Ken Borland

Dean Elgar was philosophical about the telling blow his team has suffered with the withdrawal of fast bowler Anrich Nortje from the series against India, but the Proteas captain was more upset when he told South Africa’s administrators that they have not backed the squad, and especially the coaches and management, enough.

As has become the norm, the Proteas go into a vital series with off-field clouds hanging over their heads. The most threatening of those is the news this week that coach Mark Boucher and director of cricket Graeme Smith are to be subjected to a formal enquiry by the CSA board based on the “tentative” and “untested” findings of the Social Justice and Nation-Building Report.

On the field, they will be without one of their key enforcers, Nortje needing to see specialists to sort out a persistent hip injury. The 28-year-old has been South Africa’s leading wicket-taker in Tests this year with 25 in five matches at an average of just 20.76.

“It’s not too tough for us, as a team we’ve got used to bad news being around us the last one-and-a-half years,” Elgar said on Tuesday. “We just adapt to it, even though they are not ideal headlines.

“What happens off the field is irrelevant now, we have to try and implement a game-plan and trust it. We’ve been through such crappy times, but we’ve formulated such a bond that works for us as player group.

“There have been so many different administrators, but I feel that we have not received enough backing, especially in terms of our coaches and management. We need to show them some love.

“As players, we would like to say that we back them, we know the work they put in that is not seen by the public. It’s not nice to see them being lambasted by articles in the media,” Elgar said.

Another Proteas squad member who is encountering some mixed media treatment is returning fast bowler Duanne Olivier, and Elgar did his best to bolster the former Kolpak’s image. Nortje’s injury means the 29-year-old is now surely almost certain to play his first Test since February 2019.

“The team has responded very well to Duanne coming back, he’s played with quite a few of the guys before and he has half-a-dozen Central Gauteng Lions team-mates here as well,” Elgar said.

“I want us to have the best opportunity of winning matches and series and I’m sure there’s 100% backing for that in the changeroom. Which means sometimes you have to make tough calls.

“But I’m very pleased and excited to have him back, I know what he can do on the field and there are no bad feelings. I see a different energy and enthusiasm in him.

“He’s a different cricketer now and he brings a lot of knowledge and experience back into the team, which is what we need. He’s a matchwinner, I’m very aware of that and that’s what I want to have,” Elgar said.

Thriston Lawrence was still shaking with excitement and the release of nervous tension half-an-hour after being told he was the winner of the weather-disrupted Joburg Open at Randpark Golf Club on Saturday, giving the 24-year-old South African a life-changing first international title.

Saturday was meant to be the final round of the co-sanctioned tournament with the DP World (formerly European) Tour, after the organisers decided to cut the event to 54 holes due to the terrible weather and the turmoil caused by travel restrictions overseas due to the announcement of a new Covid variant discovered in South Africa.

But the thundershowers returned just after midday and did not let-up in time to avoid the tournament being called off at 3pm. With the second round first needing to be completed on Saturday morning, none of the 69 golfers who made the cut were able to complete their third round.

The final placings were therefore decided based on the completed second-round scores and Lawrence, who had bogeyed the first hole and parred the second just before play stopped, was declared the winner by virtue of his four-shot lead over Zander Lombard after back-to-back 65s.

“I’m still shaking and it hasn’t really sunk in yet,” Lawrence said after receiving the crystal trophy. “It’s always been a goal of mine to win on the European Tour, but I didn’t see it coming so quickly and you never think it would come out like this.

“But the whole week has been strange weather and my mentality was just to finish the tournament. It wasn’t nice waiting today because you hear a lot of talk about what might or might not happen.

“But I’m just thankful for the way it turned out, it’s a life-changing moment and a lot of things are going to change in my schedule. It’s an unbelievable feeling. Being me a week ago to now is two worlds apart.

“You want to see yourself up there winning tournaments, but there have been a lot of knocks in the last year-and-a-half and it’s been tough,” Lawrence said.

The winner of one previous Sunshine Tour event – the 2019 Vodacom Origins Stellenbosch – was a trifle disappointed to not have his winning moment on the 18^th green, but even that did not stop his perpetual smile.

“I would have liked to get the win on the 18^th, have a winning putt, so it was not the perfect way to finish,” Lawrence said.

“But I played unbelievable golf over the last two days to take a four-shot lead into the weekend.

“Then the tournament was cut short amid a lot of confusion. The weather prediction was actually fine for today with a zero percent chance of lightning. But that only lasted 45 minutes.

“But I just stayed patient and I will take a lot of confidence from this win. And I don’t have to worry about invites anymore,” the Nelspruit golfer said.

Lizo Gqoboka’s face is an ever-smiling one, but if one had to offer the Bulls prop a penny for his thoughts after their loss to Connacht last weekend, he would have told you about his bitter disappointment, even though he scored a try and put in a stout individual performance.

“It was a tough one. I was happy about the try, but we lost the game so actually I was not happy. The team comes first and I can never be happy when we lose,” Gqoboka said this week as the Bulls try to rectify the mistakes they made in their 34-7 loss to Connacht ahead of their United Rugby Championship match against the Cardiff Blues on Saturday night.

“There are a couple of things we need to adjust to, mostly the conditions and the tempo. These European sides play differently and they are accurate in their execution.”

“We need to adjust and learn really quickly how to counter that tempo. But the focus is on ourselves and making sure we continue improving. Our attitude as Bulls is not to complain, but to adapt and grow.

“We always look at ourselves and even the guys who came on in the second half continued to fight and showed character. If we continue to improve than good results are on the way,” Gqoboka said.

While the match against Connacht was played in the old-fashioned venue of the Galway Greyhound Stadium (capacity 8129), which is open and allows the elements to take full force, the Bulls will be playing Cardiff on the high-tech 4G, artificial turf pitch at the Arms Park.

Bulls scrumhalf Zak Burger is a man who knows about playing in small venues missing the finer touches of a place like Loftus Versfeld as he moved to Pretoria from Griquas. He is looking forward to showing a bit more daring in better conditions for running rugby.

“A couple of times in Kimberley we would have a 40km/h wind in that open stadium and it made it very difficult in certain corners. Connacht used the wind really well last week in the second half and put us under big pressure.

“But as a scrumhalf I enjoy this 4G pitch in Cardiff a lot, you feel like you are running lighter, it’s nice to play on. I don’t know what the weather will be like on Saturday, but I hope it’s okay.

“We must use the conditions more and we are not far off, we’re getting our entries into the 22. But in the Currie Cup, where you get 10 chances and take five, in this competition you only get four and you have to take them all.

“If it’s wet and windy then we will have to kick more and we can’t run from our 22. We will have to put pressure on them with more tactical kicking. We need to play good rugby and attack where the space is,” Burger said.

British and Irish Lions coach Warren Gatland said the squad was told before the tour to expect a couple of Covid cases within their camp and he is still absolutely sure that their Test series with the Springboks will still go ahead.

Gatland said they knew the key to their tour would be their ability to adapt and he believes the squad showed that in highly impressive fashion as they went on to the field at short notice against the Sharks and demolished them 54-7 at Ellis Park on Wednesday night.

The match against the Sharks was only confirmed as going ahead two hours before kickoff following a hectic day of testing and retesting for the Lions after the positive Covid tests for one player and one member of management, plus the isolation of their close contacts.

“I honestly believe we will have the Test series. Obviously there have been a few cases in the Springboks camp and we hope they get everything right in the next couple of weeks so we can have a good Test series. The medics said before we arrived in South Africa that we were likely to pick up a case or two and it will be all about how we deal with it. The last couple of days have been quite surreal and really challenging.

“I’m incredibly proud of how the team adjusted and, more than the result of the match, what I’m really pleased about is the togetherness of the group. My message to the team was ‘let’s use this as a positive, whatever is thrown at us, we can cope, it will not faze us’. Faced with potential chaos, we needed to adapt and change, that’s what we did and the players were outstanding,” Gatland said.

Although Gatland has made it clear none of his squad can consider themselves to have booked places in the Test team just yet, lock Iain Henderson, who captained the Lions against the Sharks, said there is no doubt players are taking their opportunities to show the selectors that they are ready to face the Springboks.

“This is an incredibly tight bunch of guys and you can see the team bonds are thriving. Everyone is trying their utmost to put their hand up and the team were able to carry out their roles excellently, even though we are still trying to get our breath at altitude. The scoreboard might not show it, but these have been two very tough games and the players are certainly making it challenging for the selectors.

“The way the guys carried themselves having to play at a moment’s notice, they could have made any number of excuses, but we made sure we kept on track with what we want to do on this tour. To pitch up the way we did after an unbelievably difficult day was great,” Henderson said.