Where are the Warriors?

Eastern Capers prize a glass. Whether it is half-full or half-empty doesn’t bear thinking about.

Sunday Times

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TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

YOU can take cricket out of the Eastern Cape, but you can’t take the Eastern Cape out of cricket. It is the heartland of the game in this country, regardless of race, colour, creed or anything else.

It’s been 128 years since the first test in South Africa was played at St George’s Park. The president of Cricket South Africa, Chris Nenzani, is a Bhisho history teacher. The national team’s coach, Ottis Gibson, came from Barbados to play for Border in 1992.

Almost a third of the players — 29 of 97 — who have earned test caps since re-admission have strong ties to the Eastern Cape.

But in South Africa’s current squads, in all formats, only one franchise is unrepresented: the Warriors.

“There are certainly Warriors cricketers good enough to be in the national team,” said Piet Botha, who played for Border and coached the Warriors and is now in charge of Eastern Province.

“Jon-Jon [Smuts, who played six T20 internationals between January and June] deserved his call-up and it was quite surprising he got left out, especially after Faf [du Plessis] was injured.

“Simon Harmer took a Kolpak deal and if Colin Ackermann didn’t go that route he would certainly have been good enough to play at the next level. Andrew Birch has come close and played for South Africa A and Colin Ingram is a world class talent.

“Maybe the type of skill they have wasn’t required. Sometimes these things are all about timing; who retires or who gets injured.”

Botha is a transplant from up north — he played for Transvaal’s senior and B teams before moving to East London in 1992 — but he has acquired the Eastern Caper’s acceptance at simply having a glass. Whether it is half-full or half-empty doesn’t bear thinking about.

So the fact that the Warriors are not represented at national level is simply that: a fact.

Was it a worry for Warriors chief executive Mark Williams?

“No,” Williams said. “The infrastructure that should identify talent is there.

“I’m convinced it’s going to happen and there are a few knocking on the door. Another a season or two and some of those players will be serious contenders.”

That’s if they’re still around. The impoverished Eastern Cape has been exporting skills to all parts for centuries.

“Producing players for the Proteas is important for us; we know we’re a factory,” Williams said. “But sometimes it’s better for them to move from an economical perspective.

“We just want to make sure we compete well, and the fact that we ended up in two finals last season is some indication that the player stock out there is pretty good.”

That the Warriors reached both white-ball finals a summer ago was impressive considering they haven’t had a title sponsor for three years.

But the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality puts R6-million a year into the coffers, and there could be news on that horizon.

“We’re pretty choosy about who gets involved,” Williams said. “The last thing I want is to get somebody on board for two years and we have to start the process again.

“We’re looking for a long-term sponsor and we are talking to a few; there is interest.”

There will always be interest in cricket in the Eastern Cape. But will there always be players?

Leading Edge: Now on at a ground near you – David v Goliath

“Listen, fella,” the Israelites captain snaps at David, “if you stand still for much longer people are going to think you’re a bloody statue.”

Sunday Times

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TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

DAVID, as slight as he is short, walks back to his mark swinging his skinny arms as hard as he dares to take his attention off the terrifying thump of his heart. Can it really be that loud?

Many metres away, to the right of the crease, towering above pads almost tall as David and hunched over a bat hewn from most of a decent sized willow tree, is Goliath.

David turns. Stands. Waits. Trembles.

Goliath grunts.

“Holy Moses,” David thinks as he fidgets aimlessly with his field. “What the hell did I have to go and get that Philistines opener out for?”

The Israelites captain gets tetchy and trots over from extra cover. “Listen, fella,” he snaps at David, “if you stand still for much longer people are going to think you’re a bloody statue.”

David knows the game is up, that he doesn’t have 40 years to spend in this wilderness. T20 cricket doesn’t work like that, and he’s going to have to run in and bowl to the monster sooner rather than later.

“Oh well, here goes nothing. What’s my psalm again? Oh yeah …

“The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want …”

David works through his mantra steadily as he runs, and when his left foot hits the ground to take the pace before his delivery stride he ends with, “ … and I will dwell in the house of the lord for ever.”

His right foot hits the crease and his ice-cream stick of a left arm cuts a crescent through the air above his head.

Goliath has cocked his terrible eye and his bat, issued his last grunt and forgotten to breathe.

And he waits …

… Too long! Yorked!

As David got to, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil”, he saw the daylight between Goliath’s massive feet and his bat.

It looked as big as a parking space. More than enough, then, to smuggle a cricket ball through and onto stumps that didn’t quite reach up to Goliath’s knees.

An awful roar issues from the giant’s throat as he throws back his massive head in anger and frustration.

David can smell his sulphuric breath as he sprints past him in giddy triumph, teammates in tow. He’ll be up for a few tunes on his lyre in the pub tonight, china …

David slaying Goliath is among sport’s most compelling narratives, and it’s part of what’s making the franchise T20 competition a drawcard.

Aubrey Swanepoel, for instance, has been bowling off-spin for Griquas, Northern Cape and the Knights for more than 10 years.

During that time he has claimed the wickets of Ashwell Prince, David Miller, Colin Ingram, Temba Bavuma and Stiaan van Zyl — facts that are likely to be known only those who are part of the sub-culture that domestic cricket has been relegated to in its continuing separation from the international game.

When the short, slight Swanepoel shambles in to the crease and lets fly with a slinging right arm, you might not think something special could happen.

Aiden Markram probably also didn’t think so when Swanepoel bowled the second ball of the 15th over to him in the Knights game against the Titans in Kimberley on Wednesday, especially as he had put away the offie’s previous offering for four.

But Swanepoel induced a mighty heave from the golden child of South African batting that was caught at deep midwicket — by Swanepoel’s brother, Patrick Kruger, nogal.

And that with a sizeable crowd at the Diamond Oval and an exponentially bigger audience watching on television.

That many would have been at the ground or tuned in principally to see Dale Steyn’s return from a year on the sidelines through injury didn’t matter.

A layer of Swanepoel’s relative obscurity would have been peeled away. More people knew his name; maybe even his nickname: “Appel”.

Except on Wednesday, when it was David.

Steyn, De Villiers, Markram star for Titans

TMG Digital

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TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

DALE Steyn provided evidence of his match fitness, and AB de Villiers and Aiden Markram impressed in the Titans’ seven-wicket T20 win over the Cobras in Centurion on Sunday.

Steyn bowled all his four overs and took 2/16 to help limit the Cobras to 119/9, and the Titans were home with 6.3 overs to spare.

Vernon Philander reduced the Titans to 13/2 after 15 balls of their reply, but Markram and De Villiers righted the home side with a stand of 70.

De Villiers clipped 37 off 22 deliveries and Markram hit the winning single to finish with an unbeaten 51 off 36.

In his return from more than a year out of action with injuries against the Knights in Kimberley on Wednesday, Steyn bowled first change and sent down only three overs — the first of which went for 17 runs.

On Sunday he shared the new ball with Albie Morkel and conceded a couple of singles before dismissing Wayne Parnell with the last ball of his first over.

Temba Bavuma hit Steyn for four in his next over, but that was the only boundary against his name.

Having banked a decent first spell of 1/10 from two overs, Steyn returned in the 16th to remove Qasim Adams with his first delivery.

The Cobras didn’t reach three figures until after they had lost seven wickets, and their piddling total was never going to challenge the Titans’ potent batting line-up.

Even so, a tremor or two would have gone through the home side’s dugout when Philander got rid of Quinton de Kock and Henry Davids a dozen balls part.

But that was the visitors’ only look-in as Farhaan Behardien, who made 16 not out, helped Markram get the job done.

Hendricks hundred wins it for Lions

TMG Digital

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TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

REEZA Hendricks hammered his maiden T20 century to guide the Lions to victory over the Dolphins in Potchefstroom on Sunday.

The Dolphins recovered to 168/6 and Hendricks’ 102 not out off 72 balls helped the Lions win by six wickets.

But all four of the home side’s wickets went down in the space of 10 balls in the last two overs, and they had to sweat it out until the final ball before to clinch their win.

Dolphins dangerman Sarel Erwee, who scored an undefeated 103 against the Titans in Centurion last Sunday, was trapped in front by Bevan Fortuin with the sixth ball of the match, and the visitors crashed to 85/5 in the 12th over.

Morne van Wyk, who hit 42 off 30 balls, kept the visitors’ heads above water while that was happening, and Sibonelo Makhanya’s 46 not out off 32 took them to a reasonable total.

The Lions were cruising it while Rassie van der Dussen and Hendricks were at the crease in their opening stand of 158.

They were separated in the 19th over when Andile Phehlukwayo had Van der Dussen stumped for 57, which he scored off 42 balls.

That left the Lions the reasonable task of scoring 11 runs off the 10 remaining balls.

But Phehlukwayo kept things interesting by having Mangaliso Mosehle caught behind with his next delivery.

The Dolphins veered closer to unlikely glory with consecutive deliveries in the last over, when Robbie Frylinck had Nicky van den Berg caught behind and Dwaine Pretorius was run out.

That left the Lions needing three to win off the ball, which Wiaan Mulder hit for four to settle the issue.

Maketa a tough act to follow

TMG Digital

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TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

MARK Williams has known for a while what was confirmed on Thursday when Malibongwe Maketa was named South Africa’s assistant coach.

That’s only fair on Williams, who as the Warriors’ chief executive has the challenge of replacing a figure who has become central to the success of a franchise that is as rich in gees and commitment as they are poor in big name players.

“The coach has had a lot to with the backbone of the side and the infrastructure behind him has been solid,” Williams said on Friday.

Maketa took over the Eastern Cape side in February 2015, and guided them to the finals of both white-ball tournaments last season.

And the only Warriors player to have cracked the nod with the national selectors in that time to date has been Jon-Jon Smuts, who played six T20 internationals between January and June.

“In the past two seasons we’ve had a robust and meticulous way of developing the team and the way we want the team to play,” Williams said.

“It would help if we have one or two [players] coming through earlier than we would expect, but I’m comfortable with the base we’ve created.

“Our coach has been honoured with the [national] assistant coach’s position but he leaves a good squad and it’s now for me to wrestle with that.”

Williams and the Warriors don’t have to bid Maketa farewell just yet: he will keep the reins until the end of this season’s T20 competition, which concludes on December 16.

Maketa will be able to ease into his new job as his first engagement will be a four-day match against Zimbabwe starting on December 26.

That’s as easy as it gets at international level, and it won’t hurt that the game will be played at St George’s Park, one of the Warriors’ home grounds.

Williams would not be drawn on who might inherit the Warriors tracksuit from Maketa, but Piet Botha — his predecessor and currently the coach of the Eastern province team — declined to rule himself out.

“That’s to be discussed behind closed doors,” Botha said.

Whoever lands the job will have a tough act to follow, not only in following a quality coach but in working out how to win with limited resources.

Maketa’s appointment another feather in Botha’s cap

TMG Digital

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TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

“MAYBE I’m a good omen — if you want to work for South Africa come and work with me.” If that makes Piet Botha sound egotistical, nothing could be further from the truth.

The former Transvaal and Border allrounder, who is now Eastern Province’s coach, is about as self-effacing as cricketers get.

But he has a point. He served as the Warriors’ assistant coach to Mickey Arthur and Russell Domingo, and Adrian Birrell was his assistant at the franchise.

Arthur and Domingo went on to coach South Africa and Birrell became Domingo’s assistant.

Now Malibongwe Maketa, who was Botha’s assistant before succeeding him as Warriors head coach, has been named Ottis Gibson’s assistant with the national team.

What did Botha think of Maketa’s appointment?

“It’s very good for him,” Botha said on Thursday. “He was always going to be a coach for the future and I’m glad he got his opportunity quite early.

“He worked with me for a year-and-a-bit when I was Warriors coach, and I tried my best to get him in because I saw his value when he worked for Northerns.”

By then Botha and Maketa had known each other for several years, at least from the distance of 22 yards.

Botha moved from Johannesburg to East London in 1992 to play for Border, who had been promoted to the A section of the Currie Cup the season before.

Back then provincial cricketers played for clubs, and when Botha opened the batting for Buffaloes against Ian Howell’s King William’s Town side he encountered a tearaway quick who was still at Dale College.

As Botha remembered: “Malibongwe was a competitive cricketer and you knew he was going to go places.”

But not as a player: Maketa’s record shows only one first-class and one list A game.

“He was very highly rated as a fast bowler at school but like so many he ended up with a stress fracture at an early age,” Botha said. “Fortunately he stayed in cricket.”

Now, at 37, Maketa has made it to the top level. He replaces Birrell, while Dale Benkenstein comes in for Neil McKenzie as batting coach and Craig Govender is the physiotherapist in place of Brandon Jackson, who has been the job since 2009. Justin Ontong will fill the vacant position of fielding coach.

The changes, which were made in the wake of Ottis Gibson’s appointment as head coach in August, were announced in a Cricket South Africa (CSA) release on Thursday.

Claude Henderson stays on as spin consultant, as do fitness trainer Greg King and technical analyst Prasanna Agoram.

CSA’s board have extended Mohammed Moosajee’s contract as team manager until April 2018.

And in the Eastern Cape an unsung coaching talent-spotter has notched another success.

Mission accomplished for Steyn

TMG Digital

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TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

AN era ended and another began at 7.49pm on a crisp evening at the south end of the Diamond Oval in Kimberley on Wednesday.

There, ball in hand, at the start of the second over of the Knights’ innings in their T20 match against the Titans, stood Dale Steyn, ready to do something he hadn’t done since November 4 last year: bowl in a match.

He broke his shoulder and ripped muscles in his arm, chest and back that day bowling for South Africa in the first test against Australia at the WACA in Perth.

What would have felt, for Steyn, like an era was over. What South Africans will hope is a new era of dominance by the finest fast bowler of the age was about to start.

“I watched him bowl in the middle [during the warm-up] and it’s just a thing of beauty,” one of those South Africans, AB de Villiers, said in a television interview during the innings break.

“We just hope his body stays fit through this campaign. We are expecting him to enjoy himself tonight; not too much pressure on him.”

The time for talk was finally over when Steyn steamed in to Grant Mokoena …

And bowled a no-ball.

A no-ball? Steyn spends 376 days on the sidelines, sweating through surgery and rehab and probably a world of self-doubt, and then he oversteps?

Mokoena waited again, a free hit in his back pocket.

Steyn swooped — and Mokoena scooped a slower, leg-side delivery to fine leg for four.

The next ball, which swung wide outside off, disappeared through the covers for four.

Steyn stormed back with a similar effort, and this time Mokoena put him over the covers. One bounce. Four.

Three more runs came off the last two balls. Seventeen for the over.

Umpire Brad White offered a smile, perhaps in apology, as Steyn collected his cap.

He returned in the ninth over, this time from the north end and with Theunis de Bruyn tapping his bat.

As Steyn leapt into his delivery stride the ball escaped his grasp and trickled to earth.

WTF?

He turned, went back to his mark, glided towards the crease once more …

And De Bruyn heaved a straight delivery high towards the long-on fence, where De Villiers took a comfortable catch and, would you believe it, kissed the ball.

Steyn limited the damage to three runs in that over and five in his next, the 11th, despite starting with a leg-side wide.

But with every additional delivery you could see his muscle memory stirring, his rhythm losing rust, his gears clicking ever more smoothly.

Clearly, at 34 and after everything he’s been through — he has broken the same shoulder before, remember — Steyn still has what it takes.

Three overs was all he had, taking 1/25 and helping his team win by 38 runs, but it was enough to know the mission had been accomplished.

Look who’s back … Dale Steyn in Titans squad

TMG Digital

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TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

THE Titans on Tuesday named a decent 13 for their T20 game against the Knights in Kimberley on Wednesday, which is no surprise in a dressingroom bursting with talents the size of AB de Villiers, Quinton de Kock, Aiden Markram and Lungi Ngidi.

But the second-last name on the squad list will grab the most attention. There, hiding in plain sight, were two words many South Africans have been waiting to see on a team sheet for more than a year.

One of those words was Dale. The other was Steyn.

The last Steyn’s compatriots saw of him in action was in November last year when he left the WACA in Perth in clear discomfort after bowling 12.4 overs in the first test against Australia. He had broken a bone in his shoulder and seriously injured three major muscles.

With that Steyn’s march towards the five test wickets he needs to break Shaun Pollock’s record of 421 for South Africa was put under doctors’ orders to mark time.

That time has been marked. After surgery to insert a pin and months, weeks, days and hours of rehab, Steyn is finally ready to put his best foot forward again.

If all goes well it’s difficult to imagine him not reeling in Pollock’s total this summer, and that against the illustrious Indians and Australians.

But Steyn will be the Knights’ problem on Wednesday — he will play, surely — and that means he will be Nicky Boje’s problem. Whatever might the Knights coach tell his batsmen?

“What you tell them is you play the ball; you don’t tell them to play the person,” Boje told Times Media Digital on Tuesday.

“Dale hasn’t played for a while. So he might be on song or he might not be.”

Kimberley as a comeback venue for a star fast bowler only adds to the story. The pitch is as flat as they come, and the short straight boundaries mean batsmen get away with errors more often than bowlers.

What was Boje’s advice for Steyn?

“You’ve got to stay ahead of the game,” he said. “If you commit to bowling a yorker or the bouncer you must execute it.”

Steyn, 34 and with 510 matches of all descriptions — in which he has bowled 38 758 deliveries of all descriptions — to his name since he made his first-class debut in October 2003 will know that only too well.

He will also know that nothing means more than delivery No. 38 759.

Even the weather plays ball on successful T20 opening weekend

TMG Digital

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TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

SAREL Erwee’s century grabbed headlines in the first round of franchise T20 matches at the weekend, but what will stick in the memory is AB de Villiers hammering no less than Kagiso Rabada for consecutive sixes to secure victory.

Almost forgotten, already, are the hard-hit half-centuries Theunis de Bruyn and David Miller scored to win the opening game of the competition.

And there’s more good news to follow this week in the shape of Dale Steyn’s return from a year out of action because of a shoulder injury.

All of which makes exactly the kind of impact organisers would have hoped for in an event that was born as a dowdy second prize after plans to play the inaugural T20 Global League collapsed last month.

Even the weather played ball with a Highveld thunderstorm serving as a spectacular halftime show, and not getting in the way of the cricket too much, in a double-header in Centurion on Sunday.

Opener Erwee’s undefeated 103 off 58 balls and Khaya Zondo’s 67 not out — and their stand of 136 — guided the Dolphins to a tournament record total of 231/2 in the first game.

The Cobras couldn’t stop the bleeding despite their attack harbouring internationals Vernon Philander, Dane Paterson, Rory Kleinveldt and JP Duminy — who all went for more than 10 runs an over.

Hashim Amla, who saw the Cobras shamble to 20/3 inside four overs of their reply, scored a stylish 52 not out.

But that wasn’t enough to get his team to their revised target of 124 from 10 overs, and the Dolphins won by 15 runs.

De Villiers sent what became the last two balls of the Titans’ game against the Lions, which was reduced to 15 overs-a-side, arching into the still sparking night sky to seal an eight-wicket win.

One of those blows was delivered with a knee on the ground, a pose that would be suitable for the statue of De Villiers that will surely grace Centurion once De Villiers has retired.

All Rabada could do was crack a wry smile and nod his appreciation for a superb display of hitting by De Villiers, whose 50 not out flew off 19 balls, and Albie Morkel, who made his unbeaten 41 off 16 deliveries. Sixty of the 85 runs they shared were scored in sixes.

Reeza Hendricks’ 67 not out for the Lions looked pedestrian by comparison, but it had to be: opener Hendricks’ side lost their first two wickets before they had scored a single run.

That was also Morkel’s doing. He dismissed Rassie van der Dussen and Mangaliso Mosehle in the first four balls of the match and finished with 3/12.

It was all quite different from Friday’s events at St George’s Park, where the Knights needed their steeds to break into barely a canter to race past the Warriors by eight wickets.

The home side crashed to 69/5 before recovering to 153/9 with the help of Christiaan Jonker’s 61.

But De Bruyn and Miller made light of all that with an unbroken stand of 142 to clinch victory with a dozen balls to spare.

De Bruyn’s 78 not out came off 48 balls and featured three fours and six sixes.

Miller hit his unbeaten 62 off 47 balls with seven fours and three sixes.

The Knights might have a tougher job on their hands in Kimberley on Wednesday, when Steyn is expected to be part of the Titans XI.

Leading Edge: Why the Ashes still matters. Or does it?

Folks the world over care deeply about a series in the fuddiest, duddiest format contested by the unsexiest teams imaginable.

Sunday Times

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TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

EIGHTY million, nine hundred thousand. That’s more people than live in Mzansi and greater than the combined populations of Australia and England.

It’s the number of results returned when you type two seemingly ordinary words into your friendly neighbourhood search engine: The Ashes.

Clearly, cricketminded folks the world over care deeply about a series in the fuddiest, duddiest format contested by the unsexiest teams imaginable.

They will likely tell you that they and their forebears have been caring since 1882 and for 336 tests. They would be wrong: English and Australian women have contested the Ashes since 1998, but you won’t find those matches counted among the 336.

There’s a women’s Ashes on the go as we speak, but an outrageously disproportionate amount of the coverage on the most important platforms in cricket media deals instead with what might happen when the equivalent men’s sides clash at the Gabba in Brisbane in 11 days’ time.

Cricket’s unthinking cling to tradition explains some of that. The rest is misogyny, which often hides in adherence to tradition.

Those looking to keep up with events in the Ashes, you would have thought if you clicked many links this week, were expected to be exponentially more interested on the state of the ankle that a mediocre English seamer called Jake Ball twisted in a dreary tour match in Adelaide than anything that happened at the SCG — where Australia and England were playing the first ever day/night women’s test.

Some day, centuries from this benighted age, people will wonder how sports like cricket survived and prospered so successfully for so long despite their ignorance and arrogance.

But, for now, we are left to wonder why the Ashes matters to so many whose lives it will never touch.

The protagonists are ranked third and fifth, but the series does involve three of the game’s top five batsmen — Steve Smith, Joe Root and David Warner — and its No. 1 bowler, James Anderson.

And rather than all that orthodoxy, Warner excepted, wouldn’t you rather watch the magnificent madness of AB de Villiers? Or Virat Kohli’s ambition, which towers in reverse proportion to the man himself?

Or the improbably successful Rangana Herath, boep and all? Or, particularly in Asia, Ravichandran Ashwin and his fiery eyes demand, and claim, wickets?

Take the fake patriotism out of the equation and those are not difficult questions. Each to their own, of course, but the truth is the Ashes has become a behemoth because it is the product of first-world economies spending enough money on the series to make much more, many times over, in return.

And what you can sell to Poms and Aussies — the parents of test cricket, let’s not forget — you can sell to anyone who knows how to pick up a bat. Especially in places like Mzansi, where the pale, male ranks of our cricketminded folks have always taken their example from other pale males. Like Poms and Aussies.

But here’s an indicator of unstoppable change: the 2015 World Cup match between India and Pakistan was watched by 1-billion people. That’s not even how many live in India.