Ken Borland

While the capricious Cape winds toyed with most of the field, only nine golfers shooting under the par mark of 74, Kylie Henry flourished, posting a five-under-par 69 to lead after the first round of the Standard Bank Ladies Open at Royal Cape Golf Club on Wednesday.

Coming from Scotland, Henry ought to be comfortable in the wind, and it showed in a top-class round that featured an eagle on her second hole, the par-five 11^th, followed by four birdies and just a single bogey.

The winner of the opening event in this year’s Sunshine Ladies Tour, the Dimension Data Ladies Pro-Am at Fancourt, also in the Western Cape, went out from the 10^th and reached the clubhouse in four-under, before coming home in one-under as the wind became stronger on her back nine.

“It was pretty windy today, but it does that here and I’ve had quite a lot of experience in the wind, most of the time I manage to judge it well. I do enjoy these good, strong courses. Royal Cape is a great layout and in really good condition, and Fancourt was amazing, a brilliant test.

“Some holes were really quite tough today, with crosswinds or the wind into you, but I played really good golf. I gave myself lots of birdie chances because my iron play was really solid, and then my putting was the best part of my game. It’s quite a tight course, so I drove the ball well too.

“Both nines are similar, but the wind just got stronger when I was on the front nine, so the back nine was slightly easier for me and I hit a lot of good shots,” Henry said.

South Africans Shawnelle de Lange (71) and Lora Assad (72) are Henry’s closest challengers, while compatriot Kiera Floyd is one of the six golfers who posted one-under-par 73.

Like a flower opening up its corolla to show the beauty within, this Sunshine Ladies Tour season has really seen Floyd unveil her huge talent. The 19-year-old finished tied-fourth in last week’s Fidelity ADT Ladies Challenge at Blue Valley, she was in contention after the first round of the SuperSport Ladies Challenge at Sun City, and she was tied-second going into the final round at Fancourt.

De Lange dropped only one shot, on the par-four 10^th, but finished superbly with three birdies in the last four holes.

Assad began her round on the 10^th and immediately dropped a shot, but she fought back brilliantly with birdies on the 13^th, 14^th, 16^th and 18^th holes. The 31-year-old suffered a couple of bogeys on the front nine, but finished well with a birdie to post two-under.

Floyd began a rollercoaster round on the 10^th with a bogey, but reached the turn in two-under, before making one birdies and two bogeys coming home.

Frenchwomen Emie Peronnin and Ariane Klotz, Norway’s Maiken Bing Paulsen, Florentyna Parker of England and India’s Tvesa Malik, winner of the SuperSport Ladies Challenge, are the other golfers on one-under-par.

South African cricket is under enormous pressure at the moment, with the Proteas battling to keep their heads above water in Australia at the height of summer in a Test series that enjoys considerable profile due to it being between the two sides at number one and two in the World Test Championship.

The second Test at the MCG from Boxing Day, one of the great occasions in the game, is do-or-die for the Proteas in terms of staying alive in the series; but it also offers them the chance to go into 2023 on a much-needed positive note.

There can be no doubt that the South African cricket team have underperformed in 2022. The Test format has actually been their strongest, which is why they are still in contention to play in next year’s World Test Championship final, despite having one of the weakest batting line-ups.

They began 2022 by sealing a memorable series win over India, where the batsmen showed true guts and the bowlers were superb in home conditions. Their inconsistency then came to the fore in New Zealand with an abysmal performance in the first Test, but then a brilliant effort in the second to draw the series on the home turf of the reigning WTC champions.

Bangladesh were efficiently dispatched by a Proteas team missing their IPL stars, but spinners Keshav Maharaj and Simon Harmer came to the fore, and a thumping innings win over England at Lord’s followed to really raise expectations.

But then the batting was exposed and heavy defeats followed at Old Trafford and the Oval. The Gabba massacre was a continuation of that trend.

The same batting woes often inflicted the T20 side. There were times when the Proteas looked genuine T20 World Cup contenders, like when they beat India away twice in a row in June or won the series in England. Even at the World Cup in Australia, winning a crunch game against India in Perth gave renewed hope; but they then lost to Pakistan and, most humiliatingly, to the Netherlands when just one more win would have seen them through to the semi-finals.

South Africa’s ODI form has been mediocre. The highlight of the last year was the 3-0 series win over India in the Cape, but unfortunately that did not qualify for World Cup qualification points. Their record for the rest of the year in ODIs was three wins and five losses, including a shock home series defeat to Bangladesh.

The Proteas are now struggling to automatically qualify for next year’s 50-over World Cup, especially since they are forfeiting their series in Australia, which was meant to follow the Tests, to concentrate on the SA20 competition, a desperate bid to rescue Cricket South Africa’s finances.

Those same dismal finances are the reason the Proteas are going to be desperately under-exposed at Test level over the next few years, so how can we honestly expect them (especially the batsmen) to get better in that arena? The Australia tour is the last three-Test series South Africa will play until September 2026!

The lack of attention CSA is giving to red-ball cricket is an immense frustration. There are many coaches who believe having a foundation in the skills of long-format cricket actually makes better limited-overs players, so we should not be surprised that the malaise spreads to the ODI and T20 performances.

And it’s not just the Proteas who aren’t getting enough red-ball cricket. Our domestic stars, the internationals of the future, play just seven four-day games the whole season. With the inevitable weather interventions and innings wins, some batsmen will only get 10 visits to the crease all summer.

And then there is the quality of that cricket. It is really annoying that the Proteas play such scant regard to ‘paying it back’ to the system that grew them and play so infrequently, even right before a major series like the current one in Australia.

I have no doubt our batsmen’s woes can be directly attributed to the fact their games are not sufficiently honed at domestic level. They are seldom really challenged from both ends during a game, whereas at international level they will face two fast bowlers roaring in at 140km/h or a top-quality spinner almost the whole time.

Unless these basic building blocks are fixed, we can stand by for another very frustrating year.

The second Test between South Africa and the West Indies may have only lasted three-and-a-half days, but in terms of advertising their self-professed love of Test cricket and their renewed happiness under new leadership, the Proteas produced a compellingly clinical display at the Wanderers on Saturday.

The West Indies were bundled out for just 106 in only 35.1 overs, their third lowest total ever against South Africa, whose 284-run winning margin was their second-biggest against the once-great Caribbean team.

Off-spinner Simon Harmer took the new ball and bowled unchanged from the Golf Course End to take three for 45 in 17.1 overs. Kagiso Rabada, as ever, had set the ball rolling with two wickets in the 11^th over, after West Indies openers Kraigg Brathwaite (18) and Tagenarine Chanderpaul (2) had initially done well to put on 21 for the first wicket.

Seven overs later, the West Indies had crashed to 34 for six at lunch, left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj also taking two wickets.

But what happened next to Maharaj was the only negative of the fourth and final day at the Wanderers, with the 33-year-old rupturing his achilles tendon as he tried to celebrate his second wicket, an excellent review leading to Kyle Mayers being given out lbw for 7 on the stroke of lunch.

Not much more than an hour after lunch it was all over, with young fast bowler Gerald Coetzee mopping up the tail with three for 37, once again improving on his career-best figures.

“Today the guys were very clinical in the way they went about their business. Winning is always fun and I did enjoy that,” new Test coach Shukri Conrad said after debuting with a 2-0 series win. “To see smiles on the faces and a happy changeroom is fantastic, because after the Australia tour, things were very dark.

“It was great to see how the guys responded and I feel there has been a little bit of growth already. We now have to find novel ways of keeping that growth going because we don’t play another Test for nine months.

“I can say categorically and emphatically that the boys want to play Test cricket, every single one of them wants to play more Test cricket,” Conrad said.

The 55-year-old coach was especially delighted for his captain, Temba Bavuma, who must have slept well overnight having scored a magnificent 171 not out that led the Proteas from a position where they were in danger of losing the match to a massive lead.

Although Bavuma only added a single to his score on Saturday, swinging Jason Holder straight to deep backward square-leg, he has answered his critics in emphatic fashion, his long-awaited second Test century being not only a biggie, but a matchwinning one on a lively pitch.

Conrad said Bavuma’s epic had roused considerable emotion in the Proteas changeroom.

“Thank goodness the TV cameras didn’t show the changeroom because there were a few wild scenes in there,” Conrad laughed. “Temba is under a lot of pressure, often for no good reason.

“So it was a monumental knock with the Test on a knife-edge. The West Indies have found ways to crawl back into the game in this series, and we have found ways of letting them back in.

“So at eight for two and then losing another two quick wickets, we needed someone to step up and move the momentum of the series. It was both a match and series defining innings.

“It was a helluva knock against a very skilled bowling unit, especially the quicks. Technically, Temba was fantastic.

“We are all so happy for him. After close of play yesterday [Friday], some of the guys stood up and lauded Temba. After all the unnecessary stick he gets, to go out and play like that was fabulous,” Conrad said.

West Indies coach Andre Coley said his team had relaxed at key times on the third day, but he praised Bavuma for “seizing the opportunity and wrestling the game away from us”.

The bowlers then wasted no time in landing the knockout punch on Saturday, securing a win that was as emphatic as some of the big triumphs at the Wanderers in the previous decade when South Africa were one of the leaders in Test cricket.

Leaders Ryan Fox and Luke Donald were only able to complete three holes on the second day of the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City on Friday as thundershowers and persistent rain washed out play, leaving tournament organisers under pressure to finish the second and third rounds on Saturday.

Overnight leader Fox birdied the par-five second hole, but then immediately gave the stroke back with a bogey-five on the third to sit at eight-under-par when play was suspended at 11.49am due to lightning. Steady rain had already been falling for some time and it never relented, leading to the course being waterlogged.

Donald had joined Fox on eight-under as he birdied the second hole and parred the first and third holes.

“We would need two hours of no rain just to start to get the course reasonably playable,” tournament director David Williams told media after play was called off for the day at 3.30pm.

“If we could have got a couple more hours in today then that would have been great, but we felt it was better to make a decision. We will start again at 7.45am on Saturday and the third round will be played in the same groups.

“The golfers will get a half-an-hour break after the second round and then go again. That way we can save two hours, maybe more, with the forecast not being marvellous for Saturday either.

“Sunday morning is also not so good, so we need to get as much completed on Saturday as we can. Hopefully we get the third round done, but there’s a lot in the air at the moment,” Williams said.

Perhaps the golfer most frustrated by the delay was Englishman Ross Fisher, who had a great round going and had climbed into a tie for third place on six-under-par with Rasmus Hojgaard and Guido Migliozzi.

Fisher birdied the first two holes and then the ninth, and had just eagled the par-five 10^th when the golfers were pulled off the course. Being five-under through 10 holes has lifted the five-time DP World Tour winner to just two strokes off the lead.

Hojgaard was also going well on three-under through six holes.

Veteran Richard Sterne is the leading South African, birdieing the first two holes to go to three-under.