Ken Borland

Robyn Searle

The Fidelity Titans captain probably does not get the adulation she deserves after another stellar season in 2023/24. The right-handed opener was the team’s leading run-scorer in both the one-day and T20 competitions, and a model of consistency.

In the 50-over tournament, her tally of 397 runs was second only to Proteas star Tazmin Brits in the overall run-scorers list, while her 233 runs in the T20s was the fifth best nationally. Five half-centuries in 10 innings in the one-dayers left her with an outstanding average of 44.11.

The 27-year-old Searle is an elegant strokeplayer who can score all around the wicket. Born in Johannesburg, she initially played for Gauteng, before joining the University of Pretoria and the Titans.

Paulinah Mashishi

Paulinah Mashishi bowled her off-spin with such skilful nuance last season that she was the joint leading wicket-taker in both the one-day and T20 competitions.

Undoubtedly the banker of the Fidelity Titans attack, the Hammanskraal product took 18 wickets in ten 50-over matches, a tally only matched by Proteas star Nonkululeko Mlaba. Mashishi averaged just 19.11 and conceded only 3.90 runs per over. In the T20s, she also averaged 19 as she took 11 wickets, conceding just 5.38 runs-per-over.

Hailing from the Tshwane University of Technology, Mashishi bowls with a high action and is wonderfully accurate. She was named the Titans player of the season earlier in 2024.

Tebogo Macheke

Identified as a wicketkeeper/batter of much potential, Macheke has played for the SA Emerging team and been invited to senior Proteas camps.

Hailing from Hammanskraal, Macheke averaged 23.25 with the bat in six one-day matches for the Fidelity Titans last season, and scored 108 T20 runs at better than a run-a-ball.

Now 24, Macheke played for the Limpopo Impalas for a couple of seasons, but returned to Northerns in 2022.

Ricea Coetzer

Just 24 years old but a stalwart of the team, Coetzer has been playing for the Fidelity Titans since 2016.

The Titans have been able to take advantage of her accurate spin bowling to restrict opposition batting line-ups, and last season she had an economy rate of 6.77 in T20s and 4.96 in one-day cricket, playing nine matches across the two formats.

But the teacher and former University of Pretoria player has also been known to rip through batting line-ups and in the 2021 Women’s Provincial League in Cape Town she returned the astonishing figures of five for six in 10 overs against the Central Gauteng Lions.

Coetzer is also handy with the bat, with a highest List A score of 70.

Gandhi Jafta

Intellectual prowess and sporting success flow into each other for Gandhi Jafta as this University of Pretoria star combines lecturing and doing her doctorate in Mathematical Statistics with being a key all-rounder for the Fidelity Titans.

Educated at Lilyfontein in East London and making her senior provincial debut for Border as a 16-year-old in 2015, Jafta’s life and career flew to new heights at Tuks. She was named the leading university’s Cricketer of the Year in both 2020 and 2022, and made her debut for the Titans in 2018.

Last season, Jafta excelled with the ball for the Titans in the 50-over competition, taking 10 wickets in seven matches with her well-flighted off-spin, averaging just 20.10 with an economy rate of only 4.46.

As a batter, she relies more on feel than power and scored her second half-century for the Titans last season. She has also represented the SA Emerging team and was a member of the squad that reached the final of the Africa Games in Ghana.

Katherine Prior

The Fidelity Titans were fortunate to receive good starts in most of their innings last season thanks to the presence of Prior and skipper Robyn Searle at the top of the order.

The Mpumalanga product’s transformation from a bowling all-rounder to top-order batter was made complete in 2023/24 as Prior scored 305 runs for the Titans in the one-day competition, second only to Searle, at a superb average of 61.00, including three half-centuries. She was also the aggressor up front in the T20 tournament, striking at 106.66.

Prior is more of a part-time bowler these days, but her bustling medium-pace, with a bit of swing, still chips in with useful wickets.

Amogelang Maphangula

Amogelang Maphangula is the sort of white-ball player that gets viewers up off their couches – an exciting, dominating middle-order batter and a wonderful fielder.

Fresh out of her teens, Maphangula was really able to express herself with the bat in the 50-over competition last season, scoring 153 runs at an average of 25.50 and a phenomenal strike-rate of 124.39 – the best in the tournament.

She performed her finishing role with intent in the T20 league, striking at 103.70.

A thrilling season for Maphangula saw her play in Japan as part of an exchange programme and she was named the Titans’ Most Promising Player at the end of the local campaign.

Who knows where Maphangula’s cricketing odyssey will end, what we do know is that it will get spectators on their feet.

Kay-Leigh Tapp

Tapp began her provincial career way back in 2006 in Durban, where she was born, and, going into her 15^th season of senior cricket, she is still a wonderful pace bowler. Tapp joined the Titans in 2021 after a four-year break from the game; her appointment as head of girls’ sport and physical education at Beaulieu Preparatory School was why she moved to Gauteng.

The 34-year-old was a key member of the Fidelity Titans’ one-day team last season, taking 11 wickets, but what she did particularly well was restrict the batters – conceding just 3.83 runs-per-over. Tapp was similarly economical in the T20 competition, going for just 7.71 runs-per-over.

Tapp is a tall bowler who is able to bowl consistent lines and can either hit the deck hard or get the ball up to the batter.

Monalisa Legodi

One is loathe to put too much pressure on young cricketers and Monalisa Legodi is still a teenager but has become a regular in the Fidelity Titans senior outfit. The tall and athletic pace bowler played 13 times in both one-day and T20 cricket for the team last season and was particularly effective in the 50-over game, taking seven wickets in six matches at an average of 19.85 and conceding just 5.14 runs-per-over.

Having already played for the SA U19 and SA Emerging teams, Legodi is poised to enter Titans lore if she continues to mature into the bowler she is expected to become. As far back as December 2020, Legodi, from the Soshanguve hub, grabbed an opportunity to impress then senior national coach Hilton Moreeng with her performances when he attended the Women’s Super League in Cape Town.

Alysia Rudolph

The 27-year-old Rudolph is a new signing from Division II side Easterns. A marvellously talented cricketer, she can bowl mesmerising off-spin as well as being a mighty striker of the ball, either at the top of the order or as a finisher.

Rudolph was a star all-round sportsgirl at Vereeniging Gimnasium and first played senior cricket in the Gauteng system, where she spent five years. She joined Easterns in 2020/21 and has earned her stint back in the domestic top division by virtue of her performances with the ball last season. Rudolph was the leading wicket-taker in the T20 Division II competition as well as being in the top-five in one-day cricket. With the bat, she struck at 84.31 in the 50-over game and 120.89 in the shortest format.

Pura Andreou

A product of the powerful Cornwall Hill College cricket system, Pura Andreou is a new signing for the Fidelity Titans, fresh out of school. But she has been a dominant batter not just against her peers, but in Northerns senior premier league club cricket. Andreou plays for Irene Villagers and shone for them back in April at the T20 national club championships. Andreou has played for the Titans U19 team since 2021, taking a terrible toll on bowling attacks since then.

Masabata Klaas

The Proteas stalwart hails from Botshabelo in the Free State and joined the Fidelity Titans last season, enjoying a marvellous debut campaign in which she topped both the batting and bowling averages for the team in the T20 competition. Klaas claimed seven scalps in her five T20s, averaging just 15.00 and conceding just 5.52 runs-per-over. She also showed she has the makings of a genuine all-rounder, producing some mighty blows as she scored 94 runs in four innings, being dismissed just once and scoring at a magnificent strike-rate of 130.55.

Klaas took six one-day wickets, with an economy rate of only 4.40, and also averaged 25.33 with the bat, at a strike-rate of 83.51.

A bustling pace bowler who keeps to tight off-side lines and has an excellent slower-ball, Klaas has played nearly 150 times for South Africa in all formats and is an inspirational figure because she took time off from her career to be a mother.

Laura Wolvaardt

A prestigious signing for the Fidelity Titans last season, Wolvaardt’s hot run of form just keeps rolling on, even though she has also now taken over the captaincy of the Proteas. In Tests she became just the third player to score a century in all three formats of women’s international cricket; in ODIs she powered her way to five centuries last season while scoring 925 runs in 15 innings, at an average of 84.09 and a strike-rate of 88.68; and in T20s she averaged 62 with a strike-rate of 124.

A global superstar who has won the Big Bash League twice and has also played in the T20 leagues in England and India, Wolvaardt was named South Africa’s Player of the Year earlier in 2024 and walked away with four other awards. Born in Milnerton and educated at Parklands College in the Western Cape, Wolvaardt first began playing cricket with boys when she was four years old.

A supreme stylist at the crease, with arguably the most beautiful cover-drive in the game, opening batter Wolvaardt combines technical excellence with fiery strokeplay.

Anneke Bosch

The 31-year-old Proteas regular joined the Fidelity Titans last season and, without ever going wild with the bat, enjoyed a very solid debut season for the Sky Blue Daisies.

Bosch averaged 39.50 in 50-over cricket and 37.75 in the T20 competition. Technically correct as a batter who is flexible enough to bat in the top-order and lower down, Bosch also offers part-time seam bowling and has a dozen international wickets to her name.

Hailing from East London, Bosch’s journey to the Titans has taken her via Border, Free State and North-West. She made her Proteas debut in 2016 and is a qualified biokineticist.

Sune Luus

The Titans legend and former Proteas captain goes into the 2024/25 season having enjoyed her own version of an Indian summer to give her plenty of momentum. Luus scored 65 and an epic 109 in South Africa’s Test against India in Chennai in June, showing that beneath the broadest of smiles there is a character with huge tenacity.

Luus, who has a cricket-mad father and older brother, took up the game at the age of four and by the time she was 13, she was playing for the Titans senior side already, debuting in 2009. Luus was a top-order batter for the Hoërskool Menlopark boys team through to U15 level, taking on provincial representatives.

Apart from scoring more than 3700 runs for South Africa in all formats, Luus has also taken more than 150 white-ball wickets with her well-flighted leg-spin.

A gutsy performer, Luus is one of the most accomplished cricketers to come out of Northerns territory and everyone at the Titans was delighted to see her back to her best for the Proteas, after some tough series.

Luus fitted in four appearances for the Fidelity Titans last season between all her international commitments and played a couple of blazing knocks in the T20 competition, striking at 155.10.

Eliz-Mari Marx

A penetrative pace bowler and a big-hitting batter, Marx has been part of the Titans set-up since 2016, when she was just 13 years old.

But last season was her breakthrough campaign. The all-rounder started the season by nailing the SWD Badgers attack for 115 runs off just 66 balls, an innings studded with 11 fours and six sixes. In December she made her Proteas debut and in February she claimed two key wickets in a robust spell of pace bowling during South Africa’s historic first ODI win against Australia on their home turf.

Born and bred in Pretoria, Marx went to Hoërskool Zwartkop, the same school that produced Titans legend Mignon du Preez. Physically powerful, Marx is fast becoming a key player for the Daisies and a rising talent in South African cricket.

Gordon Matheson

Gordon Matheson comes to SuperSport Park as the new head coach of the Fidelity Titans after three challenging seasons in charge of the Mpumalanga senior men’s team.

An experienced mentor who has been coaching since 2001, Matheson was previously in charge of the King Edward V11 1^st XI and played a pivotal role in the development of exciting new stars in South African cricket like Bryce Parsons and Mitchell van Buuren.

A coach who is strong on batting and building relationships with his players, Matheson was introduced to the game as a young child by his grandfather (also Gordon), who played first-class cricket for Griqualand West in the 1960s.

Athi Maphosa

Having been the assistant coach of the KZN Inland Tuskers men’s team in Division One last season, Athi Maphosa is an exciting addition to the Fidelity Titans coaching staff.

The 34-year-old Maphosa has plenty of playing experience, appearing more than a hundred times for the KZN Inland team as a tidy pace bowler, as well as featuring in 13 franchise matches for the Dolphins.

Born in Umzimkulu in the southern Natal Midlands, Maphosa was educated at Maritzburg College and played for the SA Schools Colts side in 2008. He has also been involved in coaching at hubs level – at Sweetwaters.

More words have been written about former SA U19 captain David Teeger in the last week than for any other skipper ever before in the build-up to the junior world cup, but what about his successor, Juan James?

The 19-year-old James has more experience than Teeger, being 96 days older and having already played senior first-class cricket for Western Province and North-West.

The furore that followed Teeger’s comments supporting the Israeli defence force, the subsequent investigation into what he said at the Jewish Achievers Awards in October, his not guilty verdict but then Cricket South Africa’s decision to strip him of the captaincy anyway, would have made most teenagers exceedingly unhappy and one could have forgiven the national U19 team for going into their showpiece tournament feeling bitter and gloomy.

But this SA U19 squad is made of much more sterner stuff and it seems they have been able to handle the whole controversy more maturely and sensibly than their so-called adult leaders on the CSA Board.

Teeger’s comments, which were made five days before Israel’s large-scale invasion of Gaza, were the subject of no-holds-barred questioning from his team-mates when the squad did media training ahead of their world cup.

Other questions dealt with quotas and matchfixing.

Perhaps this willingness to engage with each other and confront any issues head on is why the team has been able to rally around each other in the wake of Teeger’s controversial axing as captain.

“The whole thing has not affected us at all,” James said earlier this week. “We are a very tight bunch and we stick to our processes as a team.

“David is taking the disappointment very well, he told me that he will give me his full backing and he is prepared to give everything in trying to score runs and take wickets for the team.”

They certainly showed more resolve and ability to handle tough situations than many other South African teams at world cups when they held off a ferocious challenge from the West Indies to win their opening game by 31 runs in Potchefstroom.

Teeger scored 44 and took an important wicket, and appeared to be leading them during the West Indian run-chase when James left the field with an injury.

The Caledon-born James made his senior first-class debut last season for North-West, but Western Province quickly decided to find the finances and bring him back home for this season. Before heading to Potchefstroom University, James had attended Wynberg High School and played club cricket for Ottomans.

While he has batted down the order for the SA U19s and been used more as a very handy off-spin bowler, he has batted at number six for the Western Province senior side.

Having been introduced to the game by his father as a three-year-old in the backyard, James is determined to make full use of every opportunity available to him. His most impressive first-class innings so far came against the Titans at SuperSport Park last season when he came in as a concussion substitute and lashed 37 off just 35 balls.

“It wasn’t a lot of runs, but it was definitely a confidence boost for me because it was the first time I felt I belonged at that level,” James said.

Teeger’s blacklisting by CSA has placed James firmly in the spotlight, but he has captained the SA U19s before, during their series in Bangladesh in July last year.

“It’s second nature for me and the team seems to be engaging quite well with me,” James said ahead of the World Cup. “I’m a fairly relaxed captain, I just want everyone to be themselves.

“But I do like to take the opposition on. I like to take control as a captain, but I don’t mind getting ideas from my team-mates.”

The last time South Africa and Australia met in a Test series, cricket fans’ cellphones were full of images of sandpaper and changeroom confrontations with the captain only wearing a towel, but Proteas skipper Dean Elgar is hoping that this time the spiciness stays on the field and does not cross the line into illegality.

The infamous “Sandpapergate” tour of 2017/18 was the last Test series between the two great rivals, with South Africa winning 3-1 as Australian captain Steven Smith and batsmen David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were banned for their ball-tampering shenanigans in the third Test.

“I have no animosity at all for any of the players or Australian cricket,” Elgar said in Brisbane on Monday. “It was a tough time for all of us and obviously they were sad events, it was unfortunate.

“We have moved forward as a group, although we wish things could have happened differently because there is a rich history of cricket between us and we have a similarly competitive nature.

“It was extremely juicy out in the middle, they were interesting times, but hopefully that has all been put to bed. There’s always a bit of spice on the field when we play Australia, but hopefully none of those antics.

“We love playing against Australia, we have heaps of respect for them, and hopefully this series will be a good spectacle,” Elgar said.

With Australia having plenty of depth when it comes to pacemen, the series should be a fast bowling extravaganza. Although he can be a bit of an enigma, notably in the T20 World Cup in Australia a month ago, Kagiso Rabada is still South Africa’s leading Test bowler. And Elgar is excited by the quick bowlers he has to support him – Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortje, Marco Jansen, Gerald Coetzee and Lizaad Williams.

“KG’s career and repertoire speaks for itself in terms of what he can bring to the table,” Elgar said. “But it’s good to have options and all our bowlers bring something unique.

“It’s exciting to have raw pace in the changeroom and, facing them in the nets, I’m happy that they are part of our squad. Their skillsets are up there and they can bring the heat as well.

“In Australian conditions, you want a balance of skill and raw pace. You get a lot of value on these pitches if you can execute and hit the right areas,” Elgar said.

South Africa begin their tour with a warm-up match against a Cricket Australia XI at Allan Border Field in Brisbane from Friday to next Monday.

The first Test starts at the Gabba in Brisbane on December 17.

Despite his own lack of form, results on the field have been kind to Proteas captain Temba Bavuma, and his team-mates have certainly shown their compassion for their skipper’s current struggles.

While Bavuma has scored just 17 runs in his last five innings, South Africa are now top of Group II in the T20 World Cup, and victory over Pakistan in Sydney on Thursday will almost certainly seal their semi-final place. They also have a match against the winless Netherlands, who are already eliminated, in which to qualify for the knockout round.

So the only likely change to the Proteas team for that Pakistan clash will be whether the second frontline spinner, Tabraiz Shamsi, returns to the starting XI.

“Every player goes through slumps and it seems worse when the games are so close together,” Aiden Markram said in support of Bavuma. “We’ve all been there and we all support Temba.

“We all know his important role in the team is not just about his batting. I think his leadership has been very good and he’s made some excellent on-field decisions.

“No one doubts his ability at all, we know he will come right. I’ve been there myself, more than once,” Markram said.

Although the door to the semi-finals has now leaned ajar for the Proteas after their delightful victory over India, Markram said they have learned to not get ahead of themselves.

“Being top of the log is a good thing, but we certainly don’t think we have one foot in the door. It’s going to be a massive game against Pakistan and then the Netherlands.

“We’ve seen in this Super 12 that any side can beat any team on their day. We just have to make sure we get better in each game, and that will give us the best chance of qualifying,” Markram said.

Bavuma is not the only captain under pressure at this World Cup, but his strike-rate this year is 77.22, compared to the 119.90 of Australian skipper Aaron Finch and the 115.59 of Kane Williamson of the Black Caps.

Tristan Stubbs has only scored 7 and 6 in his two innings at this World Cup, but the young man is coming in late in the innings and trying to hit boundaries. Considering his role and inexperience, it would be unfair to expect too much consistency from him at this stage, but if he does come off, then the results could be spectacular.