Ken Borland

Like an aeronautics expert trying to ensure take-off happens at exactly the right time, Bulls director of rugby Jake White will be using the next two weekends of Currie Cup action to try and ensure his team peak at the business end of the United Rugby Championship.

The Bulls have already sealed a quarterfinal place in Europe, but their match against Ospreys in Swansea on May 20 could decide whether they will have crucial home ground advantage for that playoff match.

So basically White is looking for four straight wins in the URC to take the title. But his desire to win a hat-trick of Currie Cup crowns is also great, so he was quite happy on Friday to announce a Bulls team that is a half-and-half mix of URC and Currie Cup players for their match against Griquas on Saturday evening at Loftus Versfeld.

“It’s predominantly URC guys that I want to game-time to, but it’s a double-edged sword because we take the Currie Cup seriously as well,” White said.

“There will be another rotation next week for our match against the Golden Lions when we give some of these players the week off.

“But we can’t afford to give the URC guys two weeks off before such a vital game as the Ospreys one, it’s absolutely critical to try and get a home playoff. So it’s another hit-out for them.

“It’s an opportunity to try and get right the things we want to do at the back end of the URC and this team is the sort of ideal balance you’d want every week – seniors and youngsters playing together,” White said.

The Bulls have tended to concede the most points at the starts and deaths of games, and a team like Griquas can be lethal if you allow them a foothold in the game, so White said starting and finishing better is a work in progress for his team.

“We definitely want to start well. You work out along the way what works in terms of getting a good start – the warm-up order, your routine before the game or selection can all be factors.

“There’s no exact answer, but the more you get it wrong, the closer you are to getting it right. Once you find a formula that works, you lean on that. You try to find the right recipe, but sometimes it takes a while,” White said.

Bulls team: Canan Moodie, Stravino Jacobs, Cornal Hendricks, Harold Vorster, Madosh Tambwe, Chris Smith, Embrose Papier; WJ Steenkamp, Cyle Brink, Arno Botha, Reinhardt Ludwig, Walt Steenkamp, Robert Hunt, Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Lizo Gqoboka. IMPACT – Schalk Erasmus, Simphiwe Matanzima, Dylan Smith, Ruan Nortje, Muller Uys, Keagan Johannes, Juan Mostert, Stedman Gans.

Former Proteas captain Faf du Plessis continues to bat with the same class and explosiveness as he showed in his first match as skipper of the Bangalore Royal Challengers at the weekend, but his team suffered the same fate as they always seem to when they put a big total on the board – losing by five wickets with a full over to spare against the Punjab Kings in the Indian Premier League.

Du Plessis changed gears superbly in his innings as his 88 off 57 balls took Bangalore to 205/2 in Mumbai. Opening the batting, the 37-year-old only scored 17 runs off his first 30 balls in seamer-friendly conditions, but two sixes and a four off West Indian paceman Odean Smith in the 13^th over took him to his half-century off 41 balls. He plundered 38 runs from his next 16 deliveries, adding 118 in 10 overs with Virat Kohli (41* off 29).

But then, in a recurring theme for Bangalore, their bowlers let them down.

As usual when Du Plessis is the star of the day, in what is still though a domestic league, his display led to plenty of questions over why the Proteas have not chosen him since he retired from Test cricket in February 2021.

The current situation is that Du Plessis is technically available for white-ball cricket, but it is difficult to rely on him at national level because his first priority is playing as a T20 free agent in the leagues around the world. Du Plessis wants a contract to play for South Africa, but CSA cannot afford to contract a player who is only available to them some of the time and in only one format.

Last year Du Plessis said he was taking a sabbatical from ODI cricket in order to concentrate on T20 cricket with World Cups being played in 2021 and this year. He has since made no mention of his ODI availability.

So it would seem Du Plessis has had his day in the Proteas shirt.

The Sharks spent so much time in the Edinburgh 22 that they were practically residents, but they only managed to score five points in their United Rugby Championship match in Durban, so their awful finishing was unsurprisingly the focus of coach Sean Everitt’s post-match press conference.

Their 21-5 loss to Edinburgh means the Sharks have now slipped to eighth place behind the Stormers and Bulls and are in danger of slipping out of the playoff spots.

“It’s extremely frustrating when you create so many opportunities and you just can’t finish them,” Everitt said. “Against top teams, you need to take every opportunity and the points on offer.

“We got our maul going but we just could not finish off and capitalise on that. We had territorial and possession advantage, but we missed penalties and at times missed touch too.

“Our plan worked quite well and we got into position, but we just weren’t clinical enough to round off. It’s the same challenge every week.

“It’s all about accuracy at this higher level, how accurately you can execute on the opportunities you are given. We will have to review the game and see where we can get better,” Everitt said.

The defeat will place the spotlight firmly on some of Everitt’s selections. Curwin Bosch has now been given a run starting at flyhalf, but he was poor against Edinburgh, failing to kick a couple of penalties to touch and missing all three of his shots at goal, one of them from in front of the poles.

The departure of captain Lukhanyo Am to Japan has obviously unsettled the team and the Sharks are battling to replace him at outside centre, with Ben Tapuai and Jeremy Ward tried there without conspicuous success.

While the Sharks were cruising to bonus point wins over the likes of Benetton, the Scarlets and Zebre, they were still performances with a high error-count, especially in terms of finishing, and the worry was that the cracks that had been papered over would be exposed by the top URC sides.

Edinburgh certainly proved that to be the case as they made shark fin soup of the home side at a sopping wet Kings Park.

Bangladesh’s batsmen discovered at the Wanderers that there are no vaccinations against the pace and bounce of Kagiso Rabada when he is at his fiery best, and South Africa’s ace fast bowler is hopeful that they won’t have time to figure out how to handle him and his fellow quicks before the ODI series decider at Centurion on Wednesday.

With Rabada leading the way with an outstanding 5/39, Bangladesh were restricted to just 194/9 in the second ODI, South Africa levelling the series when they chased down that target with seven wickets and 76 deliveries to spare. After a slightly flat performance in the first match at SuperSport Park, this time the Proteas pacemen came out firing.

While Rabada said he was still not sure why they struggled for wickets in the first ODI, he did say the extra pace and bounce of the Wanderers pitch made them more lethal.

“It’s a question I’m still asking myself,” Rabada said at the Wanderers after his man-of-the-match display. “I guess this pitch did a bit more with the new ball.

“I thought we bowled very well in the first 10 overs of the previous game too, but were just unfortunate not to get the breakthrough. And on the Highveld, you’re guaranteed to score quicker once you’re in, as the ball gets older it’s better to bat.

“But there was more bounce at the Wanderers, we got the ball in the right areas and it was good to us. You generally want to use the extra bounce and pace at the Wanderers.

“The talk is that the subcontinent teams are not able to deal with the bounce as well as we do because we’ve grown up here. You can’t just rock up and expect to bounce them out, but you try use the conditions to the best of your ability,” Rabada said.

While the Proteas were delighted with their all-round performance at the Wanderers, they are dismayed by their continued tendency to start series poorly, a destructive habit when it comes to a growing side developing consistency.

“It is a concern because we always want to throw the first punch but we keep finding ourselves in this position.

“We don’t do it on purpose and we don’t want to make our job even harder. So we still hve a bit of work to do before we go back to Centurion,” Rabada said.

The Proteas dare not reproduce their performance of the first ODI.