Ken Borland

When the North-West cricket team return to the top division of domestic cricket in October, they’ll have good reason to believe their batting line-up is not going to be knocked over cheaply thanks to the acquisition of one of the most admired batsmen of the franchise era.

Heino Kuhn was the sixth highest run-getter in the history of franchise cricket, his 7209 runs at 40.50 for the Titans putting him behind only Stephen Cook (8678), Andrew Puttick (7832), Justin Ontong (7583), Vaughn van Jaarsveld (7503) and Neil McKenzie (7263). The 37-year-old is still a prolific run-scorer and he averaged 67.33 for Kent in county cricket last year.

Kuhn will provide some invaluable quality and experience to the North-West top-order batting, along with Imperial Lions star Nicky van den Bergh. They are the standout names in the batting line-up, which boasts some quality all-rounders in Senuran Muthusamy, Delano Potgieter and Dwaine Pretorius, and an exciting, explosive batsman in Wesley Marshall, who has tasted success at franchise level despite limited opportunities with the Titans and Lions.

“North-West has great facilities in Potchefstroom and because it’s a new franchise that will bring new challenges. I see a lot of new names in the squad so hopefully I can bring some knowledge and experience to the group. But I am excited to be playing with some young guys.

“As you know, I don’t change the way I play, so if I’m the only experienced batsman or there’s five experienced batsmen around me, I will play the same way – be positive and bat with intent. I don’t really know how the new structure will work, but all I know is that we are in the First Division and together with Nicky and the coaching staff we will do whatever we can to win trophies and stay there,” Kuhn told Saturday Citizen on Friday.

Muthusamy’s arrival from Durban, where his left-arm spin and solid batting played a key role in the Dolphins’ triumphant season, is another major acquisition for North-West. They have also lured the promising left-arm quick Duan Jansen back from Bloemfontein to his birthplace, and he will join former Lions stars Eldred Hawken and Nono Pongolo in a useful seam attack.

The conspirational – and successful – efforts of the Cricket South Africa Members Council to block the new Memorandum of Incorporation proposed by the Interim Board were on full display on Saturday when the Special General Meeting called to pass the amendments and end the impasse in the sport’s governance was made open to the media.

That the Members Council were not actually going to embrace change and elevate the administration of cricket into the modern era was clear from the very beginning. The scheming began with Eastern Province president Donovan May, whose time on the gravy train extends through all of the governance crises of the last decade, trying to stop the meeting before it even began by pointing out they could not proceed until all 14 provincial presidents had logged on to the virtual platform. Gibson Molale of Northern Cape is believed to have been the late arrival.

May interrupted again during the address of Interim Board chair Dr Stavros Nicolaou to point out that Sascoc president Barry Hendricks, who Nicolaou had invited as an observer, should not have been invited unless he was allowed to have a voice. Hendricks had apparently turned down the invitation because of this, but then suddenly joined the meeting 35 minutes after it had started.

Following sports minister Nathi Mthethwa’s address in which he urged the Members Council to “not let us down as a country” and “consider the implications of choosing the wrong way”, Tebogo Siko of Northerns then proposed that Hendricks be allowed to speak.

Nicolaou questioned whether it was good governance to change the agenda during the meeting, but the Members Council agreed to let Hendricks speak. The Sascoc president then firmly stated that CSA could not go ahead with the amendments without them being passed by Sascoc first, clearly going against the wishes of Mthethwa for the CSA issue to finally be resolved.

Although the Interim Board announced earlier that the Members Council had agreed to the new MoI, there had been whispers during the week that they were trying to get Sascoc involved because their constitution is at odds with having a majority of independent directors on the board.

Mthethwa responded by saying Sascoc had failed to deal with the matter in the first place and had asked him to intervene. “We cannot reverse now. We want to see this process go smoothly, with no opposition and no obstruction. May cricket be the winner,” the minister said before taking his leave.

And then it was put to the vote, when the blockers of change were really revealed, because they were the ones who actively opposed a public vote. May asked if there could be a secret ballot, Interim Board member Haroon Lorgat called for transparency and a show of hands. Anne Vilas was the only provincial president who spoke out for transparency, with John Mogodi (Limpopo), Daniel Govender (KZN), Molale and Simphiwe Ndzundzu (Border) being vocal in supporting May’s call for a secret ballot.

Members Council acting president Rihan Richards then said secret ballots are “standard practice and nothing new”, which sums up exactly why CSA have been in a mess for so long, before the motion for non-transparency was passed.

The proposed amendments were not passed, with only six of the 14 presidents being in favour of a majority independent board and five in favour of an independent chair. Astonishingly, given the gravity of the issue, there were three abstentions in the first vote and four for the second amendment. But that also sums up the calibre of leadership on CSA’s Members Council.

It’s an axiom in cricket that batsmen should be picked when in form and no-one in the country has been in better touch this summer than Aiden Markram, who scored 945 runs in 12 innings in the Four-Day Franchise Series.

Which is why the Proteas have welcomed him back into their ODI squad, but it is an interesting selection because the 26-year-old has not played a 50-over innings since March 15 last year for the Titans in the Momentum One-Day Cup, and his last ODI innings was at the end of the 2019 World Cup against Australia in Manchester. In white-ball cricket generally, Markram has this season only played a handful of domestic T20 games without much success.

“It’s been a while since I played 50-over cricket and it felt a bit foreign at the start of the week. For me it’s about getting back to the game-plans when things were going well in franchise cricket, it’s more the mental side, bringing options that I think will work for me in these conditions. I still need to do a lot and I understand my white-ball cricket for the Proteas was not where I would like it to be.

“I certainly didn’t expect selection, you never do, but more so in this case. But I’m very grateful to be back and glad that the Proteas still see me as being in their plans, it’s a step back in the right direction for me, Markram, who averages 27.95 with a strike-rate of 85 in his 26 ODIs, said on Wednesday.

Run-rates in ODIs are on a steep incline at the moment, with England and India leading the way, and it is the top-order that have been the oxidising agents for these fiery pyrotechnics, rather than the old big-hitters at the death. It is a trend Markram says the Proteas want to follow, but there are still question marks over what their top-order combination will be.

Quinton de Kock and Janneman Malan are the incumbent openers from the whitewash of Australia a year ago, but where do captain Temba Bavuma and Markram himself fit in?

“We’re fortunate to be able to experiment still and in my few discussions with the coach and captain they have told me to try and be quite versatile. So I’ll probably bat anywhere in the top four. I’m probably most comfortable right at the top, but I need to get to know batting at three and four a bit more. But wherever there’s a gap, hopefully I take it and put big runs on the board.

“England and India are probably the two best ODI sides in the world at the moment and their brand certainly works. So that’s what needs to be done to be up there at the top and we have discussed it as a squad. Conditions can change things, but the Highveld is generally good for batting and an aggressive and brave approach is what we want,” Markram said.

When Imraan Khan said on October 1 last year, while they were still waiting for clarity on when the new season would begin, that “the culture and the environment is strong at the moment” in the Dolphins’ camp, there would have been many who just brushed the comments aside as typical pre-season talk from a coach.

But now that the Dolphins have pulled off an incredible triumph in the four-day competition – not just in the final but with their back-to-back away wins to host it – to add to their shared Momentum One-Day Cup title and their place in the T20 final, it is clear that Khan was dead right: something special has been brewing at Kingsmead.

How else did they manage to win the final outright with two days lost to rain, humbling the Titans, the dominant side in franchise history, by skittling them for a record low of 53?

“It’s been a fantastic performance, a bit unexpected, to be honest. But that’s been a feature of the team this season, they continuously fight. After the disappointment of the game being abandoned in Pretoria due to Covid, we fought back to share the One-Day Cup and then after losing the T20 final, we notched back-to-back away victories in the four-dayers, which was a special effort.

“We started two years ago as a technical team and we knew we had the tools, but we needed more consistency. We found a brand of cricket with our experienced bowlers being our spinners, and we stuck by it, everyone bought into it and we had a strong environment. The team does not rely on one or two individuals, it was a collective effort,” Khan told The Citizen on Tuesday.

The adoption of a new provincial-based system in domestic cricket spells the end of the Dolphins franchise just as they were becoming a dominant force, and there has already been one casualty with all-rounder Senuran Muthusamy, one of the stars of the final, throwing in his lot with newly-promoted North-West.

But Khan is confident Kingsmead will remain a fortress for the KZN Coastal side.

“We’ve managed to retain pretty much all our players, although Robbie Frylinck retiring is a big blow to our white-ball side and Senuran is unfortunately leaving us. We wanted to keep him, but we wish him well. But I am confident and comfortable with what we have, although we will still have to work hard on our execution and focus.

“We tend to back our spinners because conditions at Kingsmead have slowed down and we have a very young pace attack but it has a lot of potential. We’ve also had to do a lot of work on our batting so we can play our own conditions well. We have batted well because we spend a lot of time on the very specific skills needed here,” Khan said.