Ken Borland

Springbok great Bryan Habana spent enough time playing in Europe to know exactly what it would entail for South African rugby to ditch Sanzaar and move into Northern Hemisphere competitions, and the 2007 World Cup winner is not totally sold on the idea, he said on Wednesday.

There has been global speculation that the world champions will leave Sanzaar after the 2023 World Cup to play in an expanded Six Nations tournament as well as their SuperRugby franchises joining European competitions like the Pro14 and Champions Cup. There has also been talk emanating from Australia of Sanzaar excluding teams from both South Africa and Argentina and focusing on just a trans-Tasman competition with New Zealand.

Habana, who scored a South African record 56 SuperRugby tries for the Bulls and Stormers, finished his career spending five years playing for Toulon so he has intimate knowledge of European competition.

“There’s been a lot of debate about South Africa joining the Northern Hemisphere but right now nobody even knows when rugby will be back in South Africa. Probably the one thing most needed by rugby is a global season. But I suppose the one question is whether Sanzaar need SA Rugby, they have been an important part of Sanzaar for the last 25 years.

“For those in the UK and Europe it’s much easier to watch games in South Africa than those in New Zealand or Australia. But it’s important to see where the Springboks and SuperRugby teams could fit in and they would have to fit in with the Northern Hemisphere schedule. I don’t see our guys enjoying playing in 5⁰ in December/January and how are our rugby fans going to enjoy watching rugby over Christmas when they’re on holiday?” Habana said on Wednesday in a virtual press conference to announce the launch of MatchKit.co, a mobile tech platform intended to help athletes grow their commercial brands, set up by the Retroactive agency of which he is a partner.

There have also been suggestions South African teams could play in both Sanzaar and the Northern Hemisphere, expanding the current involvement of the Free State Cheetahs and the Southern Kings in the Pro14, but Habana said the workload on the players even if they were just involved in Europe would be immense.

“When Toulon won the double in 2014/15 they played more than 40 games and player welfare is important. If we’re going to add four more teams and include the Springboks in the Six Nations then that would mean even more matches. There are advantages to both hemispheres, the players would learn more about foreign conditions and that allows you to develop more as a rugby player and as a person.

“To say who has the better standard of play though is very subjective because what determines a good standard? The Northern Hemisphere has come strongly to the fore in the last few years: In the 2015 World Cup the top four sides were all from the Southern Hemisphere, but in 2019 it was very different [England, New Zealand, Wales, South Africa]. Hopefully our decision-makers will choose what is best for the game as a whole,” Habana said.

Kagiso Rabada, the Proteas’ top strike bowler, admitted on Monday that the previous season was a disappointment, backing up the statistics which show that it was the 25-year-old’s poorest since he began playing Test cricket for South Africa.

The former No.1 bowler in the world played six Tests in the 2019/20 season and took 21 wickets at an average of 32.85, the first time since making his debut in 2015/16 that his average has dipped into the ‘mediocre’ thirties. His previously least successful season was 2017 in England when he took 16 wickets in three Tests at 28.43. His career figures of 197 wickets in 43 Tests at an average of just 22.95 are a truer reflection of the immense talent he possesses.

To make matters worse, Rabada missed the crucial fourth Test against England at the Wanderers, when the Proteas had a chance of levelling the series, having been suspended for once again provocatively celebrating in the dismissed batsman’s face. The Wanderers has been a happy hunting ground for the Central Gauteng Lions star, with 24 wickets in five Tests there, at an average of just 20.54.

Rabada did not play in an ODI over the summer, but his performance in the World Cup last year was a let-down as he took just 11 wickets in nine matches, at an average of 36.09 and an economy rate of 5.08.

“This Covid-19 has affected people from multiple points of view and there are a lot of economic challenges. But I’ve been glad to get the rest, just not in the way it came, because the last five years have gone really quickly and there’s been a huge volume of cricket. So I’ve really, really enjoyed the break, it’s allowed me to think about what I really want, which makes it easier to set goals.

“The past season was disappointing, my stats were okay but I felt really rusty and a bit out of place. But it’s never supposed to be easy at international level and next season I will just take it day-by-day and try and achieve a new set of goals. Whatever I can contribute to the team winning would be great. That means you enjoy your cricket more and I am 150% committed to South African cricket,” Rabada said on Monday.

Rabada seemed less concerned with his overexuberant celebrations that have landed him in trouble with match referees and have certainly distracted from the focus of the Proteas at key times.

“It’s just passion. I’ve identified the things I need to work on and I will address those with the people closest to me and those people who I feel should help me. People are always going to criticise you in some way and it’s important not to take that to heart. You will always have critics no matter what you do and what others say should not affect you.

“It’s up to you what you want to reflect on and it’s got nothing to do with anyone else,” Rabada, who has been helping out the World Health Organisation with his Viral Wellness initiative along with Cameron Scott and Kingdom Kome, said.

Top South African golfer Justin Harding says he faces a predicament in arranging his schedule once professional golf resumes because he plays in both Europe and the United States and has to juggle their mussed up schedules with the quarantine and travel regulations of the various countries hosting events.

It is a problem facing many golfers as the U.S. PGA Tour hopes to resurrect their schedule on June 11 with the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial and the European Tour is supposedly going to start again at the end of July with a run of events in the United Kingdom. But many of the world’s top golfers hop between the European and American tours, which now becomes a logistical nightmare with all the quarantining and testing that will be required for international travel.

“The European Tour is going to try put on four or five weeks of action in the UK, and hopefully there will be reduced quarantine measures by the end of that otherwise it’s going to be a scheduling nightmare. If you want to play in America you have to go 14 days beforehand, and going to Europe you also need 14 days’ quarantine. The PGA Championship is scheduled for the second week of August, so if you play in the British Masters from July 23 then you miss the quarantine deadline.

“The Korn Ferry Tour [the secondary U.S. tour for which Harding has full status] sent out a 57-page memorandum on the different regulations for when they start on June 8, but I have no intention of playing a full schedule on that tour. I need the world ranking points from the European Tour, and it doesn’t make sense quarantining for six weeks just to play three tournaments,” Harding said in a recent Sunshine Tour virtual press conference.

And before one accuses the 34-year-old world number 111 of being lazy, it is a viewpoint shared by many other golfers and Harding has proven his credentials by playing all over the world in recent years. One trip to the United States that he is willing to make, however, is for the Masters, which has been rescheduled for November 12-15. Harding made an impressive debut at the Masters last year, finishing in a tie for 12^th just five shots behind winner Tiger Woods, earning himself an invitation for this year’s Major.

“I’m certainly happy that the Masters wasn’t cancelled like the Open Championship! I’m dying to go back again and I wasn’t in a great run of form when we stopped playing golf but hopefully I can go to Augusta in November and be competitive. It’s a very strategic course and you need to put the ball in the right places. But I have no idea what the course will be like at that time of year.

“I’m sure Augusta will look different, I think it will be quite firm after it was quite wet last year. It will also be the debuts of Erik van Rensburg and Christiaan Bezuidenhout there so that’s going to be good fun. I think they’re the most upset about golf being suspended because they were both flying! Whereas I had had a dip in form which I was trying to play through, so the 10-week break might be good for me,” Harding said.

Dean Elgar, in typically dauntless fashion, said on Monday that he is not only up for the challenge of being South Africa’s new Test captain but that leadership also comes “extremely easily” to him.

The resolute 32-year-old opening batsman has been mentioned as a strong candidate for the Test captaincy now that Faf du Plessis has retired and Quinton de Kock has been told he will only be the white-ball captain. Elgar is assured of his place in the team and has captained the Test side before, losing by 211 runs to England at Lord’s in 2017 and beating Pakistan by 107 runs at the Wanderers in 2019. And the left-hander said on Monday that he was willing to step up and take the reins if asked.

“It’s tough being a Test captain but I think leadership has generally come extremely easily to me, I’ve done the job a lot, from school days through to franchise level. If it were offered to me I would definitely think long and hard about it and it would mean a lot to me. But it’s not like a job interview where you hand in your CV. You don’t put your hand up for it, it’s something that’s decided by someone else, who they think is the best person for the job and I will respect their decision,” Elgar said.

“But in the last eight years of playing international cricket I’ve had quite vast learnings from the personnel in the changeroom on the way you conduct yourself when it comes to preparation, the media and off the field. I’m extremely grateful for that, as a person I’ve never stopped growing and hopefully what I’ve learnt I can pass on to the younger guys.”

And Elgar, renowned as being one of the toughest competitors around, certainly has visions of restoring South Africa to their past status as one of the world’s best teams.

“We’re coming off a tough summer playing India away and England at home and I would have liked to have seen the team win more games and be more consistent in my own performances so that I leave the team in good stead. We threw some punches in the first Test against India at Vizag but then the wind went out of our sails and India were ruthless, they keep their foot on your throat whenever they smell blood.

“We started well against England but we struggled to do the basics for longer periods, which England did, utilising their experience. We needed more consistency, that’s an area for us to work on. If we do the basics for longer, especially in Test cricket, then the results might turn around. We need some hard chats, there’s definitely room for that, but also to trust in ourselves, have confidence in our ability and always think positively,” Elgar said.