Ken Borland

The Unlimited Titans will welcome the return of all-rounder David Wiese and the debut of opening batsman Ernest Kemm as they take on the Knights in a Sunfoil Series match starting at SuperSport Park in Centurion from today.

Wiese broke his finger in the nets three weeks ago and he is back in time to lead an inexperienced Titans pace attack in the last two games of the season, and will also be hoping to regain some of the batting touch that has deserted him this year.

The 23-year-old Kemm captained Tukkies to the Momentum National Club Championships title last April and made his first-class debut for Easterns at the start of the summer, and has averaged 44.46 with three centuries. Left-handed and blessed with patience, he has the opportunity to throw his name into the hat for the Titans’ future planning in four-day cricket.

“Ernest is prepared to bat time and it’s exciting that he’s scored three centuries in amateur cricket, now we’ll see if he can take it up to franchise level. He has the patience of a traditional opening batsman, he sets up his stall, and we need that,” Titans coach Rob Walter told The Pretoria News yesterday.

Kemm takes the place of Graeme van Buuren, who joins the long list of unfortunate batsmen injured in the nets, taking a painful blow from Wiese during the week.

It’s been a long and difficult four-day campaign for the Titans and just one victory in eight matches has left them rooted to the bottom of the log. But there is still an outside chance of them finishing third and claiming R200 000 in prizemoney from Sunfoil if they can win their last two matches, against the Knights and Warriors, both at SuperSport Park.

The Knights are the team they have beaten in the Sunfoil Series this season – in Kimberley in mid-February – and their attack is stronger for this match with the return of fast bowler Marchant de Lange for the first time since November, after a string of delays due to minor niggles.

Mangaliso Mosehle also returns as wicketkeeper because Tumelo Bodibe, originally chosen for the previous match against the Dolphins that was abandoned without a ball being bowled a fortnight ago, has subsequently signed as a Knights player and, as Walter said, “it would be silly to play him if he’s not going to be part of our future”.

While the Titans are approaching the match as a pointer to how they can improve their four-day fortunes next season, the Knights are coming to Centurion chasing the title.

They are a fraction less than five points behind the Cape Cobras and will be regarding victory as non-negotiable, especially since the defending champions are hosting the Warriors at Newlands.

The Knights are confident that captain Johan van der Wath, who engineers so much of their success with his fiery bowling and powerful lower-order batting, will be fit to play, but Dean Elgar is an unlikely starter and Ryan McLaren has not recovered from a shoulder injury.

But the Titans are going to have to be prepared to take on a side that is confident and hungry for success, boasting an impressive pace attack, an in-form spinner in Werner Coetsee and dangerous batsmen like Rilee Rossouw.

“The Knights’ performance speaks for itself, they’ve won a lot of games [4] and must have played well. They know how to perform.

“But our only four-day win was against them, so we have good memories of that and hopefully we’ll play like we did in Kimberley. Our batting just really needs someone to step up,” Walter said.

Teams

Titans: Heino Kuhn, Ernest Kemm, Henry Davids, Qaasim Adams, Roelof van der Merwe, David Wiese, Mangaliso Mosehle, Shaun von Berg, JP de Villiers, Marchant de Lange, Junior Dala.

Knights (from): Gihahn Cloete, Rilee Rossouw, Rudi Second, Obus Pienaar, Gerhardt Abrahams, Johan van der Wath, Werner Coetsee, Quinton Friend, Duanne Olivier, Corne Dry, Malusi Siboto, Dean Elgar, Thabo Masheshemane.

AB de Villiers - only SA player to get a pass mark

So poor has South Africa’s performance been in the first Test against Australia at SuperSport Park that AB de Villiers is probably the only one worthy of a pass mark for their efforts.

De Villiers was the only batsman who didn’t capitulate in the face of the ferocious Mitchell Johnson onslaught, batting with remarkable assurance in scoring his 91 out of a dismal total of 206. Quick of mind, feet and hands, De Villiers was simply a class apart.

It is hard to know quite why the rest of the South African team have put in such a lacklustre, soft performance. They had 10 days’ preparation before the first Test and pronounced themselves ready for action on the eve of the game.

Which suggests the malaise is mental more than anything else. And there have been numerous examples of muddled thinking seriously jeopardising their chances in the first Test.

After 40 overs in the Australian second innings, exactly six percent of the deliveries South Africa had bowled would have hit the stumps, a ridiculously low figure especially on a pitch with inconsistent bounce that brings lbw into play in a big way. But it was how South Africa bowled in the first innings as well, with too much line-and-length stuff outside off stump that the Aussies just left alone and not enough bowling that targeted the stumps or the body.

South Africa also erred strategically in how they played Johnson, whose figures of seven for 68 were the second-best recorded in Tests at Centurion, behind Kyle Abbott’s stunning seven for 29 on debut against Pakistan last summer.

The top-order seemed intent on trying to play Johnson’s short-pitched thunderbolts with the bat, instead of swaying out of the line and dropping the hands and bat out of the danger zone.

Australia’s batsmen handled Morne Morkel’s intimidatory deliveries much better by simply getting out of the way.

South Africa’s sloppy fielding yesterday – centurion David Warner was dropped three times – was another clear sign that the wheels were falling off.

There isn’t much South Africa can do ahead of the second Test in terms of changing personnel. The XI for Centurion were generally considered to be the best players available, but unfortunately they just didn’t pitch for the contest.

Young batsmen like Quinton de Kock and Stiaan van Zyl certainly have their backers, but are they really more likely to succeed than the people they are replacing? Alviro Petersen and JP Duminy are the two South African batsmen under the most pressure, and both were dismissed in most disappointing fashion in the first innings.

Robin Peterson, chosen for his greater accuracy and ability to do the holding role, was taken for a hundred runs in his first 26 overs in this Test, which makes one wonder whether the selectors shouldn’t just go for the greater wicket-taking ability of Imran Tahir, even if he is also expensive.

Coach Russell Domingo is known for his love of statistics and it would be interesting to know whether the poor decision to bowl first upon winning the toss was mostly motivated by him or whether it was the captain’s call.

Statistics are good for establishing trends at grounds, but they can never supersede the conditions that are actually in front of the team.

Domingo and bowling coach Allan Donald have both admitted that their intensity was not what it should have been. If the South Africans have the courage to face their shortcomings at Centurion with honesty, then they could yet rebound into contention in this series.

South Africa would appear to have used up their nine lives, but there is way too much talent in the team for them to be manhandled the way they have been by Australia. The brilliant Johnson apart, South Africa’s players should be standing toe-to-toe with their counterparts. They need to rediscover the passion that took them to number one, and quickly too, because the pretenders to the throne look ready to ascend.

South Africa’s cricketers were able to survive a close encounter with a lion during their trip to Hoedspruit to support Mark Boucher’s rhino conservation efforts, but Mitchell Johnson proved an entirely more ferocious beast at SuperSport Park on Thursday to leave the Proteas in tatters at the end of the second day of the first Test against Australia.

Johnson claimed four wickets, three of them in a sensational opening burst of four overs, to send South Africa limping to stumps on 140 for six, still needing 57 just to avoid the follow-on.

How to play Johnson is probably the most common question in international changerooms these days as the left-armer took his record in his last six Tests to a phenomenal 38 wickets at an average of just 14.15.

While one should praise the South African batsmen’s efforts to get into line against the most fearsome fast bowler in the game, technically they were far too eager to get bat to ball when Johnson dug the ball in short.

Barry Richards, Peter Kirsten and Kepler Wessels were all prolific run-scorers in county cricket, where they faced the best generation of fast bowlers – the West Indians – day in and day out. Wessels also played eight Tests against the Caribbean dominators (seven for Australia) and averaged a highly-creditable 44.66 against them. So that trio of great South African batsmen certainly know a thing or two about playing fast bowling and their advice had a common theme of either getting out of the way or making sure you drop the hands.

“It’s about handling the intimidation and the pace, around 147km/h, and you’ve also got to look out for the in-swinger. The key is keeping your balance, keeping your head still and don’t get your right foot too far across.

“The batsmen also need to get their hands down quicker and bob and weave more. You’ve got to choose the right time to pull, but they were good balls to Smith and Du Plessis,” Kirsten, a diminutive batsman but high-quality player of pace, said yesterday.

Richards said the key was not getting yourself in a bad position.

“There wasn’t a lot of swing out there, so it was all about the bounce, the short ball. You need to get out of the way, make sure you don’t get caught in a bad position. Like Graeme Smith did – he’s a tall and imposing batsmen and he tried to ride with the bounce, but it got big on him and he had nowhere to go.

“It’s not easy, but if the ball is short, you’ve got to sway or duck out of the way,” Richards said.

The former Hampshire opening batsman had many epic tussles with fellow South African Mike Procter, another awkward fast bowler with an unusual action.

“Proccie had this big in-swinging bouncer that used to follow you. So you had to go the other way, but it’s not easy to duck your head towards where the ball is coming from!” Richards said.

Wessels, who has served as a batting consultant for the South Africans in the past, said accepting that getting hit was likely was an important part of successfully playing fast bowling.

“You have to get in line and drop the hands and if you’re going to take it on the body then just accept that you’re going to get hit,” Wessels said.

It takes bundles of courage to face truly fast bowling like Johnson’s, but Wessels said it was important to still remain positive.

“You need to have one back-foot scoring stroke and just evade the other balls. The West Indies had four guys of Johnson’s pace and initially I just tried to survive. But then after two hours you’d just have 15, so I decided to attack them.”

The South African batsmen have also obviously not faced someone as fast as Johnson for some time, which Wessels said meant they would need some time to adjust.

Proteas coach Russell Domingo said no matter how well prepared they were, “you can never replicate the pressure and intensity of Test cricket like that”.

“It’s what we expected of him, but the challenge is with his action, you don’t know which ones to leave. He’s skiddy, which makes him so dangerous, whereas someone like Morne Morkel has a high arm action and gets more consistent bounce,” Domingo said.

Johnson admitted that the inconsistent bounce of the Centurion pitch had him licking his lips.

“There are a few cracks and I felt when I was batting that there was something there, just back-of-a-length. Smith’s dismissal was one of those good balls that took off and the ball to Faf took off a bit as well. It surprised him and it surprised me too. I do enjoy bowling on these sort of pitches,” Johnson said.

Spectators enjoy watching Johnson in action and the way he went about his business on Thursday was much like a lion kill. The South African batsmen were probably feeling a bit like the unfortunate impala last night.

THERE was a chance of playing lesser opposition elsewhere, but Titans coach Matthew Maynard said his team would not want their Champions League Twenty20 semifinal to be anywhere other than SuperSport Park on Friday, even if it was against the tournament favourites, the Sydney Sixers.

Maynard is banking on a full house to get behind his men and lift their performance against what he warned would be formidable opposition.

“Home-ground advantage is one thing, but if there’s a big crowd in then it will also be a massive boost for the team, like having a 12th or 13th man.

“They love playing in front of their fans at SuperSport Park and I hope there are 10,000 people here on Friday night in as much blue as possible.

“If it’s only half-full, then playing at home won’t be an advantage because there won’t be enough people to create that atmosphere,” Maynard said.

“But Sydney are one of the favourites to win the competition, we all know they are a very strong outfit and their bowlers are particularly suited to these conditions,” he said.

Star batsman AB de Villiers is not going to be playing for the Titans, despite hopes that his troublesome back had settled down enough for him to appear for the first time in the tournament, while brilliant all-rounder Shane Watson is not in the Sydney team because he is being rested by Cricket Australia ahead of the crunch Test series against South Africa.

Watson’s absence does rob the Sixers of a key bowler, but they can nevertheless field a top-class pace attack boasting Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, all of whom have played for Australia.

Watson’s departure has also left a big hole at the top of the batting order and Sydney do not have a particularly explosive line-up anymore, something that will please the Titans bowlers after they received a mauling at the hands of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in their last outing. But as Maynard points out, that match against KKR was a dead rubber and the Indian Premier League team played with a freedom that would have been outrageous in a knockout game.

“The Knight Riders really went hard after our bowlers, they hit them off their lengths, but it was high risk, high reward cricket. They had nothing to lose and they could easily have been 60 for six instead. You can’t go on batting like that throughout a tournament, especially in a semifinal that has a lot riding on it,” Maynard said.

Apart from that last game, the Titans bowlers have played a big part in their qualification for the semifinals, and Maynard issued a warning to Sydney that the home bowlers would also be well suited to conditions at SuperSport Park.

“The bowling unit has been superb and it was just unfortunate that our two bankers (Ethy Mbhalati and Alfonso Thomas) went for big runs against KKR. But I’m more than happy with our bowling, they’ve been superb throughout the tournament and conditions will suit them as well,” Maynard said.

The Welshman said that even though he expected a good cricket wicket at SuperSport Park, the ability to build an innings would be crucial in the semifinal. “Slogging does not play a massive part in T20, full stop. Maybe at the end of the innings, but generally, good cricket shots are the ones that pay off. There’s an important role for a batsman with a strike rate of around 115 and then the others around him can score at 130+.”

Jacques Rudolph has already proven that, with Henry Davids and Farhaan Behardien providing the acceleration around him. The Titans will be hoping captain Martin van Jaarsveld and Protea prospect Heino Kuhn will also have their say now that the tournament has reached the crucial knockout stage.

http://www.bdlive.co.za/sport/cricket/2012/10/26/titans-banking-on-home-support-at-supersport-park