Ken Borland

Momentum Multiply Titans coach Rivash Gobind said at the start of the season that it would take “40 days of good cricket” to win the 1st-Class Series, but this week the 51-day slog that is now known as the Pro20 Cup gets underway with a thrilling double-header at SuperSport Park on Friday.

The Titans take on the YesPlay Western Province Cobras at 6pm on Friday night, after the earlier match between defending champions Dafabet Warriors and the North-West Dragons (2pm). And, in an announcement that should ensure SuperSport Park is teeming with the youngsters who adore them, new Titans heroes Dewald Brevis, Lhuan-dre Pretorius and Donovan Ferreira should all be in action under the lights.

And Friday could also see the return of the blazing batting of Leus du Plooy, the Affies product returning to Titans cricket for the first time since 2018/19, and the mystery wrist-spin of the legendary Tabraiz Shamsi.

Tickets – at just R50 for both matches – are on sale at Ticketpro and ZARbet are giving away ten R1000 cash prizes, free beers and a double ticket for Melkfest in their various competitions. There will also be an autograph signing session after the Titans match.

“It’s great to have access to some proper quality cricketers who are at the cutting edge of global T20 cricket. They raise the standard of everyone else, so this week’s preparation has gone really good and we are ready to go,” Gobind said.

“Donovan Ferreira will be our captain, he has a fantastic cricket brain and I really enjoy his passion for the Titans franchise. And he’s a proper batter, as we saw when he made that four-day hundred against the Dolphins that helped get our season off to such a good start.

“It’s also going to be very exciting to see Dewald Brevis and Lhuan-dre Pretorius in action, they are youngsters themselves but they have attracted such a wonderful following of their own youngsters, who just love them.

“T20 is such a fast-paced game, so we want to bat with high intent, play front-foot cricket. Boundary intent is one of many numbers that the analysts measure these days, but the best batters are not just about power, they are also extremely efficient.

“In terms of our bowling, I want us to be the team that does not go away under pressure. People always say bowlers should expect to go for lots of runs in this format, but I don’t want us to have that mindset. We have some really effective bowlers and they should always win the battle in the end,” Gobind said.

The new Pro20 Cup sees the Division I and Division II teams combined into two pools, with the top four in each going through to the Super Eights. The final is set for November 14. So the Sky Blues want to be consistent, but they also want to be at the forefront of the innovation that is constantly changing the shortest format of cricket.

“We want to try and dominate, but we aren’t going to do that by playing run-of-the-mill cricket, we’re not going to stick to any of the cliches about the game. We want to challenge the thinking around T20, the best players do that.

“But consistency is also a thing in the T20 game and that’s what the Momentum Multiply Titans are striving for as well. It’s going to be a great challenge against the Cobras, but the positive is that we understand our conditions. Coastal teams have to adjust to the tempo when they come up here, strategically they need to make slight changes,” Gobind said.

Titans squad: Dewald Brevis, Lhuan-dre Pretorius, Eathan Bosch, Beyers Swanepoel, Leus du Plooy, Keagan Lion-Cachet, Sinethemba Qeshile, Dayyaan Galiem, Tabraiz Shamsi, Junior Dala, Aphiwe Mnyanda, Donovan Ferreira, Lethabo Phahlamohlaka, Janco Smit.

“You never really know how a pitch is going to play,” Kagiso Rabada said, “but we had an idea from the warm-up that it would favour the seamers and bowled accordingly.”

And brilliantly.

South Africa bundled Bangladesh out for just 84 in their T20 World Cup match in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, a total they then chased down with six wickets in hand and 39 balls to spare to significantly boost their nett run-rate.

Rabada led the way with an outstanding display that brought him career-best figures of 3/20. On a pitch that almost demanded Test-style bowling, he was bang on the mark with both his lengths and skills from the outset.

“There was a lot of grass on the pitch and a bit of zip, as well as being a bit two-paced. We learnt from the Australia game here and we also noticed a bit of swing in the warm-up,” Rabada said after the win.

“You never really know how a pitch is going to play, but we had an idea that it would favour the seamers and we bowled accordingly. In my three overs up front there was a bit of bounce, seam movement and swing.

“So conditions were in my favour and you just try to get the ball in the right places. Anrich Nortje [3.2-0-8-3] is also bowling pretty rapidly at the moment and every bowler that came on stuck to the game-plan and got us into an even stronger position,” Rabada said.

South Africa also know full well that their semi-finals qualification could come down to nett run-rate and they used the small target as an opportunity to boost that figure to more than one run per over better than rivals Australia: 0.742 to -0.627.

After a rocky start, they won in the 14^th over largely thanks to Temba Bavuma’s quickfire 31 not out off 28 balls. Rabada said criticism of the captain has been ill-informed.

“There’s nothing more to say about Temba, the results are there. You are always going to have critics and we make peace with that, we take the good with the bad.

“You can’t control what is said outside the game, but we probably put more pressure on ourselves than the public do.

“Obviously we chatted at halfway about nett run-rate and we wanted to try and finish the chase as early as possible. There was a clear instruction to finish before 15 overs, we did that and we are happy,” Rabada said.