February 2024 – Bulletproof Truth

Marais Erasmus’ overs are up

“A more boring life is what I’m looking for.” – Marais Erasmus

Telford Vice / Cape Town

WHAT does Marais Erasmus want for his 61st birthday? To be bored, preferably at home. He spent his 60th, on Tuesday, 11,500 kilometres away from South Africa in New Zealand preparing to officiate in the men’s Test series against Australia. It will be his last international engagement.

“I’ll miss the privileges and the travelling,” Erasmus told Cricbuzz on Wednesday from Wellington, where the first Test starts on Thursday. “But I’ve had enough of being away and living outside of my comfort zone. I think having a more boring life is what I’m looking for.” He delivered the last line with the naughty chuckle that only those who know him outside the necessarily staid realm of umpiring would have heard.

From his debut in a men’s T20I between South Africa and Australia at the Wanderers in February 2006, he has stood in 80 Tests, 124 ODIs and 43 T20Is played by men, in 18 women’s T20Is, and as the television official in 131 men’s internationals across the formats.

“I decided in October last year and I informed the ICC that I would finish my contract in April and that would be that,” Erasmus said, denying reports implying he had been told to quit because of his age.

What would he do with his downtime? “For the first couple of months I’m just going to take the winter off. We have some travel planned domestically, and from September I’ll be in the hands of CSA. We still need to finalise how they want to use me. I’ll umpire in domestic cricket next season and play a mentoring role. I might go to the Khaya Majola Week [a schools event] or the club championships, and I’ll be watching and advising umpires.” Erasmus said he hoped to continue the work in the latter area done by his close friend Murray Brown, who died on February 8, and Shaun George, who died on Saturday.

What would he miss about being part of the ICC’s elite panel, which he joined in 2010? “The challenge of the job, being in that moment of trying to get it right. That’s always something special and tough, and it’s exhilarating when you have a good game.”

He might also yearn for the company of some of his colleagues: “There’s lots of camaraderie, because we’re all in it together even though there’s competition between the guys. We all understand the highs and the lows, and that when someone is going through a rough period you need to support him because your turn will come.”

Erasmus recommended umpiring as a profession “if you’re passionate about cricket”. His own passion burned brightly enough to keep him in the game after he had retired after playing 53 first-class and 54 list A games from December 1988 to December 1996 as a combative Boland seam bowling allrounder.

“To have seen the best players and been to the iconic venues and World Cups is a massive privilege,” Erasmus said. “It’s been quite a journey from being a schoolboy who kept score while watching Eddie Barlow play at Newlands.”

Along the way he’s been to the 2023, 2019, 2015 and 2011 men’s ODI World Cups, all eight editions of what is now called the men’s T20 World Cup and three of the women’s version. He has stood in 14 Ashes Tests, seven games between India and Pakistan, and in 10 editions of the IPL.

But several times he has had to celebrate his birthday — which he shares with Graeme Pollock, who turned 80 this year — without his family and far from his home in the Western Cape hamlet of Malmesbury. On February 27, 2008 he was at the men’s under-19 World Cup in Malaysia. Two years later he was in India for a tour by England. He had another birthday in India in 2013 for Australia’s visit. The year after that Erasmus blew out the candles in the Caribbean, during a series involving England. In 2015 he was in New Zealand for an Australia rubber. Five years later it was back to West Indies for Sri Lanka’s tour.

You don’t get to do all that if you don’t know what you’re doing. Erasmus, who joined the ICC’s elite panel in 2010, knows what he’s doing well enough to have won the David Shepherd Trophy — the prize the ICC awards annually to the world’s best umpire — in 2016, 2017 and 2021. Only Simon Taufel, who landed the first five from 2004, has claimed the trophy more often.

Even so, Erasmus has often been at the centre of drama on the field. It was he, for instance, who during a World Cup match between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in Delhi in November correctly upheld the appeal that made Angelo Mathews the first batter to be timed out in international cricket.

“We need to find a different way of administrating that situation,” Erasmus said. “Yes, it’s the responsibility of the player, and maybe if we find a different way the players will abuse it. But I think that debate is wide open. It wasn’t something I wanted to be part of at a World Cup, but I had to apply the law.”

The relevant section says: “After the fall of a wicket or the retirement of a batter, the incoming batter must, unless time has been called, be ready to receive the ball, or for the other batter to be ready to receive the next ball within three minutes of the dismissal or retirement. If this requirement is not met the incoming batter will be out, timed out.”

Mathews, not least because he had to resolve an issue with the strap of his helmet, was not ready to face within three minutes. But the incident spawned a slew of criticism of the umpires, much of it rooted in ignorance and parochialism. You could understand how a touch of boredom, preferably at home, might be welcome after that.

Cricbuzz

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Lions v WP still intense despite Tests, T20, and bungling suits

“If we can find a way to win under the circumstances we face at Western Province it will slowly creep into the admin side. We’ve managed to get a title sponsor now, and that’s on the back of a lot of strong performances from us as players.” – Kyle Verreynne

Telford Vice / Cape Town

THE last time a men’s team based at Newlands won South Africa’s senior first-class competition, the captain who will lead Western Province in the final this week wasn’t old enough to legally drink, vote, or drive a car.

How long ago was it? Far enough in the past that the competition had a title sponsor, a privilege it hasn’t enjoyed for the past six seasons. Eleven of the 22 players in the deciding match, in Bloemfontein, where the Cobras beat the Knights by 10 wickets, have since retired from serious cricket.

It was February 2013, when Kyle Verreynne was 15. Now 26, he will captain WP against the Lions at the Wanderers from Wednesday in a final that has been scheduled for five days. Unusually for this competition the game will be broadcast live on television, albeit to SuperSport’s limited audience. Also unusual is that the match is a final — only once in the past 18 seasons, in 2020/21, have the league standings not decided the champions.

Verreynne plans to break the trophy drought for a team who have won 34 of the various versions of South Africa’s senior first-class title — considering all sides of the racial divide during apartheid — and shared four. The Lions, formerly Transvaal, then Gauteng, have been champions 29 times, most recently in 2019/20, and joint-winners five times.

Inevitably the match will be cast as a clash of cultures as well as cricket; the uptight north versus the laidback south, Joburg’s can-do attitude against Cape Town’s creativity. There’s more fiction than fact to that, not least because the Lions’ squad harbours Zubayr Hamza and Bjorn Fortuin — who are from the Cape — and that Tony de Zorzi and Nandré Burger — Gautengers both — will be in WP’s dressingroom.

But it is true that during South Africa’s apartheid-induced isolation from the international arena, from 1970 to 1991, games between teams representing the white Transvaal and WP structures assumed the trappings of the Tests those players could no longer play. Apartheid barred black and brown cricketers from playing for South Africa for far longer than their white counterparts were shut out, but the Transvaal-WP rivalry was also strong in those quarters during the 1950s and 60s. Although WP subsequently became too strong for all their opponents, Eastern Province ran them close in the 1980s.

Had South Africa’s return to the international fold taken the edge off the fixture, especially as Test cricket is supposed to deliver a higher quality of cricket? Verreynne balked at that assertion during a press conference on Tuesday: “I wouldn’t say there’s a reduction in standard. Maybe the intensity is lower and the pressure is less than in international cricket. But from our team alone there are probably eight guys who could play international cricket and I’m sure it’s the same for them.” Verreynne is one of the dozen players among the 28 in both squads who have earned Test caps.

Dominic Hendricks, Verreynne’s Lions counterpart, didn’t think too much had changed: “During the four-day competition this year it was a hotly contested game in which we came out victors. Last season at the Wanderers it was a very close game that went down to the last session on the last day. It’s always been a highly competitive fixture.” The Lions won by 106 runs in November and by 28 runs in Johannesburg in February and March last year.

Even the rise of T20, Hendricks said, hadn’t dulled his and his players’ desire to claim the first-class title: “A lot of attention has shifted to the SA20 because of the influence the IPL owners have had on our game, and also how T20 cricket has taken over the world in terms of the leagues. Unfortunately it’s come at a cost because we don’t get as many four-day games as we used to. But this is the one competition we want to win, and we’ve spoken about wanting to win since we last won it. So we put a high price on this competition because it is the most difficult one to win. You have to be so consistent over the course of seven or eight games.”

If there are contending cricket philosophies in Johannesburg and Cape Town, they are more easily seen off the field. Under Jono Leaf-Wright, the Lions chief executive since October 2018, Gauteng have become one of the most successful provinces in a business sense. The Wanderers has been a drive-in cinema and the pressbox has been used as a space for lectures, for example.

Cricket there faces similar financial pressures as elsewhere in the country. But it has come up with solutions in a way that hasn’t happened at Newlands — where the disaster of the pitch prepared by a part-time curator for the Test against India last month, which hurtled to a finish in a world record 642 deliveries, is only the most glaring evidence of deep-rooted administrative problems.

“It’s been tough in the past but when Salieg [Nackerdien, WP’s coach] appointed me fulltime at the start of the season one of my biggest messages was that as the players and the management we’ve got to find ways to keep our circle small and make sure we focus on what we can control,” Verreynne said. “It’s easy to look outwards and say there are issues with whatever is going on outside of the players and management, but that’s an excuse. If you rock up to training every day and you focus on getting your work down there isn’t any excuse for not performing.

“At the start of the season we sat down as a squad and said we’re going to make sure that we focus on the cricket and make sure that the cricket stays the main thing. If we can find a way to win games and win trophies under the circumstances that we face at Western Province then it will not only help us grow but slowly creep into the admin side. We’ve managed to get a title sponsor now, and that’s on the back of a lot of strong performances from us as players.”

Verreynne’s team have indeed shown the suits the way. Hendricks and his men will do their best to make sure they don’t do so again over the next five days. Don’t expect anything less than the most intense of contests.

Cricbuzz

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Stubbs’ 302* shakes up Test batting conversation

“I’d imagine Stubbs’ innings was far more entertaining than mine.” – Stephen Cook, fellow triple centurion.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

THINK of Tristan Stubbs and you probably picture a bright-eyed human cocker spaniel puppy bounding around a T20 somewhere. You would not be wrong. His 70 games in that format is more than four times as many as the first-class matches he has played and almost three times his total of list A games.

So the undefeated 302 Stubbs scored for the Warriors against the Tuskers in Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday and Thursday is a game changer. He made four centuries in his other 26 first-class innings and replaced the injured Temba Bavuma to earn a Test debut against India at Newlands last month, but his latest performance makes him a serious contender for an extended run in the Test XI.

Stubbs batted for eight hours and 19 minutes and faced 372 balls for a rifling strike rate of 81.18. He hit 37 fours and six sixes — 60.93% of his runs — and shared 473 with Matthew Breetzke, who made a mere 188, for the third wicket.

Ten other triple centuries have been scored in South Africa, six of them from October 2009 — when Stephen Cook made 390 for the Lions against the Warriors in East London. That remains the record score in first-class cricket in the country.

“I’d imagine Stubbs’ innings was far more entertaining than mine, certainly in terms of balls faced and boundaries hit,” Cook, who batted for two minutes short of 14 hours and faced 648 balls — 276 more than Stubbs — told Cricbuzz on Friday. His strike rate of 60.16 was 21.02 points lower than Stubbs’ but he hit 17 more fours.

Not that it’s a competition. For one thing, Cook opened the batting and Stubbs took guard at No. 4. For another, Cook was circumspection in pads while Stubbs is a creature of the modern age. For still another, the realities of the respective matches were different.

Cook walked out after the Warriors had batted for 146.3 overs before being dismissed for 532 midway through the second session on day two. Stubbs was called to the crease when his team slipped to 20/2 after 10 overs.

“We had fielded for near on five sessions, so I was very tired physically when I started my innings,” Cook said. “At the end of day three, when I was [202 not out], we were going to declare and try and make a game of it. But the teams couldn’t come to an agreement over what the score should be, so we ended up batting on.”

Arduous though scoring triple hundreds becomes, they have their gentler moments. “The fielding team don’t give up, but your runs become a whole lot easier,” Cook said. “They push fielders back, and they’re quite happy to let you have one and get off strike.”

Making a pile of runs requires several facilitating factors. “It’s an incredibly long time to be batting, so the contexts of being able to get a triple hundred need to work in your favour,” Cook said. “You need to play incredibly well and probably have a bit of luck on your side. But also the game situation has to allow for it.

“I think there’d be many innings where guys would have got triple hundreds but the game situation only allowed them to get 250, or whatever the case was. In Stubbs’ case he was lucky that the Warriors lost two early wickets. So he had enough time. But a lot of things have to go right for it to happen.”

One of them, in Cook’s case, was that he and Thami Tsolekile, who scored 141, put on 365 in a key partnership for the sixth wicket. “You need a willing partner,” Cook said. If you look at a lot of the big scores, there was often a willing and able accomplice. In Stubbs’ case, Breetzke was probably equally driven to get a big score. Often there’s a partnership or a team element driving you on, otherwise the concentration goes and you get over-ambitious and give your wicket away. You need something to drive you. In my case it was that we were still so far behind the game, so you couldn’t give it away.”

Despite his feat Cook would labour for more than the next six years before he made his Test debut, against England in Centurion in January 2016. Getting past Graeme Smith, Alviro Petersen and Dean Elgar wasn’t easy. But Cook took his chance, scoring 115 in his first innings at the highest level.

Stubbs made his Test debut on an awful pitch and scored three and one. He deserves another crack, because even cocker spaniel puppies grow up.

Cricbuzz

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Procter’s lightning will keep striking in many hearts

To his ultras he was Proc or Proccie or Michael John. Gloucestershire became, with pride, Proctershire. Nobody ever called it WGshire.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

MIKE Procter wore his greatness lightly, as if he understood that the gift bestowed on him — to play cricket better than almost everybody else on earth — didn’t make him special. Perhaps he knew his talent was a happy accident. Maybe he didn’t think about it much. Either way he had none of the ego that infects others who aspire to his stature, and even some who fly as high as he did.

Once he had met you, he counted you among the people he knew. He would chat readily and casually when you saw each other again. He smiled effortlessly and laughed easily and loudly. He spoke straightforward South African English. He was as comfortable having a quick word on the stairs as he was commanding the centre of a stage. When the phone rang he picked up, and he had no problem being quoted. He did these things without a hint of superiority or smugness, or as if he was doing you a favour.

That you had not played at the level he did, nevermind anywhere near as successfully, didn’t matter. He was a star who did not, or chose not to, see his aura. Maybe, if you’re Mike Procter, everyone else is so far below your level they might as well play dominos, not cricket. So all the Test and first-class players, clubbies, social cricketers, umpires, scorers, groundstaff, caterers, commentators, coaches, managers, administrators, bus drivers, autograph hunters, presidents, potentates, parasites and press you encounter melt into a mass of mediocrity. But you treat them with the respect many among your peers would struggle to show those they consider beneath them.

The recipients did not reciprocate. Procter was revered to his face and behind his back, and to the extent that some of his devotees daren’t mention his name. To his ultras he was Proc or Proccie or Michael John. Gloucestershire became, with pride, Proctershire. Nobody ever called it WGshire. Doubtless Procter wouldn’t do more than smile with quiet warmth if he knew the county club’s flag will fly at half-mast until the start of the championship on April 5.

Perhaps all that discomforted Procter was the force of nature he barely controlled in his lusty frame when he bowled. His run-up, which started near the sightscreen, was a flight of fury by the time he reached the crease. He was about effect, not aesthetics: the substance of swinging the ball around corners at pace was more important than the style employed.

There was a brutishness about the way his right arm whipped towards the batter so quickly — and with no guidance from a broken rudder of a left arm — that everything else was forced into action with indecent haste. Consequently his delivery stride was short enough for it to be claimed he bowled off the wrong foot. He didn’t, but to keep him upright his right foot had to land a nanosecond after his left. The violence triggered shock wave after shock wave through his blond mane. His follow-through called to mind a speeding truck skidding off a highway.

The whole wasn’t so much a bowling action as a reaction to the human body being subjected to an outrageous amount of compressed energy. With every ball he looked like he had been struck by lightning.

Even in an era of unflattering playing attire, Procter came apart at the seams. His shirt was unbuttoned to the sternum, the points of its collar flapping and snapping like pennants in a hurricane. His sleeves were shoved more than rolled to the elbows.

His batting — which was his strong suit when he arrived — was more orthodox, though no less arresting. Blessed with a cracking cover drive, he could also cut like a knife fighter and smite bouncers through and over square leg and midwicket as if they had insulted his mother. He was a genuine allrounder in the sense that captains clamoured for him as a batter as much as a bowler. He was also a captain fine enough to be admired in the role by that captain of captains, Mike Brearley.

Whatever Procter was doing, you wanted to watch it; including the ridiculous catches he took in the cordon. Like he did at Headingley in August 1970 as part of a Rest of the World XI playing against England. Happily the moment has been preserved in the amber of YouTube.

Procter’s hands are on his hips well after Eddie Barlow has started bustling towards Alan Knott. The delivery swings sharply towards Knott’s pads, straightens after pitching, takes the outside edge, and screams low and fast towards the slips. Procter, at second slip, would have seen precious little of the ball’s flight before and after it pitched. He dives to his right, his arm parallel to the ground and maybe a centimetre above it, and takes a clean catch before any of his teammates move a muscle — save for Garfield Sobers at third slip, whose feet remain rooted as he takes a glance over his left shoulder like a man just managing a glimpse of a Ferrari disappearing down a street.

Procter, his cap having tumbled off his head, holds up the catch in triumph where he lays, and again as he stands and accepts congratulations. He is, as always, modest. His smile is wide, his hair, for once, sleek. Forty-four days away from his 24th birthday, he is the picture of bulletproof youth. But already the knee problems that would plague him, but not derail him, are apparent — once Procter is back on his feet he flexes his right leg twice.

This was Procter’s 103rd first-class match. He would play 401 in all along with 271 list A games, and bowl 77,769 deliveries across both formats. That’s a lot of lightning strikes. Jacques Kallis, a grown-up or less exciting version of Procter, was 55 days into his 24th year when he played his 103rd first-class match. He would appear in 257 at that level and play 600 senior white-ball games. Kallis bowled 45,453 deliveries, or just 58.45% of Procter’s total.

When the pain in his knee became too great Procter bowled off-spin. And bowled it well. In Bulawayo in October 1972, he took one wicket with seam and eight with spin. His 9/71 in that innings remain his career-best figures. Procter was the captain of Rhodesia, who played in South Africa’s Currie Cup. Their opponents were Ali Bacher’s strong Transvaal side, who would win the title that season. The Bulawayo match was their sole loss.

Bacher, the only player dismissed not to fall to Procter, told Cricbuzz: “I was taking off my pads and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: Procter was bowling off-spin!” As the wickets tumbled and defeat loomed, Johnny Waite, Transvaal’s manager and batting coach, summoned his team’s No. 11, David Lewis, for a coaching session. “Johnny told him he knew how to face off-spin, and how he had dealt with Jim Laker on a turning Oval pitch,” Bacher said. “He told him where his feet needed to be, how to push forward, how to angle the bat. This went on for a good half-hour before the ninth wicket fell.”

Lewis, a Cardiff-born leg spinner with a career first-class batting average of 9.38, took guard with Waite’s advice swirling in his head and fielders swarming the bat. Then he looked up and saw, near the sightscreen, Procter at the top of his long run. He had reverted to bowling fast. “Oh! My dear!” Lewis is reputed to have said.

Procter was not without complexity. The Bulawayo match was played eight years into the 15 years of brutal race war that would lead to the establishment of Zimbabwe. What was he doing there then, and in the 58 other first-class and list A games he played for a team representing an oppressive, illegitimate regime? As recently as September 2016 he defended the rebel tours that undermined efforts to end apartheid. He spent too much money betting on horses and, like many of us, drank too much for his own good.

But, unlike most of his cohort, whose careers were stunted when South Africa were banned because of apartheid, Procter could see beyond the boundaries of selfishness. “What is a Test career compared to the suffering of 40-million people,” he told ESPNCricinfo in May 2012. “Lots of people lost a great deal more in those years, and if by missing out on a Test career we played a part in changing an unjust system then that is fine by me.”

Procter credited playing in England with opening his eyes to racial injustice. Had that 1970 match at Headingley been in the South Africa of the time, he and Sobers would have been barred by law from being on the same field together; much less from sharing a dressingroom or a beer after play.

Maybe because of his lack of airs and graces, maybe because he needed the money, maybe both, Procter served the game long after he played his last match. He was a coach, an administrator, a commentator, a selector, and a match referee, all at a high level.

Mortals, other fine players among them, would consider that an impressive lifetime in cricket. But what if they had scored centuries in six consecutive first-class innings? What if they had taken hattricks in two consecutive matches? What if they were the only player in history to take a hattrick and score a century in the same first-class match twice?

Other players might think that would make them special. Michael John Procter, who achieved those feats and much more, did not. His great heart gave out on Saturday, but the memory of him will beat viscerally and vicariously in other hearts. It is there, not in the mind, that Procter will be held tight. It is there that he will be felt. It is there that his lightning will strike forever.

Cricbuzz

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Kane king as South Africa limp back to SA20-land

“He doesn’t leave his bubble. He just stays there, he just focuses on the next ball. He really respects the game.” – Neil Brand on Kane Williamson

Telford Vice / Cape Town

AT least it was Kane Williamson who administered the last rites. If you have to lose a Test and be lumped with an unwanted record that you have avoided for almost 92 years, rather the nicest man in cricket delivers the killer blows than some smug aggressor.

Williamson’s undefeated 133 at Seddon Park on Friday, his third century in four innings and his seventh in a dozen trips to the crease, clinched what New Zealand had never achieved from their first meeting with these opponents in February and March 1932 — victory in a men’s Test series against South Africa.

Having been outplayed and thumped, by 281 runs, in the first Test in Mount Maunganui, the South Africans — significantly weakened by SA20 contractual commitments — proved more competitive in Hamilton. With Dane Piedt taking 5/89 in the first innings, which earned South Africa a lead of 31, and David Bedingham scoring 110 in the second dig, hopes rose of a fairytale win. But a crash of 6/33 after tea on Thursday, starring Will O’Rourke, whose match figures of 9/93 are the best by a New Zealand debutant, trimmed the target to 267. Williamson and Will Young took New Zealand home by seven wickets in the last hour of Friday’s play with an unbroken stand of 152.

“We were in a really good position [on Thursday] afternoon to put the Black Caps under real pressure,” Shukri Conrad said. “At tea time we were 217 ahead for four, and we could have batted out the day and part of today. But we felt we posted something that could be competitive. But when the No. 1-ranked batter in the world plays the way he does, I don’t think we can be too disappointed about the outcome of the match.”

Williamson batted for more than six hours and faced 260 balls for his 32nd Test century, the first of them scored on debut in Ahmedabad in November 2010. His latest feat was a patient march to a victory that became more inexorable with each passing, flawless minute that Williamson occupied the crease. In the series he scored more than 100 runs than anyone else and faced five deliveries short of double the number dealt with by Bedingham, South Africa’s leading batter in the rubber.

“You just watch and marvel at the way he goes about his business,” Conrad said. “If there are any learnings for our young bucks and our more experienced guys to take away it’s how he wanted to be there right at the end and almost pull out the stumps and say thank you very much. He’s a glutton for batting. It was an absolute masterclass. I sit here in the hope that our players watched and saw how to best go about it.”

Neil Brand saw Williamson’s innings up close: “He doesn’t leave his bubble. He just stays there, he just focuses on the next ball. He really respects the game, from what I have seen. He never throws his wicket away and he is always hungry to bat. A lot of us can learn from that.”

What could Tim Southee do but heap praise on the man from whom he inherited the captaincy in December 2022: “He is a special talent. It wasn’t an easy pitch to bat on and he just found a way. We knew if someone could stick with him and he showed us his brilliance, it was going to make things easier. He was tested with spin and pace and a challenging pitch, but we’ve seen over the years he has come out on top. After the 12 months he has had with injuries and setbacks and rehabs and coming back, it’s just phenomenal to see him be able to do what he does.

“He gets into his batting bubble and I guess it’s his happy place. We joke that he doesn’t like spending time with us, that he’d rather spend it out in the middle. But it’s just pure hunger for batting — his pure love for batting, not only in the middle but the time he spends in the nets.

“He is always looking to improve his game. It’s no fluke that he is as good as he is because he trains as hard as anyone I have ever seen. He hits more balls than anyone I have ever seen, and he just gets into that zone and is a guy you want in your team. For over 10 years he has been an incredible member of the side and one of our greats. And there’s still more to come.”

The South Africans were left to pick up the pieces of what might have been had they shown more application when they batted on Thursday, but they knew the superior team won. “The only time you are allowed to lose is when the opposition are better than you, and they certainly were better than us,” Conrad said. As a consolation, Brand had the certainty that “you know it’s possible to play at this level”.

He should count himself lucky he isn’t part of South Africa’s women’s team, who are staring at a defeat of biblical proportions after two days of a one-off Test at the Waca. They were shot out for 76 in 6.2 overs more than a session with Darcie Brown taking 5/21, then toiled for 125.2 overs before Australia declared at 575/9. Annabel Sutherland’s 210 was the fourth double century scored in the 148 women’s Tests played. By stumps on Friday, South Africa had lost their top order and were still 432 behind. The fact that Australia are playing their ninth Test in 10 years and South Africa only their second goes some way to illustrating the disparity between the teams, but that won’t make the visitors feel better about their impending thrashing.

South Africa’s teams will make long journeys home to a cricketminded public who will look at them with a mixture of pity, dissatisfaction and concern. Even allowing for the extenuating circumstances, how could they have performed so poorly? What will these results do to their collective psyche? Why should they take an interest in all that when they could suspend their disbelief and pour their passion into something as frivolous and inconsequential as T20 tournaments?

Like the SA20. It’s a fair bet South Africans have forgotten what happened in the final at Newlands on Saturday, much less in the rest of this year’s tournament. And that’s the point: it’s cricket for cricket’s — and money’s — sake. There is no overarching seriousness to get in the way of the fun, and there are no memories — good or bad — to linger into the succeeding days and weeks. Everyone goes home happy. Who won? Who cares? Even so, T20 shines with an incandescent brightness when the international game ebbs as low as it does in South Africa. And especially when a tournament shows provable progress, as the SA20 has done.

Of the 34 matches just 12 were decided by 10 or fewer runs or with no more than six balls to spare. But that was three more games than last year, and close finishes are not a genuine measure of the quality of the cricket played — two weak teams could contest the tightest match as readily as two strong sides.

Four centuries were scored in this year’s SA20 compared to three in 2023. No players made aggregates of 400 or more last year. This year there were four. This season’s leading runscorer was Ryan Rickelton with 530 in 10 innings. Last summer no-one could catch Jos Buttler’s 391 in 11.

Heinrich Klaasen’s 37 sixes in 2024 was almost double Will Jacks’ league-leading 19 in the first edition. Three players reached 50 off 19 balls in 2023. Klaasen got there in 16 this year. Jacks’ 41-ball century in 2024 beat Klaasen’s effort off 43 deliveries a year ago.

Last year’s highest score was Faf du Plessis’ 113. This year Kyle Verreynne made 116 not out. The biggest stand in 2023 was 157 shared by Reeza Hendricks and Du Plessis. Rassie van der Dussen and Rickelton piled up a partnership of 200 in 2024.

There were a dozen hauls of four wickets or more this year. Last year? Eight. Three of 2024’s best bowling figures were five-fours. We saw one in 2023.

Not all of the metrics point upward. Twenty has been the magic number for most wickets by a bowler in both editions. Anrich Nortjé’s 142 dot balls last year bettered Daniel Worrall’s 124 this year.

But there is no doubt the tournament is flexing its muscles as it grows. If it continues on that trajectory how long might it be before the SA20, with all its fizz regardless of who does what and none of the funk that falls when South Africa lose, replaces the international game as this country’s cricket of choice?

Australia won the Waca Test by an innings and 284 runs on Saturday.

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Bedingham joins club he will want to leave

“I just hope this innings can win us a game and draw the series.” – David Bedingham

Telford Vice / Cape Town

OF the 366 men who have played 464 Tests for South Africa, 73 have scored centuries — 2,347 between them. That’s a slew of numbers, so let’s distill them to one: few of those hundreds are as important as the 110 David Bedingham made at Seddon Park on Thursday.

It gave a team of no-hopers hope. It confounded the prevailing narrative. It made South Africans waking up early to check the score ensure they weren’t still dreaming.

“When we are playing they’re sleeping,” Bedingham told a press conference when he was asked whether players in South Africa had been in touch to offer advice or feedback. In other circumstances it would have been a strange question. Not this time. Had, Bedingham wasn’t quite asked, he heard from the guys who should be in New Zealand — and couldn’t make the trip because they had to play in the SA20.

Bedingham had the good grace not to point out that had earned the right to be there, regardless of the problems caused by the scheduling clash. He played in both Tests against India in December and January, scoring 56 on debut in South Africa’s innings victory in Centurion. Keegan Petersen and Zubayr Hamza were also in that squad, but Petersen was dropped after making two out of 408 in the first Test and Hamza didn’t feature in either match.

Does that make Bedingham the only first-choice player among the 15 South Africans in New Zealand? By the logic above, yes. But that would be an unnecessary cruelty to inflict on people who have been through a lot in the cause of giving of their best.

New Zealand’s 281-run win in Mount Maunganui last week — which would surely have been by an innings had Tim Southee enforced the follow-on after South Africa had been dismissed 349 runs behind on the first innings — raised fears that an even heavier defeat awaited in Hamilton. That that has not transpired can be attributed, in broad strokes, to a less docile pitch, Dane Piedt’s 5/85 on Wednesday, and Bedingham’s innings on Thursday.

“I play a positive brand of cricket,” Bedingham said. “When they had attacking fields there was always the opportunity to score. So I tried to score and I’m thankful and lucky that it worked.

“I was probably a lot smarter than in the first Test, when I was trying to go for everything. In this innings I was more selective. I’m glad I got through it.”

Bedingham established himself in both innings at Bay Oval, facing 58 balls for 32 and 96 for 87 — South Africa’s only score of 50 or more in the match. But it needed more than that to keep them in the game. The stand of 44 Bedingham shared with Hamza was the first innings’ biggest. In the second dig, Raynard van Tonder and Hamza put on 63, and Bedingham and Petersen added 105.

This time, in the first innings, Ruan de Swardt made 64 and shared 77 with Shaun von Berg. In the second innings, Hamza and Bedingham put on 65 before Hamza and Petersen shared 98.

Thus Bedingham has been South Africa’s batting fulcrum in both Tests, a role he played in the classical manner. He stroked more than half of his runs through the off side, hitting 10 of his dozen boundaries through there and sending seven of them square of the pitch.

That’s not the only old-fashioned aspect of Bedingham’s game. Having heard from Shukri Conrad that he was being considered for the tour, Bedingham took his name out of the SA20 draft. “I don’t want to look back at not throwing my name in the draft,” he said on Thursday. “I just hope this innings can win us a game and draw the series.”

If that doesn’t happen New Zealand will beat South Africa in a Test series for the first time in a history that stretches back 17 rubbers to February and March 1932. That prospect was receding when the visitors reached 202/4 after tea on Thursday with Bedingham and Petersen looking settled at the crease. But, with Will O’Rourke taking 5/34 for match figures of 9/93 — the latter a New Zealand record — both were dismissed in a slide of 6/33 that cut a lead that should have topped 350 to 266.

Bedingham looked distraught after he carved a catch to gully off O’Rourke, but he had done his bit in the latest chapter of a long and winding career. In December 2016 he had to be extracted from the wreck of a crashed car, which left him with severe injuries to his jaw, hands and legs that took him out of the game for three days short of a year. From August 2020 he has been playing for second-division Durham as a local by dint of his UK passport; not to try and qualify for England but with a view to securing a British passport. And because he was not securing regular playing slots in South Africa.

“Two years ago I would never have expected to be here, so a lot of thanks goes to Shuks for showing confidence in me and giving me an opportunity to play and score some runs,” Bedingham said. His time in England had “allowed me to play in different conditions, against different bowlers. The whole experience, learning a new culture, that all helps.”

The Hamilton Test is only Bedingham’s fourth, but it is his 90th first-class match. That lends him licence to offer a view on how the last two days could pan out after the third ended with Dane Piedt trapping Devon Conway in front with New Zealand needing 227 more runs to make history. “That we got Conway probably makes us even. Piedtie and the seamers and Shaun have enough in the tank to take nine more wickets.”

Bedingham also needs to keep something in the tank. The next time he bats in a Test he will try to have himself expelled from a club he earned membership of on Thursday. Of those 73 men who have scored 2,347 centuries for South Africa, 25 haven’t made more than one.

* New Zealand won by seven wickets on Friday.

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Piedt’s back with fine five

“It will mean nothing if we don’t get over the line in the end.” – Dane Piedt on his 5/89.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

DANE Piedt spent 1,574 days waiting for Wednesday. Happily the limbo was worth it, as he made clear to reporters in Hamilton: “It was a great day of cricket. A great day of cricket for South Africa. We couldn’t have asked for a better day.”

It started, for Piedt, with the 16th ball of the second day’s play — when Will O’Rourke bowled fellow debutant Shaun von Berg off the inside edge. With that Piedt grabbed his bat and gloves and headed for the middle to resume a Test career that had been paused since October 22, 2019 — when he was part of the side who were beaten by an innings by India in Ranchi.

Piedt’s return lasted six balls, the last of them a short delivery from Tim Southee that he gloved to a diving Tom Blundell. There’s nothing great about that. But Piedt was central to what happened after South Africa were bowled out for 242 a scant 19 balls after he went, their last four wickets tumbling for 15 runs. New Zealand were dismissed for 211 with Piedt taking 5/89. More than nine years after making his debut, in his 10th Test and 22 days away from his 34th birthday, he had claimed his second five-wicket haul and new career-best figures.

The moment he will remember most came midway through the second session when he found turn and bounce to have Kane Williamson, who scored 118 and 109 in the first Test in Mount Maunganui last week, caught at short leg for 43. “Kane Williamson, in my opinion, is the best player in the world at the moment,” Piedt said. “It’s the way he goes about his business. He’s such a humble man, too. You always have a great conversation with him. But it’s always nice getting the big fish.”

How did Piedt get here? By way of retiring from the international game in March 2020 to further his career in the nascent professional T20 league in the US with a view to representing that country. He had played only two Tests after Keshav Maharaj made his debut in November 2016. By the time Piedt announced his decision, Maharaj had played 30. It was clear who South Africa, who don’t often deploy more than one spinner, had entrusted to be their slow poisoner in chief.

And so, with good grace, Piedt took his talents elsewhere. But his journey took an unexpected kink when it became clear that this year’s SA20 schedule would collide with the Tests in New Zealand. Maharaj, like most of South Africa’s preferred XI, was compelled to play in the tournament. That created a slew of vacancies in the Test squad. It was the job of Shukri Conrad, South Africa’s red-ball coach since January last year, to find players to fill them.

“I was in the US and Shukri sent me a message to ask if I was keen for New Zealand,” Piedt said. “I thought he was lying. I replied in the way that I normally do — that’s the relationship we have. We go back to 2008 when he was the Cape Cobras’ coach. He told me, ‘I am being serious’. It’s come full circle.”

When Conrad contacted him Piedt knew nothing of the SA20 situation. He did know that if he wanted to resume his Test career he would have to relocate his life — most importantly his wife and son — to play in South Africa’s domestic first-class competition. But that, too, had moved on since his last match there, for the Cobras against the Titans at Newlands in January 2020, when he went for 0/45 and 0/110. So he had to settle for a gig with second-division Free State.

In Piedt’s first match for them, against Limpopo in Bloemfontein in November last year, he took 5/55 in the second innings. The week after that, against Northern Cape in Kimberley, he shared the new ball in both innings and claimed 3/82 and 3/72. Most of the squad in New Zealand played in an A series against West Indies in South Africa in November and December. Piedt took 2/60 and 2/58 in Benoni, and 5/28 and 6/76 in East London.

That might surprise those who see off-spinners as the dowdy dads of bowling. They are not supremely athletic like fast bowlers, rebels like left-arm spinners or cerebral schemers like wrist spinners. Off-spin is what you resort to when you realise you’re not much good at bowling anything else, can’t cut it purely as a batter, and don’t keep wicket.

Consequently off-spinners need exponentially more belief, confidence and positivity than other players if they are to reach the higher levels. Either that or they must have the modesty to know they are not the star attraction, that their job is to ensure as little as possible happens while the fast bowlers rest, the left-arm spinners pout, and the wrist spinners plot their next mad move.

Piedt is something else entirely: an offie who has the audacity to try to get batters out. It’s an approach that has survived everything cricket and life have thrown at him, including being left out in Mount Maunganui. And it shone through what he said on Wednesday: “I thought I was in the game all the time. New Zealand are a quality Test team, a proper cricket team. They are not just going to give it to you. It takes 10 and 15 overs of perseverance and persistence. And we got in. We know we are on the back foot all the time and we try to take those windows of opportunity.”

In the context of New Zealand winning by 281 runs at Bay Oval, where South Africa were likely spared an innings defeat only by Tim Southee’s decision not to enforce the follow on when the visitors were dismissed 349 runs behind, for them to take a first-innings lead of 31 in Hamilton is astounding. Now what?

“We’ve got to do the things we continuously do; pound away at the wicket and be consistent and not give them free scoring opportunities,” Piedt said. “I don’t foresee the pitch getting easier so that’s going to make for a really competitive match. Day three is going to be exciting.”

Maybe too exciting? Maybe not for a bunch of SA20 leftovers and throwaways who might just have become a team: “The camaraderie has been really good. It’s a tight-knit team and when pressure situations come you can lean on the next guy. We’ll lick our lips for the fourth innings but we’ve just got to bat well tomorrow.”

Best they do, because they will share the spotlight with South Africa’s women’s team, who play their first ever Test against Australia at the Waca from Thursday. That will mark only the second time both South Africa’s Test teams will be in action on the same days — on August 21 and 22, 2003 the men were playing England at Headingley while the women were taking on the same opponents in Taunton. Should things not go well for the men’s team we could see another first: the Kiwis have never beaten South Africa in a Test series.

Avoiding that fate loomed large for Piedt even as he looked back on his success at Seddon Park: “It will mean nothing if we don’t get over the line in the end.”

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SA20 does what Test cricket doesn’t

“It’s disappointing. It’s crazy that it happened. We’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” – Graeme Smith on the clash between the New Zealand Test series and the SA20.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

THEY wore white dungarees, gold-rimmed sunglasses and not much else. The significant amount of black skin they exposed on this incandescent afternoon soaked up the sunlight, which boomed off their bleached, close-cropped hair. They were young, beautiful, utterly in vogue, and of a gender that wasn’t immediately apparent or even, perhaps, fixed.

They were the last type of person you would expect to see at Newlands, the natural habitat of white and brown conservatives mired in the conventional and the way things should be done — by all of us, not just conservatives — because they’ve always been done that way. And yet there they were promenading the concourse in their dungarees and sunglasses and not a lot else, enjoying Saturday’s SA20 final along with everyone else.

Beyond all the numbers that prove the tournament’s success, that tell us why the second edition was better than the first, that assure us the competition has a solid future, there was this. The SA20 is doing something right if it attracts people who wouldn’t otherwise be seen dead at a place like Newlands.

The conservatives are still there. But if the game is to remain relevant in the real world it will need to develop new audiences. It will require, among others, fine-looking people in dungarees. The SA20 is doing its bit to pull them in even as it goes about its core business of keeping the game in South Africa afloat financially.

But that doesn’t sit comfortably 11,500 kilometres away in New Zealand, where South Africa are likely to lose a men’s Test series to the Kiwis for the first time in all 17 rubbers they have contested from February 1932. That will happen unless Neil Brand’s team find a way to win in Hamilton, where they were 220/6 at stumps on the first day of the second Test on Monday.

The strength of South Africa’s squad has been severely impacted by the players’ contractual obligation to prioritise the SA20, which clashed with the series. Most of the first-choice Test XI was involved in the tournament — and looked on from afar as New Zealand won the first Test, in Mount Maunganui, by 281 runs on Wednesday.

The SA20 has the better of this bargain. South Africa’s seemingly bottomless well of talent means the tournament does not want for players worthy of the stage it offers. So the comings and goings of foreign stars is felt less keenly as it is in the ILT20, which runs concurrently but is heavily dependent on players from other countries.

Graeme Smith is uniquely placed to consider those contrasting realities. As the SA20’s commissioner, he is the face of the tournament and is rightfully credited with the lion’s share of its resounding success. As South Africa’s Test captain, from April 2003 to March 2014, in 109 matches of which they won 53 — both world records — he took his team to the top of the rankings in August 2012, where they remained until May 2014. How did he feel, as an administrator, a former player and captain, a South African, about the fixture trainsmash?

“My job is to build the SA20 and make it a success, but my love for Test cricket hasn’t gone away; I care for it,” Smith told a press conference on Tuesday. “I sit on the MCC cricket committee, and we debated at length two weeks ago. The challenges for Test cricket are much deeper than just this scheduling issue. It’s about the funding, how the models work.

“We saw [CWI chief executive] Johnny Grave come out and say, after an incredible Test win [by West Indies by eight runs at the Gabba last month], that they lost more than USD1-million and didn’t earn a cent on that trip. How does the revenue work between bilaterals? The distributions? All these things in the game need to be spoken about to keep Test cricket strong.

“This scheduling issue [between the Test series in New Zealand and the SA20] shouldn’t have happened. It’s disappointing. It’s crazy that it happened. We’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Under Smith, South Africa won 48.62% of their Tests, lost 26.61% and drew 24.77%. Of the 79 completed matches they have played since his retirement, in March 2014, they have won 38 — a winning percentage a marginal 0.52 lower than in Smith’s era. But they have lost 39.24% and drawn 12.66% — deficits of 12.63% and 12.14%. South Africa have not been markedly less victorious after Smith, but they have been significantly poorer at not losing. “Our Test cricket has been a challenge for a long time performance-wise,” Smith said. “I’d love to see that team strong again.”

That team had their best day of their tour to New Zealand on Tuesday. Having slipped to 150/6 after tea, they were well-served by an unbroken stand of 70 shared by Ruan de Swardt and 37-year-old debutant Shaun von Berg. South Africa might have been in a stronger position had David Bedingham not been caught off his boot after scoring a sturdy 39. “There’s so many ways in cricket to ruin your day and that’s one of them,” Bedingham told reporters. Maybe slipping on a pair of white dungarees would make him feel better.

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Kiwis eye history in Hamilton

“We want to come away from here with something.” – Neil Brand

Telford Vice / Cape Town

THE last time South Africa played a men’s Test in Hamilton, in March 2017, they were saved by rain that prevented any play on the fifth day. This time — the second Test starts on Tuesday — the New Zealanders look likely to get the job done inside four days.

In 2017 the visitors would have resumed on 80/5 needing another 95 runs to make New Zealand bat again. The chances were thus high of New Zealand wiping out the series lead South Africa had taken at the Basin Reserve, which followed a draw in Dunedin. With that the South Africans were able to celebrate their 12th victory in 18 away Test series, only one of them lost — the November 2015 rubber in India, which was tainted by poor pitches.

Almost seven years on much has changed. South Africa have won just one and lost six of their eight series on the road. The New Zealanders have quietly added to their excellence, which they confirmed by beating India in the inaugural World Test Championship final in Southampton in June 2021.

It’s tempting to look at cricket in New Zealand and wonder why the game in South Africa isn’t on as sound a footing. Isn’t the cricket industry in the countries about the same size? Doesn’t the game there and here share, broadly, the same culture? Yes, in both cases. But that’s a limited, simplistic analysis.

More relevant is the fact that as a developed country — as opposed to a developing country like South Africa — New Zealand doesn’t struggle for skills and expertise in all areas. It also doesn’t have to overcome the levels of corruption that can seem to be hardwired into South African society. Nor is it burdened with layers of distrust along racial, cultural and religious lines to the same degree as in South Africa.

New Zealand’s wider economy is significantly more stable and orientated towards growth than South Africa’s, and that the currency is far stronger. That’s why NZC doesn’t need a glitzy T20 extravaganza to ward off financial ruin. And why CSA do, and must make the SA20 their top priority. Hence the sorry state of the visitors’ Test squad, what with their best players locked into T20 mode until Saturday.

It isn’t fair on anyone involved, not least league commissioner Graeme Smith and the rest of the team who run the SA20, which is after all a rescue mission. But since when has capitalism — and cricket at this level is all about capitalism — been fair? The customers are being given what a lot of them want, and to blazes with the few who don’t want it. Until what they want pays the bills like T20 does, they are going to have to like it or lump it.

Still, it’s difficult not to feel sorry for Neil Brand and his team as they bid to avoid becoming the first South Africa team to lose a Test series to New Zealand. The original of the 17 rubbers was played in February and March 1932, when South Africa won the first match by an innings and both of the other two by eight wickets. Of the 48 Tests the teams have contested, South Africa have lost only six, the most recent of them by 281 runs in Mount Maunganui last week.

Another in Hamilton and New Zealand will banish the ghosts of March 2017, along with almost 92 years of failure. Aside from Test newbies Afghanistan and Ireland, who New Zealand have yet to play against, South Africa are the only side they haven’t beaten in a series. History is in the air.

When: February 13 to 17, 2024; 11am Local Time (Midnight SAST, 3.30am IST)

Where: Seddon Park, Hamilton

What to expect: Decent weather for the duration of the match. Totals of 500 have been reached at this ground five times in its 27 Tests — New Zealand put up 715/6 against Bangladesh in February 2019. Teams have been bowled out for fewer than 100 four times, but not since December 2002. Kane Williamson’s five centuries here — 53 have been scored in all — is as many as he has made at the Basin Reserve, where he has had seven fewer innings. Only three of the 28 five-wicket hauls at Seddon Park have been taken by spinners.

Team news:

New Zealand:

Towering fast bowler Will O’Rourke, who has played three ODIs, looks set for a debut. Mitchell Santner could make way for him. Will Young has been named to replace Daryll Mitchell, who has a foot injury.

Possible XI: Tom Latham, Devon Conway, Kane Williamson, Rachin Ravindra, Will Young, Tom Blundell, Glenn Phillips, Kyle Jamieson, Matt Henry, Will O’Rourke, Tim Southee (capt)

South Africa:

Shukri Conrad suggested strongly after the first Test that the XI would change. Exactly how isn’t easy to see. Perhaps Dane Piedt for Ruan de Swardt?

Possible XI: Edward Moore, Neil Brand (capt), Raynard van Tonder, Zubayr Hamza, David Bedingham, Keegan Petersen, Clyde Fortuin, Dane Piedt, Duanne Olivier, Tshepo Moreki, Dane Paterson

What they said:

“In New Zealand it can look like it’s going to do a lot, and then we’ve seen the side batting first get into a pretty good position. It’s about playing what’s in front of you.” — Tim Southee offers advice about what to do at the toss.

“We want to come away from here with something. We are desperate to put in a good performance this week and hopefully we can get ourselves into the game.” — Neil Brand still has the audacity of hope.

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Flurry of fireworks and fun as SA20 fizzes to a finish

“We have a very old man here who says the sound in the WPCC is too loud.” – a Newlands grinch tries to steal the fun.

Telford Vice / Newlands

FIREWORKS in the daytime are a punchline without a joke. So nobody laughed when a blast tore a glittering strip through the blue dome above Newlands at 4.22pm on Saturday. An hour and eight minutes would pass before the first ball was bowled in the SA20 final, and there were three hours and 22 minutes of dazzling daylight left in the afternoon.

Closer to the moment of truth, the XIs lined up to sing South Africa’s national anthem. All good, if we must confuse sport with war. But why were the four English players and the one each from Australia, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan in the line-ups expected to stand to attention if their countries weren’t going to be recognised in the same way? And can we honestly say the tournament is a South African phenomenon?

Hang on, you say. The SA20 is for kids, not grizzled grinches who get hung up on peripherals cannibalising the cricket. Except that it isn’t. Research conducted by Nielsen on the tournament’s first 19 matches this year discovered that 63.6% of the South African television audience was 50 or older with an average age of 57.

Why? The match was 10 overs old when a clue crackled from a walkie-talkie carried by one of the organising staff: “We have a very old man here who says the sound in the WPCC is too loud. Could you please turn it down a bit?” The Western Province Cricket Club, whose stand slumps along the south-eastern boundary, is a notorious repository of grizzled grinches. They want to see the cricket, but they’re not interested in the other stuff — the face-painters, flag-wavers and fireworks; you know, the fun. So they tend to abandon Newlands to the invasion of infesting infants and watch the matches on television from the safety of their couches. Best they are never subjected to the full-frontal assault on the senses that comes standard for IPL spectators.

Certainly, the ground reeked of youth on Saturday. A sizeable room directly opposite the WPCC houses an exhibition devoted to the history of this place and how it shaped and was shaped by life and cricket in the province. It stood eerily empty even as a school of newer, fresher fish swam straight past on their way to the next nugget of fun.

The surprises in the television research figures didn’t end with age analysis. Consider that 45.1% of the tournament’s South African viewers were female — hardly a shock, but pleasantly higher than might have been expected — and 44% were Afrikaans compared to the 30% English-speakers. Just 13% spoke another of the country’s 11 official languages, a fact no doubt influenced by the tournament being restricted to SuperSport’s subscription services — which are beyond the budgets of many black South Africans.

But, like it says in paragraph two above, the South Africanness of the SA20 is in question. With all six franchises not only owned by IPL outfits but their namesakes, and with more than a few Indians on-hand to help run the tournament, India is all around. How this year’s SA20 has landed there wasn’t dealt with in the research figures, but in India the 2023 edition garnered five-billion viewing minutes, enjoyed 104-million digital video views, and reached 131-million people. How did that compare with the IPL? Exponentially, as in the latter had 427.1-billion viewing minutes — more than 85 times as many as the SA20.

Faf du Plessis was second only to Shubnam Gill among the runscorers and Heinrich Klaasen made one of the dozen centuries recorded. But it would be outrageous to claim the IPL was anywhere near as South African as the SA20 undoubtedly is Indian — and that despite the fact that no Indians play in it, as per BCCI rules regarding leagues that are not the IPL.

Not even Klaasen and his strike rate of 208.87 going into Saturday’s final could stop Durban’s Super Giants from dwindling to a distant second place behind Sunrisers Eastern Cape, who successfully defended the title they won last year. Aided by umpire’s call, the canny Ottniel Baartman trapped Klaasen in front first ball with a delivery that veered towards leg. It was Klaasen’s 11th first-baller in 505 innings of any sort and level going back to his under-19 days, but the only instance since April 2014 — itself a measure of his development as a force at the crease. Before Saturday, Klaasen went 30 innings without making a duck.

DSG were 63/4 after 10 overs when Klaasen took guard and 115 all out 37 balls after he was dismissed, their last seven wickets crashing for 52. It would have needed far better batting than that to overhaul even a reasonable target, much less SEC’s 204/3 — the ninth highest first innings in the tournament this year.

Keshav Maharaj removed Jordan Hermann and Tom Abell — who shared 90 off 52 — in four deliveries in the 11th to reduce SEC to 106/3. But that was DSG’s last reason to celebrate as Aiden Markram and Tristan Stubbs set about the partnership that would grow to an unbroken 98 off 55.

The proceedings ended with fireworks, of course. This time they screamed and soared into the night sky.

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