Ken Borland

It took deep into the second half before the Bulls were able to finally rout a boisterous Zebre Parma side 45-7 in their United Rugby Championship match at the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi at the weekend and coach Jake White admitted that his team had suffered from a bit of over-eagerness in the first half.

Several chances went abegging in the first half and it was only thanks to two tries in the last 10 minutes of the first half that the Bulls went into the break 17-7 up.

“In the first 25 minutes we had to find our feet, so we scored 45 points in the last 55 minutes,” White said. “At the beginning there were a few chances we did not finish, but I’m generally quite happy with the way we played.

“It’s not that easy to come here to Parma, not even Munster managed to score more than 34 points here in January and they are one of the great European sides.

“Zebre had also only lost three players to their national side and were relatively unchanged. So there are a lot of positives for us, especially the five points that means we stay in the competition, but we will keep our feet on the ground.

“You’ve got to earn the right to go wide, we went too quickly a couple of times and there were knock-ons. As soon as you become more direct then you create the space out wide,” White said.

While White questioned the small number of times his team was awarded penalties for Zebre being offsides, he did say he was pleased with the tempo of the game allowed by referee Adam Jones.

“The offsides maybe could have been policed better, Zebre would shoot off the line and we got caught a bit, they were coming at us the whole time,” White said.

“But I was very happy with the pace of the game, the tempo was what we need in the URC for us to compete. It was a significant difference to what we’ve been getting at home.

“There was pace on the ball, a much higher ball-in-play time, and that allowed us to keep putting them under pressure with wave-after-wave of attack. The referee managed that well.

“We want to attack, you need to score tries when you’re playing in a whole year long competition. You have to back yourself to put points on the board. To score 45 away from home is the outcome we wanted,” White said.

Fast bowler Duanne Olivier is starring in four-day domestic cricket, back in South Africa for the first time since February 2019, when he took four wickets in the Proteas’ infamous second Test loss to Sri Lanka in Port Elizabeth, when the tiny island nation became the first subcontinental team to win a Test series here.

He then added to the sense of shock in South African cricket at the time by taking a Kolpak contract to play in English county cricket for Yorkshire. Olivier did play in the Mzansi Super League for the Jozi Stars at the end of 2019, but with the Kolpak door now closed, the 29-year-old should be back in the local game permanently.

Olivier was named in a powerful four-man Central Gauteng Lions pace attack on Friday in their CSA Four-Day Domestic Series match against the North-West Dragons at the Wanderers, and was in fine form, taking four for 50 in 14.2 overs. And it wasn’t just all fire and brimstone either, there were clearly intelligent plans at play too.

As a fiery strike bowler, Olivier is always expected to take wickets and be the spearhead of a successful team. Certainly in English county cricket, he will be looked to by Yorkshire as the overseas pro who will win them matches and get them into contention for silverware.

Despite fairly modest returns of 75 wickets in 25 first-class games for Yorkshire at an average of 32.42, Olivier has been signed as an overseas pro through to the end of next season.

The owner of an excellent Test record of 48 wickets in 10 matches at 19.25 will have the same level of expectation from the Lions, especially since their home base of the Wanderers is ideally suited to his high-energy, high-impact bowling that can drag life out of most pitches.

Olivier said he is loving the pressure that is on him to perform.

“I always feel pressure because I am always trying to do well for the team. I actually enjoy it, it’s a part of the game and it helps a lot that in the UK, you are also always under pressure,” Olivier said on the eve of his Lions debut.

“This is a different structure now in South African cricket, which means there is different pressure, and I will embrace that. Every year is a challenge, with different ups and downs, and every year I just understand my game a bit better.

“Obviously cricket is performance-based and if you take wickets then it looks like you’re making an impact, but for me it’s about the process and how well I have bowled.

“It’s always nice in Johannesburg because it’s more suited to fast bowling. But I will just try to keep it as simple as possible. What I’ve achieved before is irrelevant, it’s three or four years since I last played at the Wanderers, and it’s a fresh challenge,” Olivier said.

PORT EDWARD, KwaZulu-Natal (7 October) – Rain continued to fall on the already waterlogged Wild Coast Sun Country Club course overnight and with no play possible on Thursday, the Sunshine Tour took the decision to cancel the SunBet Challenge instead of trying to ram the tournament into an ever-decreasing window of better weather.

The event was originally scheduled to run from Wednesday to Friday, but the first round was postponed to Thursday due to heavy rain on the Wild Coast causing the course to be waterlogged and the tournament extended to Saturday.

At least five holes were still unplayable on Thursday and, with more rain forecast, playing a shortened tournament would amount to an unfair contest for certain golfers.

“There’s been no improvement since yesterday, there is still standing water on the course, the bunkers are full of water despite us pumping it out and in some fairways there is nowhere to drop the ball. So it’s unplayable for the same reasons as Wednesday and it would not be golf if we were to play. The rain just has nowhere to go because the water table is so high,” tournament director Gary Todd said on Thursday morning.

It took the most gruelling of meetings, but after 11 hours of intense wrangling, the Cricket South Africa Members Council on Sunday night finally agreed to the new constitution proposed by the Interim Board, marking the end of the crisis in cricket that would have led to Minister of Sport Nathi Mthethwa withdrawing their recognition at the end of the week.

The Members Council met on Saturday afternoon and then went into a meeting with the Interim Board from 10am on Sunday. The initial attitude of the Members Council seemed to be that CSA should “defend” their autonomy against the Minister’s looming action, especially since Sascoc issued a strong rejection of having a majority independent board in a statement on Saturday.

But with the threat of irreparable harm being done to the game if they were suspended by the minister, agreement was eventually reached on all the outstanding issues that prevented the Members Council from approving the MoI last weekend.

Sascoc, who have warned CSA that they could have their membership of the mother body suspended if they agree to an majority independent board and an independent chair, will obviously still be an obstacle, but it is believed Mthethwa will be handling that side of the conflict.

CSA issued a communique half-an-hour before midnight on Sunday night, the headline of which included the gorgeous words “Joint Statement” indicating agreement had finally been reached and a catastrophe averted. In terms of Section 60 of the Companies Act, an expedited process has now been triggered which will see the MoI being adopted in the next 48 hours.

“By reaching this agreement, cricket in South Africa has adopted a governance mode which is best practice both in South Africa and internationally,” the statement said. Both Members Council president Rihan Richards and Interim Board chair Dr Stavros Nicolaou were then quoted expressing their delight at the cessation of hostilities.