Ken Borland

Ruan Nortje has not captained a team before at senior level, but the willing second-row forward sees his new responsibility as an exciting adventure after he was confirmed as the new Bulls captain for the rest of the season on Thursday.

With Marcell Coetzee enjoying a sabbatical in Japan for the next few months, the Bulls needed a new leader and director of rugby Jake White has gone for one of the team’s inspirational young guns. Nortje has also been surrounded by an exciting young leadership group including potential future Loftus Versfeld legends like Elrigh Louw and Johann Grobbelaar.

“I’m very excited for the challenge and it’s an unbelievably big privilege. I captained a team maybe one or two times in high school but never at professional level or anything,” Nortje said.

“As a lineout leader, there’s also a lot of pressure, and doing that has definitely helped me gain confidence and I’ve learnt a lot about leadership. But I don’t know how I will feel running out in front on Saturday.

“I’ve known about it for a while and had a long time to get my head right for it. It’s another step on my journey towards my greater goals at the Bulls.

“Marcell asked me for a lot of advice on the field and I’ve learnt a lot from him. But the one message from him that stood out was to be myself as captain, don’t try too hard, just lead by example,” Nortje said.

One senses a new, young leadership group fits in perfectly with White’s long-term plan for the Bulls, with the director of rugby recently extending his contract at Loftus Versfeld through to June 2027. While there are still some richly experienced and massively respected older players at the Bulls, the new guard is starting to push itself to the forefront.

“It’s been coming a while, from last season already it came up that Marcell was probably going to go away for a Japan stint,” Nortje said. “Both Marcell and Jake spoke to me about how I would feel about the captaincy. It’s all been done in a systematic way, not just suddenly decided one morning.

“From the first time I played for the Bulls, I think of all the legends who have played before in the number five jersey whenever I put it on. Like Victor Matfield, who I will also follow now in his footsteps as captain.

“It’s a big motivation and when under pressure, I feel the best comes out of me. And I’m always chuffed and excited to play every weekend and give my 100%,” Nortje said.

The Bulls will return to United Rugby Championship action on Saturday when they host the Ospreys in Pretoria.

Former New Zealand captain Sean Fitzpatrick is willing to endorse the Six Nations as the best tournament in rugby outside of the World Cup, but the All Blacks great believes it would be a terrible idea for South Africa to join that Northern Hemisphere competition.

Speculation has been rife recently that the world champion Springboks will follow their domestic franchises into European rugby, breaking from their traditional Sanzaar alliance with New Zealand, Australia and Argentina, and joining France, Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, and maybe Italy, in a new-look Six Nations.

“The Six Nations is arguably the best tournament outside the World Cup,” Fitzpatrick told a Laureus World Sports Academy media opportunity on Wednesday. “The first three rounds have been compelling viewing.

“There has obviously been a lot of talk in New Zealand and up north about South Africa joining, but why add to something when it is not broken? I don’t like the idea of Southern Hemisphere teams in the Six Nations because the history of the competition is Northern Hemisphere.

“And I don’t think the Southern Hemisphere can afford to lose South Africa from the Rugby Championship, it will be devastating to lose them. If they join, it would be a Seven Nations because Italy can’t just be ejected, they have a right of veto.

“So starting a new competition would add a pretty big new international window. It would be a sad day for rugby,” Fitzpatrick said.

The current form of the All Blacks has many of their fans already having kittens, but the chairman of the Laureus World Sport Academy said he was confident they were on track, while acknowledging the demise of the old Super Rugby competition that included South Africa has hurt them.

“Ian Foster [head coach] knows where he is going for sure,” Fitzpatrick said. “Traditionally the All Blacks have not worked on four-year cycles, they try and win every year.

“But I think this time they are building for the World Cup. The results have been disappointing but Ian has exposed a lot of players to international rugby. In 2019 they were exposed a bit in the heat of World Cup battle.

“Super Rugby has not turned out to be the competition it should be. Super Rugby Aoteroa in 2020 was fantastic, everyone loved it, coming back to New Zealand, it was very tribal.

“But last year was different and we’ve missed South Africa. Super 12 was such a good product, but they got greedy going to 14, 16, 18 teams and it blew out because it was unsustainable,” Fitzpatrick said.

The Proteas batsmen are prepared for flat wickets or tricky pitches at the T20 World Cup in the UAE, and are also willing to shoulder the responsibility of the top six scoring the majority of the runs due to the bottom of South Africa’s batting line-up being rather large, veteran slugger David Miller said on Wednesday.

South Africa’s strength during their recent winning run in T20 cricket has definitely been their bowling attack, especially their trio of spinners, but that also means they have a long tail. Gone are the days of frontline bowlers like Lance Klusener, Shaun Pollock and Nicky Boje also being dangerous batsmen down the order.

“There’s been a lot of chat about the slower pitches and the one for our warm-up against Afghanistan was a bit low and slow,” Miller said in Abu Dhabi. “I expect they’ll get slower as we go along in the tournament too.

“The pitches in Dubai and Sharjah weren’t too bad in the IPL and if there’s dew then the ball slides on nicely. But only our last game is at night. We are also well-prepared though if the wicket is good.

“We have to be mindful of our tail, but we’ve had that for some time and we’re aware of it. But our all-rounders are seriously dangerous batsmen too and we feel we have a strong enough batting unit.

“Ultimately we want the bulk of our runs to come from the top six and if we don’t do that then we probably don’t deserve to win games. It’s the responsibility of the batsmen and lately we’ve been able to find ways of getting winning scores,” Miller said.

The powerful left-hander says his current role in the team is to guide the middle-order, as befits a man with his experience, even though he has had a spell batting in the top four and his figures there are actually better than his overall stats.

Miller has had 15 innings in the top four, bringing him 370 runs at an average of 33.63 and a strike-rate of 154.81, both better than his overall average of 31.67 and a strike-rate of 140.82 from 80 innings.

But Miller says he is enjoying his tricky, floating finishing role in the team.

“In the IPL games here we’ve seen really good starts and it’s important to control the middle overs. It’s something we’ve done really well over the last few months and it gives a very good platform for the last five overs.

“If we lose a couple of wickets up front, then I can bat for more overs. But it’s about having an open mindset because there will be different scenarios all the time. You need to be more flexible.

“I’ve done the finishing role for the last couple of years and I feel comfortable there now, but I could come in in the ninth or 10th over to keep a left/right combination, or attack a spinner with a short boundary,” Miller said in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.

The 32-year-old tore his hamstring in Ireland and missed the ODIs in Sri Lanka, but returned for the first T20 and scored 26 off 15 balls. He continued that good form against Afghanistan this week with 20 not out off 10 deliveries.

The fact that the national selectors were willing to choose a 33-year-old new cap for Test cricket in Stephen Cook this summer has provided hope and no little inspiration to Heino Kuhn, who is the leading run-scorer in the Sunfoil Series this season.

The 31-year-old Titans batsman also averaged 60 in the Momentum One-Day Cup and a golden summer has pushed Kuhn right back into the picture for national honours after playing five T20 internationals for South Africa as a wicketkeeper/batsman between 2009 and 2011.

Kuhn is now strictly an opening batsman (and a quality fielder too) and regularly goes big, with six centuries in the last two seasons. His tally of 18 first-class hundreds includes three doubles and a 191 for South Africa A against Bangladesh A.

“It was nice to see Stephen Cook get an opportunity with the Proteas, I was happy for him because for years he’s been flippen good for the Lions. It was great that he took his chance and it’s great to see that South African cricket is now like Australian cricket where, if you’re a good enough batsman, you’re never too old.

“As long as my body holds, I’ll always believe that I can play for South Africa again and my fiancé Trudie probably believes even more than me! But I’m playing the best cricket of my career and luckily enough I have another two years on my contract with the Titans, so I hope I can continue this run because it’s the best I’ve ever batted,” Kuhn says.

The Titans stalwart – he has been granted a benefit season by the franchise – says his purple patch is not down to anything new in his technique but rather a better focus on the basics of top-order batting.

“I just try to bat time and play straight. I know I have the square shots, but if I just try and play straight and face a lot of balls then I know I’ll get runs. I know that if I face 200 balls then I’ll be close to a hundred. It’s about sticking to the basics and Rob Walter [Titans coach] is big on us just worrying about our own things and not the opposition,” Kuhn says.

It’s amazing to think of all the different jobs Kuhn has fulfilled on a cricket field since his days at Affies in the early 2000s, playing alongside AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis. He was actually a middle-order batsman who dabbled in leg-spin.

“I batted four at Coke Week for Northerns, behind AB and Faf, and I batted twice, scoring 40 not out and four not out, the winning runs. And at club level, Roelof van der Merwe kept wicket and I bowled leg-spin, and then one day I said we should swop. I made a stumping off Roela and our ways were set!

“I was very fortunate to keep to guys like Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Alfonso Thomas, Paul Harris and Imran Tahir in my early days at the Titans. But if opening the batting is the only way I can play in a team, I’ll definitely take it. Not many people enjoy opening, but I put up my hand, I like the challenge. It’s like I prefer a green pitch because then you have to work for your runs and you know you deserve them. It’s lovely to get runs in those tough conditions,” Kuhn says.

The likeable man from Piet Retief certainly deserves a successful benefit and another look-in at international cricket, and there have been few more loyal servants of the Titans.

“At the beginning of my career I was fortunate to have traditional team-mates like Martin van Jaarsveld and Pierre de Bruyn, so that was the way I grew up. My family are all here in Pretoria and the Titans are the best franchise in the land. I can’t see myself playing in another country and, if I don’t play any more cricket for South Africa, then I won’t play international cricket for anybody else,” Kuhn says.