Ken Borland

Veteran Sunshine Tour star Adilson da Silva goes into this week’s Titleist Championship in hot form and believing that a win is nearby when the third event of the Rise Up Series tees off at Pretoria Country Club on Wednesday.

The 48-year-old is third in the order of merit having finished sixth in the Betway Championship at Killarney Country Club and tied for second in last week’s African Bank Championship at Glendower; only the winners of those respective tournaments – Darren Fichardt (Killarney) and Danie van Tonder (Glendower) are ahead of him. And Da Silva has fond memories of Pretoria Country Club, having finished 11^th there in 2018 on his last competitive visit, for one of his best European Tour co-sanctioned results.

“It’s definitely a course I like because it doesn’t really suit the bombers and it’s a bit dry so it probably won’t run as much as the last two courses have. So if you can hit the fairways then the ball should stay on and the greens are stunning, quicker than they usually are during summer – you will hole a lot of putts if you get your stroke right. The greens are so good and my putting feels right.

“I had a practice round this morning [Tuesday] and I’m happy with the way I’m hitting the ball. I’m very happy with the way I’ve been playing but I’ve just got to be patient. Wild shots on this course can get you into trouble very quickly because of all the bunkers and trees. It could be cold too and they say the wind will be up. I hope they keep the greens fairly soft otherwise it’s going to be very hard to get close,” Da Silva told The Citizen on Tuesday.

Cold air will also mean the ball not going as far as usual on the Highveld and Da Silva knows the importance of accuracy off the tee.

“You’ve got to hit good shots, especially off the tee it’s very important. If you drive well then you’re going to give yourself lots of chances. Fortunately I’ve been hitting the ball good and putting well and just a little change made by John Dickson, the coach at Johannesburg Country Club, has helped a lot,” Da Silva said.

There are, however, other contenders who have even more intimate knowledge of the Waterkloof course. George Coetzee knows exactly where to ping his drives having won the Tshwane Open at Pretoria Country Club in 2015 and 2018, while Fichardt has played there since he was a teenager and won several amateur titles and Jacques Blaauw finished second, sixth and tied-13^th in the European Tour co-sanctioned tournaments held there.

The differing domestic circumstances of the Proteas women’s squad meant some of them had done no cricket-related work since the beginning of Lockdown in March when they arrived at their training camp in Pretoria, but coach Hilton Moreeng said on Friday that he is happy with the intensity shown this week.

A high performance squad of 24 was named to gather at the University of Pretoria for a skills-based training camp that ended on Friday. The Proteas were last on a cricket field 143 days previously when they were narrow losers to hosts Australia in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup.

“The last time we were together was at the World Cup so we needed to get back into the swing of things. The camp went well, even though the environment is now totally different, there’s a new normal, which we realise and are slowly getting used to. We needed to press the reset button and if our tour to England happens in September then we need to know we’re ready and can hit the ground running.

“We needed to see where the players’ skills are. For some of them it was the first time they have picked up a bat since the World Cup because not all of them had the facilities to train properly. But I was very happy with the intensity I saw, that was good to see for our preparation for a possible tour and the upcoming 50-over World Cup. We needed to assess where the squad is and get everyone in the right frame of mind,” Moreeng said on Friday.

Moreeng was assisted by Dillon du Preez, the former Knights pace bowler, and the head coach, who still has to finalise his assistants, said he was impressed by his work.

Proteas vice-captain Chloe Tryon, who has been signed again by the Hobart Hurricanes for the Women’s Big Bash in Australia, said by focusing on the basics she has come out of the week-long camp happy with her progress.

“I just went back to basics in all aspects – batting, bowling and fielding – because it’s been a while since I played. So I just tried to keep it pretty simple and not just jump right in. I wanted to make sure that I mastered that first and my skills are now pretty good,” Tryon said.

The Black Lives Matter logo might not be printed on their playing shirts when cricket returns on Saturday with the Solidarity Cup three-team event in Centurion, but leading White Proteas have now joined the movement and publicly expressed their support for the anti-racism drive.

Cricket South Africa director of cricket Graeme Smith has indicated that the playing shirts had already been printed, for an event that was originally meant to take place on June 27, when the cricketing world began to embrace the Black Lives Matter movement.

Nevertheless, when former Proteas captain Faf du Plessis “takes the knee” on Saturday along with other White players like Rassie van der Dussen, Dwaine Pretorius and Anrich Nortje, it will be a powerful moment of solidarity with Lungi Ngidi and the other Black players who have spoken out in support of BLM.

Du Plessis has even taken matters further by apologising for his comment that the team “don’t see colour” when Temba Bavuma was left out of the Newlands Test against England at the start of the year.

“I surrender my opinions and take the knee as an intercessor. I acknowledge that South Africa is still hugely divided by racism and it is my personal responsibility to do my best to empathise, hear the stories, learn and then be part of the solution with my thoughts, words and actions. I have gotten it wrong before. Good intentions were failed by a lack of perspective when I said on a platform that I don’t see colour. In my ignorance I silenced the struggles of others by placing my own view on it.

“A race problem is a human race problem, if one part of the body hurts, we all stop, we empathise, we get perspective, we learn and then we tend to the hurting part of the body. So I am saying that all lives don’t matter UNTIL Black lives matter. I’m speaking up now, because if I wait to be perfect, I never will. I want to leave a legacy of empathy,” Du Plessis said in an Instagram post on Friday.

Van der Dussen and Pretorius, who both play for the Central Gauteng Lions and have had to wait a long time to kickstart their international careers, said they too support BLM.

“I will be proudly supporting the BLM movement and I will be taking a knee on Saturday. I honestly and wholeheartedly believe it’s the right thing to do. I also believe taking the knee is only the start. To me the BLM movement stands for the most basic right all people across the world deserve and that is the right to not be judged or segmented because of his/her colour, but rather for WHO they are.

“It’s not a movement that says Black lives are MORE important than any other colour. It’s my brother from another mother asking me please see me for WHO I am. Don’t persecute me because of my skin colour. Give me the same benefit of the doubt you would give someone with the same colour as you. Yes, the movement says ‘Black’, but I believe it’s relevant to any colour and race,” Pretorius said on Facebook.

Van der Dussen was asked on Twitter by journalist Max du Preez where he and several other Proteas stood on BLM, and the 31-year-old batsman tweeted in Afrikaans: “I support BLM, I’m against murder, I’m against all murders: physical, character and cultural murders. I support equal opportunities for all. Just because I support BLM does not mean I support violence or Marxism, so I refuse to be labelled by people.”

The fact that almost all of them have international playing experience was first and foremost in fast bowler Lutho Sipamla’s mind this week when he spoke about the effect the Proteas coaching staff have had on his own fledgling career for South Africa.

Since making his Proteas debut in a T20 against Pakistan at the Wanderers in February last year, the 22-year-old Sipamla has played four ODIs and five T20 Internationals. For all his inexperience, he has been quick to recognise the value of all the experience around him.

“Guys like Charl Langeveldt, Mark Boucher, Jacques Kallis and Justin Ontong have walked the talk, they know what it takes to be a good international cricketer. It’s awesome to have them as coaches because they have been in our shoes and they have done it all before. So they can relate to what we are going through because they’ve experienced it themselves.

“Someone like Charl, when it comes to bowling at the death, he’s had to defend six or seven runs to win the game and done that. So he knows the processes involved, he’s been successful and he passes that on to the bowlers,” Sipamla said.

Bowling coach Langeveldt played 72 ODIs, but the respect he is held in by local cricketers suggests he should have played many more; head coach Boucher played 147 Tests and 295 ODIs, batting consultant Kallis is South Africa’s most-capped player ever with 166 Test and 328 ODI appearances, and fielding coach Ontong was unfortunate to play just two Tests, 14 ODIs and 28 T20 Internationals.

Last year was a pretty terrible one for the Proteas, but there were signs of the tide starting to turn when they whitewashed a powerful Australian side 3-0 in the ODI series in February/March.

“It was a great experience making my debut in the limited-overs format and it was a really good win over Australia, a wonderful experience and a great time for me. We had a very young squad but we all worked together towards our goal and gelled nicely. We all knew what we had to do, everyone knew their roles and we were able to execute.

“In that campaign we all grew as individuals and players, and it was something special to be part of it. And now we’ve had a long wait to play again and I’m really excited just to get back to practice and crafting my skills again. As my Dad always tells me when I’m having a tough time, I must just make sure I keep working hard and make sure I’m still doing all the right things,” Sipamla said.