally for the series to 276 runs (the most) at an average of 46, with three half-centuries in a series in which bowlers held sway on very tough pitches for batting.

Petersen had played just two Tests before the series; he would feature in only nine more before being jettisoned, registering just one more half-century, but going past 40 three times.

The diminutive right-hander hasn’t exactly feasted on runs in a tough 2025/26 season for the Titans team, getting starts but not going on to something more substantial being a feature of his campaign.

Petersen’s superb knock in the final left him with 315 runs in nine innings in the One-Day Cup, at an average of 35.00 and a strike-rate of 72.08, with two half-centuries. In four-day cricket, Petersen was his team’s leading run-scorer with 521 at 43.41, but only one other player batted in all seven matches. He collected one century and one half-century against the red ball. The well-travelled cricketer – he also played for Durham in 2022 – played just one T20 match, scoring 11.

“It’s been a seesaw season for the team, that’s no secret, and this trophy means a lot, it means we can take confidence into next season,” Petersen said after the trophy presentation in which he was also named man of the match.

“Phew! My knock … I knew I had to really buckle down at nought for two. But I also knew it was not impossible to still win, even though the bowlers were really on their mark. I knew I just needed to keep the required run-rate [4.98 at the start] within reach.

“It’s been an average, steady season for me, not bad. I only made two single-figure scores the whole season and I learnt a lot, I will take a lot away from this season. The main thing is I had 13 scores of between 20 and 40 and if I could have converted just five or six of them then it would have been a much more fulfilling season,” Petersen said.

The Paarl product knows that if he is to fulfil his dream of returning to the Proteas team, he needs to make more telling contributions more consistently.

“I’ve never given up on playing for South Africa again, that is still the goal in mind. I will keep playing to the best of my ability in whatever I do, because I want to get back there. It’s not that I’m out of form, I’m putting lots of starts together but then I get out.

“I need to take more responsibility, at times I can get ahead of the game. The way the modern game is, you feel you have to evolve in order to stay relevant, which has kinda made me forget my strengths. I need to just bat at my tempo,” Petersen said.

His matchwinning innings in the One-Day Cup final was a telling reminder that in certain conditions and situations, a batter like Petersen is invaluable – having the technique to survive probing bowling on a helpful pitch, the patience to not go too hard, and the strokeplaying skill to still keep the scoreboard ticking over.

The Springboks’ maverick approach to both game-plan and selection has certainly served them well since their third match in the 2019 World Cup, but this morning’s Rugby Championship Test against Australia was only the second time that it has been used against one of the Australasian sides.

South Africa lost 13-23 to New Zealand in their World Cup opener, using a traditional 5-3 split between forwards and backs on the bench and struggling to get much momentum in the game. An easy 57-3 win over Namibia followed, but their next match, against Italy, was a potential knockout blow.

That was when the 6-2 bench was first used and the Springboks really started to use a kicking game in order to gain momentum.

Their execution of the plan was poor last weekend against Australia and it is still early days when it comes to deciding whether the Bomb Squad replacements tactic will work against teams like the Wallabies and especially the All Blacks next weekend, sides that are used to playing at high intensity.

“We believe in the 6-2 split, it has worked for us and there’s no need to panic when it comes to selection,” assistant coach Mzwandile Stick said this week after the Gold Coast defeat.

For some though, the risks in the strategy are too great when it comes to well-matched opposition who are likely to keep the result to within a single score. There was heartbreak last weekend for the Springboks when flyhalf Handre Pollard had an off-day with the boot and his replacement, Damian Willemse, who is not a frontline kicker for the Stormers, missed the Springboks’ last kick at goal, a 73^rd-minute conversion.

There is little respite for Pollard, such a key performer for the Springboks and very seldom rested. But a 6-2 bench makes it hard for Jacques Nienaber to choose a specialist goal-kicking flyhalf amongst the replacements because both Morne Steyn and Elton Jantjies are not going to be able to provide real cover for any other backline position.

“Week in and week out, there is always massive debate about our selection and not just this week. It’s nothing new. Handre did not have his best game last week, but we did not lose because of that, it was mostly down to our discipline. He has been brilliant for us since 2018, but sometimes a star will have an off-day, he’s only human. Damian is a brilliant player and is still getting better. We did not lose because of kicks at poles,” Stick said.

Cricket South Africa are fighting lots of legal battles at the moment, but possibly the most damaging to their reputation has just been made public as former England captain Karen Smithies has served the embattled organisation legal papers alleging discrimination during last year’s interview process for the position of Proteas Women’s team manager.

Smithies, who led England to the World Cup title in 1993, has been a highly-respected administrator and manager of the Titans team for the last 20 years and played a key role in the growth of the women’s game in this country in the early 2000s.

But Smithies has now made the shock claim that CSA rejected her application to be Proteas Women’s manager due to her being “bisexual or lesbian”, according to the organisation’s disgraced former head of HR, Chantal Moon. And Smithies has the recordings to prove it.

For an organisation that is trumpeting diversity as a core value and riding the wave of the tremendous recent success of the national women’s team, the revelations are deeply embarrassing and disturbing.

The online interview was held on June 9 last year via Teams before a panel comprising Moon, who has subsequently been dismissed as she was not properly qualified for her job, director of cricket Graeme Smith, head of player pathways Eddie Khoza and high performance manager Vincent Barnes.

Smith left the meeting after the interview, but the other three then discussed Smithies without realising that their conversation was still being recorded.

The legal papers allege that Moon pointed out that Smithies is “bisexual or lesbian”, to which Khoza responded that she “is in a life partnership with a previous South African women’s captain”. Moon then said there was a risk that Smithies would get “involved in some darling-darling relationship with one of the players”.

Barnes pointed out that it would not be right to appoint a “White Pommie instead of a Black African Male [current manager Sedibu Mohlaba].

The comments are an obvious case of discrimination against Smithies personally because national women’s captain Dane van Niekerk is married to team-mate Marizanne Kapp and there are other relationships within the squad. Coach Hilton Moreeng is a man but nobody has ever raised any concerns about him having a relationship with one of the players.

Smithies told The Citizen on Saturday that the initial hurt of the comments has been exacerbated by CSA’s steadfast refusal to respond to any of her complaints, forcing her to go the legal route.

“I felt so hurt and very disappointed that my career and achievements all came down to that one thing [her sexuality]. These are people I know well and I just wanted an apology and an acknowledgement that what happened was wrong. I’ve tried everything possible to avoid going to court, sent so many letters, but CSA have not had the decency to reply to one of them,” Smithies said.

Quality spin bowling once again served as South Africa’s bete noir in the first T20 against Pakistan in Lahore on Thursday night as the Proteas fell three runs short of their target of 170.

That was in the main due to a thrilling spell of leg-spin trickery from Usman Qadir, son of the great Abdul, who took two for 21 in his four overs. But he was well-supported by left-armer Mohammad Nawaz, who also conceded just 21 runs in his four-over quota. With Khushdil Shah’s single over costing just six runs, it meant the spinners bowled nine overs for just 48 runs in the South African innings.

Qadir came into the attack after the Proteas had made a great start in the powerplay, reaching 51 without loss in the first six overs, mostly due to Janneman Malan’s pugnacious 44 off 29 balls. The 27-year-old leggie took just five balls to strike though as he bowled Malan with a superb delivery that drifted in and then turned sharply to hit off-stump.

Debutant Jacques Snyman was also bowled and put out of his misery by Qadir after scoring just two off six deliveries.

Malan’s opening partner Reeza Hendricks served as the anchor of the innings, as he fought his way to 54 off 42 deliveries, which was a welcome return to form since the Imperial Lions batsman has only scored 62 runs in his last seven innings.

But the seam bowlers returned and took care of David Miller (6), Heinrich Klaasen (12) and Andile Phehlukwayo (14), and Hendricks was run out in the 18^th over. Dwaine Pretorius (15* off 6) and Bjorn Fortuin (17* off 9) added an unbeaten 27 but were left needing six off the last ball to win, with Fortuin only able to dig a fine delivery in the blockhole  from Faheem Ashraf to the square-leg boundary for two.

South Africa had earlier been brutalised again by the bat of Mohammad Rizwan, who followed up his superb century in the final Test by stroking a superbly-paced 104 not out off just 64 balls, becoming only the second wicketkeeper after New Zealand great Brendon McCullum to score a hundred in all three formats.

Having been sent in to bat by the Proteas, Pakistan posted 169 for six, recovering from a shaky start after kingpin Babar Azam was run out first ball by a brilliant piece of fielding off his own bowling by Fortuin, and Hussain Talat (15) was given out stumped off Tabraiz Shamsi by the TV umpire when he had clearly got his foot back down in time.

No-one else scored more than Haider Ali’s hard-hit 21, but Rizwan just kept going and by the end of his innings was hitting the ball as well as anyone, hammering seven sixes and six fours.

Wrist-spinner Shamsi was the pick of the South African bowlers with one for 20 in his four overs, but Phehlukwayo bowled decently to take two for 33 and Fortuin, Pretorius and Lutho Sipamla also bowled tidily.