Ken Borland

The DP World Lions advanced their lead at the top of the CSA 4-Day Series standings to more than 30 points on Saturday as they hammered the Dafabet Warriors by 200 runs in Johannesburg,sealing victory on the third day.

Having bundled the Warriors out for just 94 in the morning session on the second day, giving them a first-innings lead of 197, #ThePrideOfJozi then declared their second innings on theirovernight score of 214 for eight.

That set the Warriors a target of 412 for victory, a daunting score that has never been chased down before in the fourth innings of a CSA 4-Day Series match at the DP World WanderersStadium.

Despite the magnitude of the challenge, the Warriors set off rapidly in their second innings, racing to 121 for two in 17 overs. But the DP World Lions showed their tenacity by fightingback and they had Eastern Province 151 for four at lunch, youngster Kwena Maphaka having taken two of the wickets as he removed both openers.

A superb yorker bowled Diego Rosier for 8 and 10 minutes before the break, the left-arm fast bowler claimed the key wicket as he had Jordan Hermann caught behind off a superb delivery,the left-hander having blasted 67 off 71 balls.

Less than 25 overs later, the Warriors were all out for 211, with Lutho Sipamla wrapping up the lower-order with four for 42. He also produced brilliant deliveries to bowl Andile Mogakane(1) and Sinethemba Qeshile (40).

The 23.82 bonus points earned from the match will sit nicely under the DP World Lions’ Christmas tree because this is their last four-day match until March. That takes their tally to83.96, with their nearest challengers, the Knights and Titans, both below 50 points in the standings.

The home side had won the toss and elected to bat first, and evergreen captain Dominic Hendricks once again held the batting together on the first day, scoring a defiant 89 as he wentpast 300 runs for the season.

But when Hendricks fell in the final session, trapped lbw by the impressive swing bowling of Beyers Swanepoel, the Warriors had felled five of the DP World Lions batsmen with just 167on the board.

But that brought the combative Bjorn Fortuin to the crease and he struck a crucial 50 as he decorated his 59 balls faced with nine fours. Codi Yusuf once again stood tall with the batin the lower-order, scoring 30 as he and Fortuin added 65 for the seventh wicket.

The DP World Lions were bowled out for 291 in the last over of the first day and the second morning gifted their bowlers helpful conditions for seam bowing.

Yusuf (5-1-11-2) had Jordan Hermann smartly taken by Delano Potgieter at short square-leg off the first ball of the innings, and then trapped Proteas batsman Matthew Breetzke (4) lbwin his second over.

Meanwhile, Maphaka showed the class that has many talking about his hereditary line from #ThePrideOfJozi’s legendary fast bowler Kagiso Rabada, as he had Diego Rosier (4) edging a lifterbehind and then trapped Matthew de Villiers lbw first ball with a searing inswinging yorker.

The Warriors were nine for four and the tumble of wickets spread like a disease as Sipamla and Tshepo Moreki (6.3-3-17-3) chipped in to send the visitors crashing to 41 for six insidethe first hour.

Moreki’s pace and venom is often underestimated and he forced Swanepoel to retire hurt on 21 after hitting him in the head with a lifter. The Warriors’ key all-rounder, who took fivewickets in the first innings, could take no further part in the match due to the concussion he suffered.

Maphaka (7-1-24-3) returned to claim his third wicket, resulting in the Warriors being bowled out for their second-lowest total ever against the DP World Lions.

The clatter of wickets took a breather when #ThePrideOfJozi came out to bat in their second innings, with Josh Richards (44) and Mohamed Manack (49) taking them to 100 for two at tea.

The DP World Lions suffered a sporadic loss of wickets through the final session, but the batsmen had done more than enough to give the defending champions an unassailable lead.

The infectious enthusiasm of the bowling attack, despite a rough start, then finished off a job very well done on the third day.

A quickfire half-century from Sherfane Rutherford and the express pace of Gideon Peters sent the Pretoria Capitals surging to the top of the SA20 standings on Monday night with their bonus point victory over a subdued MI Cape Town at SuperSport Park.

The in-form Rutherford struck a pugnacious but classy 53 off just 27 balls to lift Pretoria Capitals to 185 for six after they had been sent in to bat, providing a fabulous late boost to an innings that was restrained in a first 15 overs in which they could only score 101 for four.

Peters then took three wickets in his first two overs, prompting a dramatic collapse that saw MI Cape Town lose four wickets for nine runs between the powerplay and the halfway mark of their innings. MI Cape Town eventually limped to 132 for seven, losing by 53 runs.

Reeza Hendricks scored 68 not out off 50 deliveries, but he struggled to bat with any freedom, his first 30 runs coming off 35 balls before a late flurry saw him collect four sixes which really were too little too late.

The rest of the MI Cape Town batsmen did not cover themselves in glory either. Openers Rassie van der Dussen (15) and Ryan Rickelton (7) both fell to boundary catches inside the powerplay, while Nicholas Pooran lashed 17 off five deliveries and then promptly cut Andre Russell straight to short third man.

Corbin Bosch (2), Karim Janat (0) and George Linde (0) proved to be a very fragile middle-order, and even the big-hitting Jason Smith could only score 13 off 17 balls as he and Hendricks meandered to a 34-run partnership between the 10^th and 15^th overs.

On paper, the team from the Western Cape should be playing beautiful T20 cricket; the defending champions boast the most successful opening pair in SA20 history in Van der Dussen and Rickelton, and Pooran, Linde and Smith are feared boundary-hitters. A bowling attack of Boult, Rabada, Bosch, Rashid and Linde is a coach’s dream for T20 cricket.

But MI Cape Town have been as fragile as the delicate Disa orchids that are the emblem of the Western Cape, showing none of the resilience this summer of the Proteas which that area is also famous for. They are now at the bottom of the log, five points behind the Paarl Royals in the fourth and final playoff place, with the Boland team having two games in hand.

Their highly-rated bowling attack was also disassembled by the Capitals, as their poor death bowling once again reared its ugly head.

Rutherford and Dewald Brevis (34 off 19) lashed 84 runs off the last five overs to give the home side an above-par total on a tricky pitch for batting. It was a two-paced surface with variable bounce and all bowlers needed was basic discipline in sticking to lines and lengths to make life hard for the batsmen.

That’s where Peters excelled as he took three for 32, brilliantly supported by Lungi Ngidi (4-0-29-1), Lizaad Williams (4-0-27-1), Russell (4-0-20-1) and spinner Keshav Maharaj (4-0-19-1).

“We just tried to do the basics better tonight. Sometimes you just try to do so much as batters that you get bowled out inside 20 overs or as bowlers you get whacked around. I was just trying to hit the top of off-stump,” Peters said.

The Pretoria Capitals certainly gave the defending champions an education in how to play on pitches with a bit of spice, keeping resources in hand for a late surge but also ensuring the platform was laid with positive intent.

It will be a momentous weekend for Boland cricket as their thrilling climb to the summit of the CSA One-Day Cup standings, playing top-class 50-over cricket to win five of their seven matches, has rightfully been rewarded with hosting rights for the final in Paarl, but it has been a week in which the credibility of Cricket South Africa has taken another beating.

That’s because Boland’s opponents in the final were basically decided in the CSA boardroom, with the troubled organisation’s directors imposing an almost unprecedented penalty on the Eastern Province Warriors for failing to meet their transformation targets against the KZN Dolphins in Durban in their first match on February 16.

The controversial penalty raised eyebrows enough; the fact that it took CSA’s hotchpotch Board three whole weeks to decide on what they, but not many others, believed was appropriate action, led to much head-shaking. It’s a blow to the image of CSA because it suggests yet again that their leadership is a mess, focused more on political agendas than providing direction to the game they are meant to be serving and bettering.

Arriving at Kingsmead and finding a very spin-friendly pitch, the Warriors decided to choose a third frontline spinner in Jason Raubenheimer, a Coloured from Schauderville, undoubtedly a disadvantaged part of Gqeberha. But that created a problem in balancing the side because it meant leaving out a Black African player, leaving EP with just a couple in their starting XI – wicketkeeper Sinethemba Qeshile and all-rounder Andile Mogakane.

It was a breach of CSA’s stringent quota rules, which require three Black Africans and a total of six generic Black players to be included in every XI. The Warriors registered a massive 126-run bonus point victory, riding a brilliant unbeaten 148 from opener Jordan Hermann. Ironically, it was seamer Mogakane who destroyed the Dolphins batting in a devastating burst of four for 23.

Teams have sometimes failed to meet their race quotas in recent years, but have been able to apply to CSA for permission, based on injuries or illness. Head of Domestic Cricket, Eddie Khoza, is a reasonable man, a lover of the game, and he has generally been sympathetic in this regard. But because EP did not get permission and made their selection for ‘cricketing reasons’ i.e. tactical, and not because of injury/illness, it is believed the decision to severely punish them was made by the Board.

The last time a team was deducted points for missing quotas was twenty years ago, but then last Sunday night, after tournament broadcasters SuperSport had already announced the playoffs line-up, news leaked from CSA that the Warriors were going to be docked all five points for their flouting of the race laws.

But that’s not all!

Eastern Province Cricket were also hit with a R500 000 fine and, even more astonishingly, the Dolphins were given four points for a match in which they were utterly thrashed. It was a meritless gift to KZN that punished the Northerns Titans, a totally innocent party in this fiasco. They had finished the end of the round-robin stage in second place and were due to host the Qualifier that would decide who went to Paarl to play Boland.

But the four boardroom points given to the Dolphins lifted them above the Titans and Kingsmead hosted the Qualifier. A typical spin-friendly, slow pitch was produced for the Highveld visitors, and the Dolphins predictably triumphed to reach the final.

(Upon reflection, I have decided on a small addition here: Credit does need to be given to the Dolphins for the way they bounced back from such a poor start, winning four of their next six matches. They too are victims in this whole mess, which has detracted from their good performances.)

When this new leadership of Cricket South Africa took over a few years ago, it was hoped that they would be a unifying force following the divisive tenures of the previous guard. Hyphens and em-dashes look very similar; the former is used to connect words while the dash is employed to separate thoughts or ideas in a sentence. The current CSA Board seem to have confused them, judging by their recent decision-making. Remember the David Teeger mess a year ago when they rushed to take action, used spurious reasons to justify it and then lied about it being a security issue?

Taking three weeks to make a decision and then choosing the most incendiary option has to be down to poor leadership; there are not enough ‘hyphenators’ on the CSA Board and too many ‘dashers’. There is talk of a big rift between the independent and non-independent directors of the body running cricket in South Africa.

Dashing the trophy hopes of a Warriors team that represents the nursery of Black cricket in this country is bad enough, but CSA’s spraygun reaction has unduly prejudiced the Titans, as well as teams like Western Province, North-West and the Free State Knights.

By gifting the Dolphins four unearned points, they have also allowed them to score five bonus promotion/relegation points for finishing second and not fourth on the One-Day Cup log, leaving them two points ahead of WP in the crucial battle to stay in Division One, and level with EP and the Dragons, and just one point behind Free State.

It’s not just the cricket-loving public who have been left dismayed by CSA’s decision. Imagine how the players feel. Are the CSA mandarins saying Raubenheimer is not deserving of benefiting from transformation initiatives, or that playing a third Black African player would have negatively affected the Warriors to such a huge extent that it would have cost more than 126 runs? Because that’s what one can infer from their decision to take all five points away from the winners on the field and give four to the losers … 

Never mind the irony that it was a Black African player in the promising Mogakane who inflicted the most damage with the ball on the Dolphins.

Does the CSA Board really care about the true transformation of our playing resources or are they just content to tick boxes and satisfy a government that is notoriously callous when it comes to actually improving the lives of the disadvantaged rather than just talk about it?

While government certainly must foot the blame for the dire lack of facilities in disadvantaged areas and the stifling effect that has on the pipeline, CSA need to stop hiding behind the incompetence of the ANC and acknowledge that transformation is failing. That is the biggest takeaway from this week’s shambles.

There is plenty of Black talent coming through the number of excellent cricket schools we have in the country, but too many of those fall off the grid. Instead of hauling a forward-thinking coach and great cricketer like Robin Peterson over the coals, the CSA Board should be focusing on that pipeline.

The grim reality is that the CSA Board don’t really care. Too many of them have their eyes set on scoring political points and riding the cricket gravy train as far as it can take them. Otherwise they would surely have done one simple thing to help the bleak state of our domestic cricket: Let our local teams operate under the same transformation rules as the national sides. That would mean the average use of Black and Black African players is tallied at the end of the season and teams that fail to reach their targets can then rightfully have the book thrown at them. Small infringements like that of the Warriors in February would then not lead to such a disproportionate reaction.

Munster coach Graham Rowntree hailed a top-class performance and a plan coming together as the defending champions moved into the top three of the United Rugby Championship standings with a tenacious 27-22 win over the Bulls in Pretoria.

The bonus point win saw Munster leapfrog the Bulls, deserved reward for beating the South African powerhouses at their home fortress of Loftus Versfeld, where they had previously not been beaten this season in the URC.

A beautifully-controlled first half saw Munster lead 17-10, but the Bulls mounted a strong comeback in the third quarter to take a 22-17 lead. But a red card for a head-on-head tackle by flyhalf Johan Goosen in the 54^th minute was a big turning point against the home side.

A pair of tries in the 58^th and 74^th minutes sealed a hard-fought win for Munster and the 53-year-old Rowntree was a delighted coach afterwards.

“The composure was special today, we had a good plan at altitude and stuck to it. We were in a good place at halftime but not so good in the third quarter. But we are used to these end-of-season pressure games, we have learnt to deal with adversity and move on quickly, and we had a great bench today.

“We had to stick to the plan with great skill, there was no panic. We had to kick very smartly, go away from the way we’ve been doing things for the last two years, when we have generally tried to keep the ball on the field.

“There are still elements of our game that need to be better, but this was an incredible performance against a team we really respect. They have power and pace and can really rip teams apart and we needed to be so much better at the start of the second half. But we believe in our defence, it’s one of the best in the league. It’s got to be against such a powerful team,” Rowntree said.

While Bulls coach Jake White said Goosen’s red card was a 50/50 decision that could have been deemed a ‘rugby incident’, Rowntree said it was an obvious call.

“I thought it was quite clear and easy. There was no mitigation and I was happy with the process. We make sure that we keep our tackles low, we practise that late drop into the tackle,” the former England prop said.

Wing Shane Daly, the scorer of the opening try, said Munster were a team with belief.

“We believe in ourselves, we play against the big teams and we get the results. That’s the big thing about this team,” Daly said.

Munster will next take on the Lions, who slayed top-of-the-log Leinster on the weekend, at Ellis Park.