Ken Borland

Following a hugely successful 2024 in which they conquered both hemispheres, former Springbok great Naas Botha believes South Africa have entered rugby Elysium and deserve to be ranked alongside the greatest ever teams to play the game.

The Springboks won the southern hemisphere’s Rugby Championship by a whopping eight points, losing just one of their six matches (by one point in Argentina), and then recently beat Scotland, England and Wales for an unbeaten tour for the Autumn InternationalSeries in the UK.

Their only other defeat in 2024 was against Ireland in July, losing 25-24 in Durban thanks to a last-minute drop goal by Ciaran Frawley. The 12 months since their 2023 World Cup triumph have been good for the Springboks, who remain the number one ranked team.

Flyhalf Botha was the key member of the South African team between 1980 and 1992, but due to the country’s banning from international competition, he only played 28 Tests. Nevertheless, he scored 312 points as one of the most accurate kickers the game has known.It was a record tally for the Springboks until Percy Montgomery surpassed it in 2004 in his 50^th match. The World Cup winning fullback still holds the record with 893 points in 102 Tests.

A brilliant rugby strategist, Botha, who was chosen for the World XV in 1986 and 1992, led his province, Northern Transvaal, to nine titles in the famous Currie Cup. He is that competition’s leading points-scorer with 1699, including a record 135 drop goals,many of them in high-pressure situations.

“It’s absolutely amazing what Rassie Erasmus and his squad have achieved and you have to give them that credit. One win does not make a great team, a magic moment does not make a great team. But magic season after season after season makes a great team. Youcan’t compare this Springbok team to any of their current rivals because we know the pool of players they have is frightening,” Botha told SportsBoom.com at Sun City, where he was playing in the Gary and Vivienne Player Invitational, a golf tournament that raises money for needy children at the Blair Atholl Pre-Primary School on Player’s Johannesburg estate.

Botha is now 66 years old and his rugby memories go back a long way, making him highly qualified to weigh in on the debate as to whether the current Springboks are the greatest team ever.

“By repeating in 2023 what they did in 2019 and winning the World Cup again, they did something that nobody can ever take away from them. No matter how you analyse it, they are the first South African team to do that. So who do you compare them to?

“You can’t really compare different eras and the 1980s were totally different to 2024. I played in some really good Springbok teams like the 1981 one that went to New Zealand was fantastic and the 1986 side that played the New Zealand Cavaliers. Then we havethe Jake White (2007) and Francois Pienaar (1995) teams that won World Cups.

“Going back, people used to talk about the 1937 Springbok team that won a series in New Zealand. We thought we had become only the second team to do that in 1981, before referee Clive Norling intervened.

“The 1974 British Lions were a great team, but they started in 1971 in New Zealand where they had an absolutely brilliant tour and then finished the job in 1974, unfortunately against us in South Africa. So we had to rebuild after that and we beat the BritishLions in 1980, so you have to give that Springbok team some credit too.

“The Australia team in 1984 won the Grand Slam, beating all four Home Nations, and Australia also won the World Cup in 1991 and 1999 when they cleaned up France in the final. And then we have the 2003 England team winning the World Cup in Australia.

“And what about all the New Zealand teams since then? Forget about World Cups, which you win in six or seven weeks, for the last 20 years, who has really dominated rugby before South Africa and you’d have to say the All Blacks, so give them credit as well.

“But the pleasure of this current Springbok team is that they have taken over and are playing at a different level. For once the world is following South Africa. I’m not meaning to sound arrogant, but I don’t think the rest of the world wants us around. They’reeven trying to make laws to eliminate our dominance, instead of just letting rugby be rugby and allowing the game to succeed. There is enough nonsense outside of rugby, we don’t need to let it on to the field,” Botha said.

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.

T20 franchise cricket has changed the life of more than one cricketer and the IPL, who held their mega auction at the start of the week, has done that more than most. But Betway SA20 Commissioner Graeme Smith wants South Africa’s franchise T20 tournament to do that and revitalise the game in the country he captained with such distinction.

The Indian Premier League is obviously the benchmark all other leagues aspire to, and their auction saw record prices being paid for the next tournament being held from March 14 next year, with the 10 franchises spending more than £60 million overall.

Smith wants the SA20 to continue growing in stature such that it is considered to be part of the top group of T20 tournaments, and the fact that so many South Africans and overseas players who feature in the SA20 are being picked up by the IPL as well, bodes well for the stature of the January/February competition.

Proteas stars Heinrich Klaasen, Marco Jansen (the most expensive overseas player), Quinton de Kock, Anrich Nortje, Kagiso Rabada, Gerald Coetzee, David Miller, Aiden Markram, Faf du Plessis and Lungi Ngidi have all been signed up by the IPL, as well as lesser-known players like Lizaad Williams, Kwena Maphaka, Matthew Breetzke, Donovan Ferreira, Ryan Rickelton and Tristan Stubbs, who have shone in the SA20 and thereby attracted the attention of the Indian franchise owners who all have teams in the IPL too.

Amongst the highest-paid overseas stars who were bought at the IPL auction are players like Josh Buttler, Jofra Archer, Moeen Ali, Noor Ahmad and Rashid Khan, who have all featured regularly in the SA20.

“From an SA20 perspective, it’s lovely to see the platform provided by our tournament to these players and there are a significant number of South African players in the top money-earners list,” Smith told sportsboom.com in an exclusive interview at the Wanderers in Johannesburg on Monday.

“Last year we produced the most players going to the IPL of all the overseas countries, and that shows the growth of our franchise cricket. And that includes a few youngsters, those are the good stories of people’s lives being changed, like Kwena Maphaka going to Rajasthan Royals for £142 000.

“So the exposure from the SA20 is very important but we also hope that the tournament keeps the Proteas strong. They haven’t had a great period in T20 cricket since making the World Cup final, but the IPL auction and the SA20 tournament show that there is still some incredible talent there.

“There is a lot of franchise cricket played around the world and we want to elevate SA20 so that it is one of the No.1 picks. There is like a Tier One of these T20 franchise tournaments and we certainly want to be up there. I think we are establishing ourselves as one of the Tier One events.

“The feedback from the overseas players has been incredible. They love coming to South Africa because of the crowds, they say the tournament is well-run and, most importantly, they say it provides extremely competitive cricket. Two years into the event, there is much higher confidence that we can pull it off and we hope it just keeps developing,” Smith said.

Smith has high hopes that the SA20 will also keep developing South African domestic talent into world-beating international stars. Never mind being able to get them on the phone, the likes of Tristan Luus, an SA U19 all-rounder, can sit in the Mumbai Indians changeroom and chat face-to-face with Ben Stokes about the game. Likewise, Breetzke, who has just set off on his international career, will be chewing the ear off of fellow top-order batsman Kane Williamson in the Durban Super Giants locker-room.

“With our rookie draft and our introduction of the SA20 Schools competition, we’re going to expose a lot of youngsters. Plus the franchises are unbelievable when it comes to their attention to their pipeline and talent. They bring great expertise in terms of the support staff.

“Maybe before SA20, our players were not developing in the right way, they were becoming fully professional late in the day and you were still trying to educate them at national team level. But playing against the best shows you where you need to improve and what it takes to play at that level. They can sit and chat with a Ben Stokes or a Kane Williamson, and you’ll have international physios telling them that these are the levels they need to reach physically,” Smith said.

The bottom line is always commercial, however, and the SA20 continues to be the second-biggest money-spinner for CSA after the Proteas men. That has enabled things like the SA20 Schools competition, an annual camp for U19 girls and an umpire exchange with The Hundred in England, to be introduced.

There was more good news for the SA20 on the commercial front on Monday as they announced a new partnership with DP World, the global smart logistics and supply chain company.

A 3-0 series victory over Malawi was as good a debut in charge as new Proteas netball coach Jenny van Dyk could ask for, but she said there is still plenty of room for improvement as she looks to grow the depth of the South Africa squad.

The Proteas won the three Tests, played at the Ellis Park Arena last weekend, 68-31, 69-38 and 69-24, a record winning margin against Malawi, a side who have always provided tough competition and are currently ranked seventh in the world to South Africa’s fifth.

“I’m really happy, it’s the way we wanted to start and I’m really proud of the girls,” Van Dyk said. “The team reacted well and they stuck to the game-plan, they played with a lot of passion, they played hard and they did us proud. As a first series, it was certainly good enough, we’ve got the goals we wanted. I challenged them to get certain scores and they have shown themselves to be coachable and they have a great mindset.

“Scoreline-wise, I am very pleased. To win 3-0 in your first run out is great and we also managed to test a lot of combinations. At times our second combination was under pressure and there are more proper tests to come. This series was an opportunity to pair the right combinations together and they gave it a good shot.

“We could just revert back to the old combinations, but I want 15 strong players. I understand it’s a tall order, but we’ve seen those cycles when we have seven strong players, but then you have one or two injuries and the whole campaign is destroyed. So we need to create depth and I will also be having a good look at the U21 World Cup next year, that gives good exposure to the young talent,” Van Dyk said.

The team will now have a short break before gathering in early December for a camp that will take place at the same time as the Spar National Championships in Johannesburg, and the next week the Proteas head off to Namibia for the Africa Cup in Swakopmund from December 9.

Four of the Proteas squad are, however, involved in the Fast 5 World Series in New Zealand, including Kamogelo Maseko, the creative mainstay of the team, and exciting new goal shooter Rolene Streutker.

Veteran Karla Pretorius is still an absolute pillar in defence for the Proteas, and she emphasised the learning curve that the national netball team are on at the moment.

“This series was an opportunity to push different combinations, it was not just about getting good wins but also testing combinations and putting players in different situations. We wanted tough games, to be in those tricky situations, out of their safety zones. To put out different combinations and still win 3-0 is the positive.

“We’re happy with what we got out of the series, we never panicked and we always felt fully in control. We just need to adapt quicker, not let the opposition get momentum. We need to get into the game defensively a bit quicker,” Pretorius said.

Defence was also the one area that Van Dyk highlighted as needing attention.

“We weren’t as pleased with the defending as we wanted to be, we weren’t quite in the positions we wanted to be and we allowed Malawi too much space. Especially our attackers, they need to be tighter on their opposite numbers. That is something we need to work on,” Van Dyk said.