Ken Borland

When Australia arrived in South Africa for their four-Test series, it was billed as the battle of the bowling attacks, and it was the Proteas who had the gas required to take 80 wickets, while the tourists could claim just 70 wickets as they went down 3-1.

So just how did South Africa manage to bowl Australia out in all eight innings of the series?

“Firstly, you’ve got to have good fast bowlers and we’re lucky that we do, and they’re good in any conditions. And then you add Keshav Maharaj to the mix and Lungi Ngidi came in and made his mark as well. There were guys putting their hand up all the time.

“Kagiso Rabada was Man of the Series, but I was especially pleased with Vernon Philander. I set him a challenge at the start of the series and he exceeded it, he bowled the overs and got the wickets, so I’m delighted for him. It’s a shame to see Morne Morkel go with the way he’s bowling at the moment, he’s a handful for batsmen,” Proteas coach Ottis Gibson said.

The solid batting performance was also down to the unit as a whole performing, with four different batsmen getting centuries.

Gibson said he was also especially pleased by the way his team handled the controversies and enmity that would burn through the series, until Australia arrived at the Wanderers a beaten side.

“One thing I focus on all the time is keeping the focus on the cricket. It was disappointing that after every game the story was never about the cricket. We lost the first Test badly and we needed a strong statement and we did that. But still our performance didn’t take centre stage, even though we had played really well.

“They were playing under the whole pressure of not winning a series against Australia here since readmission, fixing that was our goal and focus, and after not being at our best in Durban, the guys said it’s okay, there are three Tests left. It was a fantastic performance, with youngsters Aiden Markram and Kagiso Rabada leading the batting and bowling, but when we needed to see the experienced players come through, they did that. We performed across the board,” Gibson said.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20180405/282325385537518

Ardent South African cricket followers would have heard of the success of the University of Pretoria team and now the Assupol Tuks are taking their talents overseas as they represent the country in the Red Bull Campus Cricket Finals in London.

Tuks have been the national club champions for the last three years, enjoying an 18-match unbeaten run in the process, they are the South African Students Sports Union champions and in the last week they have beaten SA A twice in warm-up games.

And so they will arrive in England on Friday confident of their chances of winning the title in their first appearance at the Red Bull Campus Cricket Finals, in what amounts to a T20 Varsity World Cup.

“We’ve put a lot of work in for the last 12 weeks and I’m really chuffed with our preparation. It was great for the guys to play against SA A and measure themselves, and we managed to ruffle a few feathers as well.

“So everyone’s looking confident and very excited. We’re expecting a very high standard at the tournament, but we’re going there to win. The trophy looks like the real World Cup and we want it here,” coach Pierre de Bruyn said before the team’s departure on Thursday evening.

The student champions from the United Kingdom, Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the West Indies are taking part in the finals, with 106 universities taking part in the qualifying tournaments. The eight finalists will be split into two round-robin groups of four, with the draw only being done on Sunday evening. The top two teams in each group will then contest the semi-finals on Saturday, with the final to follow later the same day.

The strength of the Tuks team would seem to lie in their batting. Opener Aiden Markram was not only the inspirational captain of the SA U19 side that won the Junior World Cup earlier this year but was also named the Player of the Tournament for the runs he scored at the top of the order. He has shown no signs of easing up since then and is joined in a powerful Tuks batting line-up by Theunis de Bruyn, one of the brightest batting talents in the Titans franchise, and strokeplayers such as Heinrich Klaasen, Sean Dickson and Johan Wessels, all of whom have been in fine form lately.

Left-armer Vincent Moore and Corbin Bosch, another SA U19 star who was man of the match in the Junior World Cup final, spearhead the bowling. Both have immaculate skills in the death overs, while seamers De Bruyn, Tian Koekemoer and Wessels, and off-spinners Markram and the lanky Ruben Claasen, slow left-armer David Mogotlane and leg-spinner GC Pretorius provide a wealth of options in all conditions.

The success of the Tuks side in the last three years also means they have mastered the knack of winning under pressure and coach De Bruyn, one of the most tenacious players of his era, takes pride in the ability of his team to get the job done.

“Some people don’t like pressure, but we want it, we thrive on it. We don’t pretend it’s not around and we’ve coached the players to deal with it. They make sure they find a way to perform under pressure and that plays a massive role, they have belief when they’re under the pump because they’ve overcome most pressure situations in the last three years,” De Bruyn said.

“I don’t think we could be better prepared, we’ve done the hard work and now we just need to express our skills with confidence. We’re a tight unit, we’ve been tested under pressure and we’ve won matches which we shouldn’t have won. I’m very confident in the batting and we have all the bases covered in our bowling,” Theunis de Bruyn, the captain, said.

The tournament starts on Monday at the Wormsley Cricket Club, while Saturday’s semi-finals and final will be held at the famous Oval.

Participating teams: Leeds Bradford MCC (United Kingdom); University of New South Wales (Australia); University of Liberal Arts (Bangladesh); Rizvi College (India); Karachi University (Pakistan); University of Pretoria (South Africa); International College of Business and Technology (Sri Lanka); Jamaica University (West Indies).

Tuks squad: Theunis de Bruyn, Heinrich Klaasen, Sean Dickson, Gerry Pike, Aiden Markram, Corbin Bosch, David Mogotlane, Tian Koekemoer, Vincent Moore, Nsovo Baloyi, GC Pretorius, Ruben Claassen, Johan Wessels.

It was a very exciting weekend of rugby – although obviously the SuperRugby results weren’t very good for South Africa – and the importance of competing hard at the breakdowns was shown in two of the biggest games of the weekend.

One of the positives for South African rugby to take out of the weekend was France beating England in such passionate, collision-dominant fashion. They really blitzed England at the breakdowns and the tackle and have certainly given the Springboks a blueprint for success in their June series against England. The things which worked for France are certainly tactics we can do as well.

Defensively, France really competed at the breakdown and were able to disrupt England’s really flat attack. The decision needs to be made by the Springboks to replicate this, although it also depends on what loose forward combination they choose. But the Springboks tend to prefer having 14 players on their feet, all defending in a row. I can remember Chean Roux and Rassie Erasmus preaching to us that for the first 15 minutes the Springboks mustn’t compete at all at the breakdown! Fortunately we ignored that.

Obviously England have breakdown problems away from home and they were only able to get go-forward when their finishers came on, guys like James Haskell and Kyle Sinckler. When they came on it solved their problem in terms of power in the collisions and I’m sure Eddie Jones would have learnt some lessons about having more power up front. Especially with two of the Tests against South Africa being played at altitude, the power factor really comes into play in what should be high-scoring games.

The Lions versus Blues game was also a very exciting encounter. The Blues gave it their all, they played with an utter sense of purpose and passion, and they played with that intensity for the full 80 minutes. Normally against the Lions at altitude, the wheels come off at the back end of the match – think back to the game against the Hurricanes in the semi-final last year and even against the Crusaders in the final when the Lions only had 14 men. The Lions certainly finished the stronger team in both those games.

But the Blues were the stronger finishers last weekend and I’m not convinced the balance of the Lions back row is correct. Playing lock is very different to blindside flank and the Lions have been at their best when Kwagga Smith, Warren Whiteley and Jaco Kriel have been their loose trio, along with Malcolm Marx at hooker. That group is good on the floor, at the breakdown and in the tackle, which enables them to slow down the opposition’s ball and win turnovers.

And because the Lions generally play to a 1-3-3-1 system, it means they usually have two back-rowers on the edge of the field, which provides them with strike power, certainly Smith and Kriel have given them real impetus in the past.

It’s not quite the same when you look at Franco Mostert playing that role, and then you look at the ease with which the Blues scrumhalf was able to get around him at scrum time. The Lions need to look at whether he should be persevered with at number seven; the problem is they are well-stocked at lock and maybe they feel their other back-row players aren’t up to the level needed.

With the loss of Whiteley for the next four games we will see whether the experiment will continue or whether the Lions will go down another road.

To be fair to the Blues, they were very disciplined and they gave a blueprint as to how to beat the Lions. They denied them entry into their own 22, from where they strike with their strong lineout and drive, and they obviously didn’t give them many penalties.

The Blues were also able to keep the ball, through many phases, and the Lions were just not able to get over the ball and get steals. The Lions defence was good, but there were few turnovers, so they were on the back foot for long periods of the game.

Aphiwe Dyantyi made two key interventions in the match – his interception try was absolutely superb and then his charge down of a restart, if he had just been able to gather the ball then the game would have been won … those are the small margins in SuperRugby.

But the major thing is that the Lions spent too long defending and the Blues got the confidence to come back. And what a good effort it was to come back from 21-3 down. At altitude things change quickly, but normally for the home team.

The Blues generally kicked off shape – in other words they would keep the ball in order to bring the Lions wings up and isolate Andries Coetzee at the back, meaning they were able to find space in the corners quite easily, and a good chase then meant the Lions were under pressure.

Most importantly, your scrum has to stand up to the opposition front five, and the Blues did that all game.

You have to credit the Blues for never running out of steam, and credit to the Lions for their part in a fantastic game of rugby. It shows the high standards of Swys de Bruin that he was very upset and complaining about his team at halftime, even though they were 21-10 up. Swys favours all-out attack, he has a simple philosophy of beating your man, he wants his players to take on their opposite number.

It’s been a big month for the Lions with two local derbies, but there will always be a slight let-up in intensity somewhere in the competition and there are times when you have to win when you are not at your best.

It was also interesting to note Marx being kept on the field for the whole time, so he’s now played four straight 80 minutes, even though Robbie Coetzee is not a bad replacement. The Lions are going to have to look at Marx’s workload.

I was with the Sharks at the weekend and I was able to visit my old Springbok friend Ricardo Loubscher, who is now coaching their SuperSport Rugby Challenge side. It was nice to exchange ideas with him and meet up with a lot of old friends at Kings Park.

I was also able to meet and chat with Alan Zondagh, the former Western Province coach, who has a great passion for attack. He raised a very interesting point that all teams play a similar style of attack these days – the 1-3-3-1, you see the same style from all the teams.

It will be an interesting weekend of SuperRugby again and I think the Lions will bounce back, they’ll be expecting five points as they have the good fortune to play the Sunwolves, and remain in a good position before they go on tour. I don’t think their slip-up against the Blues will be too costly because the Aucklanders are not really seen as contenders, and a bonus point win this weekend will see them still in a good position.

The Sharks now have a difficult run of four games away on tour and it was interesting to see coach Robert du Preez being so positive as to target four wins. That would be a first for a touring side!

The Bulls are in Hamilton, John Mitchell’s old stamping ground, to face the Chiefs and it will be interesting to see how they go. The Chiefs have been competitive this season, they beat the Blues before their good win this last weekend. It’s been an interesting change to have Damian McKenzie at flyhalf and I didn’t expect them to be as good as they have been. But in New Zealand they just seem to be able to rustle up fresh 100kg centres and wings that are flippen quick.

The Stormers have a home game against the Blues and it is non-negotiable to win at home if you are going to try and get a home semi-final. Anything away from home is a bonus. Just look at the Hurricanes, who were not very convincing against the Bulls but then smashed the Crusaders quite convincingly in Wellington last weekend.

John McFarland is the assistant coach of the Kubota Spears in Japan and was the Springbok defence coach from 2012 through to the 2015 World Cup, where they conceded the least line-breaks in the tournament and an average of just one try per game. Before that, McFarland won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls. In all, he won 28 trophies during his 12 years at Loftus Versfeld.

If the Proteas are to be regularly playing on pitches with pace and bounce at home in the future then “the time is right to start moving now” towards the solution to the pitch problems that have been highlighted in South African cricket during the India tour, according to Cricket South Africa pitch consultant Hilbert Smit.

For a country renowned for the quality of their fast bowling, the pitches in South Africa have generally been becoming slower and lower, and the solution will be drop-in pitches, according to Smit.

“Our pitches are old, it’s as simple as that. Maybe only Centurion is less than 10 years old, so they are all over-used and full of organic matter. You must remember that a pitch is a living creature and when the grass dies off, you get natural decomposition which helps new grass to grow because nutrients are released. But you also get a build-up of organic matter and that’s what makes a pitch slow and low.

“And a new pitch can’t be used for international cricket for the first two years because it needs to settle and it’s more difficult to do this on-site because you have games next door or over it going on all the time. Plus we can only use the three or four middle strips for all televised games.

“Australia have similar conditions to us and they have addressed this problem with drop-in pitches. We have to make a plan too because with cricket starting on the highveld in August, there’s no time to grow pitches out in the middle. So drop-ins are the only solution,” Smit told Saturday Citizen on Friday.

The highly-experienced groundsman says he will be sending a comprehensive report to CSA at the end of March on the state of pitches around the country and, while Australia’s system is very expensive due to the cost of transporting the drop-ins, Smit believes necessity is the mother of invention and a local solution has been found which will bring the costs down to acceptable levels.

“In Australia it costs about A$7 million, but we do have a local engineer who has come up with a concept, a unique design, that could cut that to a one-off R2-3 million per ground. Then we can replace pitches every year. That is the way forward because it’s something we have to address,” Smit said.

While there will always be a debate around whether it is acceptable for the national team to demand certain types of pitches, there is general concensus around the cricketing world that wickets with pace and bounce are the best way to develop batsmen with the all-round game to succeed all over the world. Even India have pushed for those attributes at home.

Many have linked the fall of West Indies cricket to the decline in their pitches in the 1990s, hard surfaces with pace and carry becoming slow and low.

“You can’t expect to produce proper cricketers if you can’t produce proper conditions,” the late, great fast bowler Malcolm Marshall said in 1998 when he was the West Indies coach. “We’ve got batsmen coming through now with plenty of faults and that’s largely due to the sub-standard pitches they’re playing on.”

The good news for South African cricket is that there is agreement that there is a problem.

“Conditions in South Africa have changed quite a lot, the pitches are over-used and have become slower, more spin-friendly. There was a lot more pace and bounce when I started my career, for example in Durban, Shaun Pollock used to call the Kingsmead pitch his lawn because of all the grass. You now consider reverse-swing and spin as your main weapons there,” Graeme Smith, who debuted for the Proteas in 2002, said.

The groundsman’s lot is not an easy one with hostile African weather always threatening to derail the preparations, so they need all the help they can get given the enormous workload of their creations.

“Grass is what gives a pitch its pace, and our groundsmen are now trying to grow it through winter, but too much grass is dangerous. Cricket is the only sport in the world where you see the effect of such a little playing area, the pitch determines the whole way the game is played, everything’s all about that little 3×22 metre patch. It can cause a total mismatch.

“We are all human and we all get it wrong sometimes, plus you’ve got the influence of the weather as well. For an inexperienced groundsman, it is basically unfair and this series has highlighted that. But we don’t want to make the same mistakes, so we will have closer mentoring and link with the RPCs and Hubs to bring guys through. One of our shortcomings is mentoring and training,” Smit, who is only in his first year in a full-time capacity with CSA, said.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-africa-sport/sa-cricket-sport/1804869/the-time-is-now-for-south-african-cricket-to-cure-pitch-ills/