Marques Ackerman – Bulletproof Truth

Olivier goes onward and upward

Kolpak comeback has taken 28 wickets at 11.10 in four games.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

DUANNE Olivier bowled the Lions to their fourth consecutive first-class victory at the Wanderers on Sunday — and kept himself in contention for a place in South Africa’s squad for the Test series against India that is due to start next month, pandemic permitting.

Olivier claimed match figures of 8/66 in his team’s 10-wicket win over the Knights, which made the Lions the only side to win all of their matches this season. The Warriors needed less than two days to beat struggling Western Province by an innings and 114 runs at St George’s Park. North West and the Dolphins, and Boland and the Titans endured rain-plagued draws in Potchefstroom and Paarl. All four games were in division one, with none played in the second division.

Olivier took 5/53 and 3/13 in the Knights’ totals of 124 and 103, in which 13 of the 20 scores did not escape single figures. But with rain a constant threat bold captaincy was needed for the home side to make the most of that advantage, and Malusi Siboto — no slouch with the ball himself with his hauls of 3/28 and 4/17 — delivered the key decision by declaring with a lead of only 69 on the back of opener Joshua Richards’ 100 not out, Kagiso Rapulana’s 58, and their stand of 125. Having lost their last nine wickets for 57 runs in the first innings, the Knights saw eight tumble for 69 to leave the Lions a nominal target of 35. They knocked it off in 29 deliveries.

Having returned to the South African fold in the wake of the Kolpak era, Olivier is the competition’s leading wicket-taker with 28 at an average of 11.10. He played the most recent of his 10 Tests against Sri Lanka at St George’s Park in February 2019, and would seem set to add to that tally — especially as Lungi Ngidi last played a competitive match in July for reasons of selection, personal choice and his contraction of Covid-19.

The Warriors beat WP emphatically despite their decent but hardly dominant first innings of 366, which was built on captain, opener and wicketkeeper Matthew Breetzke’s 100 — his second century in three innings. The visitors must have thought they had tilted the balance in their favour when they took the last four Warriors wickets for 25 runs, but they suffered collapses of 9/49 and 8/123 and were rattled out for 79 and 173 in 28.3 and 43.4 overs. No WP batter reached 20 in the first innings and seven didn’t make it to 10. No. 8 Basheer Walters’ 47-ball 52 in the second dig was easily their best effort. Curiously, none of the Warriors’ bowlers took more than three wickets in either innings, but slow left-armer Tsepo Ndwandwa was the standout performer with 3/7 in 7.3 overs in WP’s first innings.

Marques Ackerman’s 123 — his first double-figure score in five innings in the competition this season — and half-centuries by Keegan Petersen, Bryce Parsons and Ruan de Swardt took the Dolphins to a declaration of 400/9 despite medium pacer Delano Potgieter’s 5/85. Opener Lesego Senokwane’s 91 was part of a second-wicket stand of 169 he shared with Shaylen Pillay, who made an undefeated 156 and put on 135 with Christopher Britz — who scored 60 not out — to ease North West to 313/2. But, with rain getting in the way and preventing any play on the third day, that was as far as the contest was allowed to unfold.

The weather took the last day out of the equation for the Titans, who were 170 ahead with seven second-innings wickets standing at stumps on the third day. Neil Brand made 111 and Gihahn Cloete 56 — and shared 108 — in the visitors’ first innings of 308, in which Zakhele Qwabe took 4/40. Opener Isma-eel Gafieldien was last out for 97 in Boland’s reply of 234. The most pertinent feature of the match in terms of the bigger picture was that Dean Elgar, who is set to lead South Africa against India next month, scored five in each innings.

The Lions top the log with 92 points, 61.62 ahead of WP, who have lost two games and drawn the other two. The Capetonians are in last place, below even North West — who are also winless but have been beaten three times. Only the Lions and the second-placed Warriors, who have three victories, have won more than one match.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Dolphins dive deep for domestic diamonds

“This year, with this bubble life, it’s actually panned out to be one of the best domestic seasons in a long time.” – Heinrich Strydom, Dolphins chief executive

Telford Vice | Cape Town

WHEN Heinrich Strydom looked out of his window in Durban on Friday morning, he saw an enveloping grey gloom. Rain had been falling since the day before and would continue for hours. Strydom is chief executive of the Dolphins, who were up against the Titans at Kingsmead in the first-class final that started on Thursday — when bad light and rain allowed only 10 overs. And now this. How did that make him feel?

“What I’ve made peace with in my life is that you can only control the controllables,” Strydom said on Tuesday. “When it rains or there are things happening in the boardroom, control what you can control and don’t stress about the rest because it’s not in your hands. But when you see that weather ….”

The Dolphins had seen that kind of weather before, most recently in the one-day final — also against the Titans — in Potchefstroom in February, when even the provision of a reserve day couldn’t help engineer a positive result. The title was shared. The same teams had sat and watched three days of their first-class match gurgle down Centurion’s drains in December. The elements didn’t get in the way of the T20 final at Kingsmead in February, when the Lions won by four wickets.

Would the Dolphins, the only team to reach all three finals in one season in South Africa’s franchise history, which started in 2004/05, finish the summer without a trophy of their own? Their coach, Imraan Khan, and captain, Marques Ackerman, were having none of that. “They still believed that if we could just get some time on the field we’re going to win the game,” Strydom said. “It’s probably that mindset that pulled us through, even though a lot of us were thinking it’s going to be another shared trophy.”

Not a ball was bowled on Friday, but in an online press conference after the match on Monday, Ackerman left no doubt about his team’s resolve: “I’ll be dead honest with you, when we had three days of cricket left not once did we speak in the changeroom about drawing and sharing the trophy. From the beginning we said we’re going to win this. This is not just another final. This is not the time for us to share a trophy. The positive energy, the positive mindset that we had was unbelievable. I wish everyone could understand this, because everyone was so goal driven. And we knew, because we normally fight with bad light in Durban, our four-day games normally end up being three days of cricket. So we knew we had to bat first and bat well. If we bat well it would bring our spinners into the game because the pitch will deteriorate. And so it did, and it played so beautifully into our hands.”

Ackerman called correctly and his team padded up. But it needed a steely century by opener Sarel Erwee and 74 by Ackerman, and their partnership of 135, to ensure the advantage of batting first wasn’t squandered: they banked a total of 295. “Credit has to go to ‘SJ’ [Erwee] for a beautiful knock,” Ackerman said. “It wasn’t easy to score, and he went out there and out us on the front foot. He threw the first punch, and then our spinners backed up an unbelievable batting performance.”

Between them, Prenelan Subrayen and Senuran Muthusamy took 19/171 to bowl the Dolphins to victory by an innings and 76 runs — a remarkable result considering 182 overs were lost on the first two days. The Dolphins needed 61.1 fewer overs than that to dismiss the Titans twice.

But they needed much more than that to become a consistently competitive team in all formats. The Dolphins won or shared white-ball titles four times during the franchise era. They were less successful in the first-class competition, where they had shared the honours twice — and not since 2005/06. Last season they won just two of their eight matches and finished above only the Cobras. “We knew we had the right group of players to get us over the line, but it’s one thing saying it,” Ackerman said. “We had to make a change and I was given the responsibility [of captaining the team].”

Other change was under way by then. Strydom joined the Dolphins in August 2017. Khan was appointed head coach in July 2019. In October 2016, Johannesburg-born and educated Ackerman had scored 112, in a total of 208, off 94 balls in three hours of quality batting on a challenging Kingsmead pitch for North West — where Strydom was then chief executive — in a second-tier first-class match against KwaZulu-Natal Coastal. Once Strydom moved to Durban, “We said we need to bring him here.” Ackerman played his first match for KwaZulu-Natal Coastal, one of the Dolphins’ two feeder teams, in January 2018. He made his debut for the Dolphins on the second day of a match against the Lions at Kingsmead the next January as a concussion substitute for Vaughn van Jaarsveld. In 35 first-class innings for the Dolphins, Ackerman has scored 1,474 runs at 44.66 with two centuries and a dozen half-centuries.

And established himself as an enterprising and eminently followable leader. That’s evident from the way he captained his team in the final — with what looks suspiciously like enjoyment — and the way his players responded to him: with enthusiasm and trust. Maybe the moment that revealed the most about Ackerman’s approach came in the Titans’ second innings, when Muthusamy bowled to Neil Brand — a left-hander who plonked his front foot well outside his off stump and prepared to lap the delivery to fine leg. The ball had yet to pitch when Ackerman, who was at slip, anticipated what needed to be done. He was on his way towards where a leg slip might have been by the time the ball bounced, and was thus in the perfect position to make a complicated catch look simple.

Even those far from Kingsmead were able to marvel at Ackerman’s exploits because the match was broadcast live and ball-by-ball on television, a rarity for first-class cricket anywhere. For that we can thank Covid-19. England’s white-ball tour to South Africa was abandoned halfway through in December and Australia called off their Test series, which was to have been played in March. Both postponements were forced by fears over the pandemic, and they created gaps in the broadcast schedule — which were partly filled by showcasing more domestic cricket than usual, including all the matches in the one-day and T20 competitions. That was facilitated by the fact that all the white-ball games were played in two venues to try to curb the spread of the virus. “Normally you get two or three T20s televised in a season, or one or two [one-day] games,” Strydom said. “This year, with this bubble life, it’s actually panned out to be one of the best domestic seasons in a long time [from a broadcast perspective].”

That level of coverage, if it sustained, would have a wide positive impact. “It’s good for the profile of domestic cricketers,” Strydom said. “You see Janneman [Malan] making his debut for the Proteas and he gets a duck [as Malan did in his first ODI, against Australia in Paarl in February]. And then everyone says where does this idiot come from. But if you’ve followed his career and you’ve managed to see him a few times then you know this guy can play.”

South Africans aren’t able to attend matches in person because of the country’s lockdown regulations. Not that they did turn up, in significant numbers, at domestic games before the pandemic. Strydom made a wish for that to change once something like normality returned: “I hope people will embrace [domestic cricket]. If we were able to have spectators at the final, you might have had a few thousand in on Saturday or Sunday.”

Still more change is in store, what with South Africa reverting to a provincial model from next season. The franchises will be put out of business and 75 fewer player contracts will be on offer nationwide. But a team called the Dolphins — formed solely of KwaZulu-Natal Coastal players — will still be out there and Kingsmead will still be their home ground. Teams in South Africa’s other major cricket provinces are expected to follow suit. “For us in the new structure, the more we can keep things the same the better off we will be,” Strydom said. “That’s my mission.”

So far, so accomplished. Come rain or shine.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Dolphins spin a fairytale to end franchise era

Subrayen, Muthusamy take 19 Titans wickets, bowl 85% of the Dolphins’ overs.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

SOUTH Africa’s franchise era ended with a bang, not a whimper, when the Dolphins overcame the weather and the Titans to claim the first-class championship at Kingsmead on Monday. The home side, spearheaded by spin, won by an innings and 76 runs before lunch on the fifth day.

The Dolphins are the only team to have reached all three finals in a season in franchise history, but the one-day trophy was shared after the decider against the Titans was washed out and the Lions beat them in the T20 final. This is the only time the Dolphins have won the first-class title — they shared it in 2004/05 and 2005/06. They did so despite bad light and rain limiting the first day’s play to 10 overs and claiming the second day entirely.

Monday’s play, which ended the domestic summer, was the last that will feature the franchises that have existed since 2004/05. From next season top level representative cricket in South Africa will be structured along provincial lines, as it was before the franchises were created.

Opener Sarel Erwee’s 100 and captain Marques Ackerman’s 74, and their stand of 135, anchored the Dolphins’ first innings of 295. The total would have been significantly bigger had the Titans not fought back to take the last seven wickets for 75.

With the pitch slowed by the conditions and showing signs of wear, off-spinner Prenelan Subrayen took the new ball for the Dolphins when the Titans took guard for the first time on Sunday. Subrayen took 6/24 and left-arm spinner Senuran Muthusamy claimed 3/12 as the Titans crashed to 53 all out — a record low for them and for Kingsmead — in 43.3 overs. Dean Elgar’s 16 was their only score in double figures. Elgar faced 65 balls, more than twice as many as eight of his teammates.

The Titans were dismissed before lunch on Sunday and followed on 242 runs behind. This time they applied themselves better, but they were always going to struggle what with Subrayen and Muthusamy tightening the noose in conditions that skewed ever further in favour of spin. The visitors were 92/4 at stumps on Sunday and were dismissed for 166 before lunch inside the first session on Monday. Rivaldo Moonsamy’s 41 was the best effort in an innings that included Yaseen Valli’s 37 and Theunis de Bruyn’s 38. Valli and Moonsamy each faced more than 100 deliveries. Subrayen, who shared the new ball this time, took 4/56 to complete a match haul of 10/80 and establish new personal career-bests for an innings and a match. Muthusamy claimed 6/79 to finish the match with 9/91.

That marked the only time in franchise history that two bowlers took at least nine wickets in the same match. The only Titans wicket in either innings that didn’t fall to Subrayen or Muthusamy was that of Dayyaan Galiem, who was run out without facing a ball in the first innings. Subrayen bowled 60 overs in the match, 22 of them scoreless. Eighteen of Muthusamy’s 42.5 overs were unblemished by runs. Together they sent down 102.5 of the 120.5 overs the Titans faced in the match, or 85%.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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All for Markram, none for De Bruyn

First win for the Lions, Cobras the only team without a win after three rounds.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

AIDEN Markram and Theunis de Bruyn had the most contrasting experiences possible for the Titans against the Warriors in franchise first-class matches this week.

Sisanda Magala claimed the only five-wicket haul of the round for the Lions, whose victory over the Knights was sealed by a record stand by Joshua Richards and Dominic Hendricks.

Khaya Zondo scored a century for the Dolphins in their draw against the Cobras, which is now the only winless team in the competition.

Opener Markram scored 149 and 121 in Centurion, marking the first time in his first-class career of 69 matches that he has made centuries in both innings. He was the only Titans player to reach 50 in totals of 320 and 289. Teammate De Bruyn, who batted at Nos. 3 and 4, suffered his first pair in his 71st first-class game. Marco Jansen took match figures of 7/135 for the Warriors.

Yaseen Vallie’s 80, Sinethemba Qeshile’s 97 and half-centuries by Matthew Breetzke and Lesiba Ngoepe earned the Warriors a first-innings lead of 72. It chased 218 to win, and got there with three wickets standing thanks to Vallie’s 55 and sturdy 30s by Rudi Second and Ngoepe.

At the Wanderers, Magala took 6/60 in the Knights’ first innings of 300, in which no other bowler claimed more than two wickets. The Lions crashed to 47/5 in reply and were dismissed 98 runs behind with Mbulelo Budaza, Migael Pretorius and Gerald Coetzee sharing eight wickets.

Wiaan Mulder and Delano Potgieter claimed seven wickets between them in the Knights’ second innings of 235. That set the Lions a sizeable target of 334, which Richards and Hendricks — who scored nought and six in the first innings — whittled down patiently in their opening partnership of 256. Richards’ 136 was his first franchise century, and the partnership is the biggest for the first wicket for the Lions. The previous record, 226 by Stephen Cook and Reeza Hendricks against the Cobras in 2017/18, was set in Potchefstroom, a featherbed compared to the Wanderers’ lively surface. The Lions lost 4/33 after the openers were dismissed, but won by four wickets.

The Dolphins declared in both innings at Kingsmead, where Zondo made 105, Senuran Muthusamy 79 and Marques Ackerman 66 for the home side before the Cobras were dismissed 77 behind — Tony de Zorzi made 58 — with Muthusamy taking 4/58. Scores of 56 by each member of the Dolphins’ top order, Sarel Erwee, Muthusamy and Keegan Petersen, built the lead to 294 when the declaration came. The Cobras had slipped to 155/6 — key batter Zubayr Hamza fell first ball — when the draw was agreed. Muthusamy completed a solid allround performance by taking 4/56, giving him match figures of 8/114.

The Titans and the Knights have now won two matches each, while the Lions celebrated success for the first time. The Warriors is the only side to have lost two games, and the Cobras the only team with two draws.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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MSL catches fire in PE

As a window into what the MSL could be if major players in the sponsorship and broadcast world were able to have confidence that it was a good place to spend their money, it was bittersweet.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

THE Mzansi Super League (MSL) took the edge off its problems by delivering the closest game yet in this year’s competition at St George’s Park on Wednesday.

Plagued by inadequate sponsorship and broadcast revenue, ineffective marketing, little prospect of breaking even, and tiny crowds, the MSL doesn’t have much going for it.

But, for three or so hours while the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants and the Cape Town Blitz conjured a contest for the ages, none of that mattered as acutely.

The Blitz put up a decent 186/9 — the Warriors’ 189 against the Cobras in April is the only higher T20 first innings at this ground, and remains the record total — and the Giants reeled it in with five wickets standing and four balls to spare.

Janneman Malan and Quinton de Kock shared 72 for the first wicket for the second time in the tournament in scoring 31 and 39, and the rest of the visitors’ top five — Marques Ackerman, Liam Livingstone and Asif Ali — added another 87 to the total.

But the Giants fought back, taking 5/22 to limit the damage effectively.

Chris Morris, Junior Dala, Imran Tahir and Onke Nyaku claimed two wickets each with Tahir’s 2/26 and economy rate of 6.50 the standout showing.

The Giants seemed sunk without trace after only nine balls, what with openers Matthew Breetzke and Jason Roy gone with just three runs scored.

But captain Jon-Jon Smuts stood tall through partnerships of 53 with Ben Dunk, 46 with Heino Kuhn and 48 with Marco Marais before slashing a catch to backward point to go for a 51-ball 73.

Smuts’ gutsy effort included a reprieve for a no-ball dismissal by Wahab Riaz and surviving a lengthy review for a catch by George Linde at short fine leg off Sisanda Magala.

His exit, forced by a near no-ball from Wahab, left Marais — the cleanest, crispest, hardest hitter in South African cricket since Rassie van der Dussen — and Morris to get the job done, which they did by clattering 37 off 18 balls.

Morris clinched it in soap opera style with a mighty heave off Magala, which Linde, diving for all his worth on the midwicket fence, almost caught.

Instead the ball was deflected onto the boundary cushion, which cost the Blitz six runs, the match, and their position at the top of the standings — a spot now occupied by the Giants.

As a game of cricket it was the stuff of dreams: dramatic and intensely competitive with a fair sprinkling of quality individual performances.

As a window into what the tournament could be if major players in the sponsorship and broadcast world were able to have confidence that the MSL was a good place to spend their money, it was bittersweet.

Reality resumed, and with it an interview Hashim Amla gave to Pakistani website PakPassion.

“I find it very amusing whenever this whole subject of Kolpak and its effects on South African cricket are brought up,” Amla was quoted as saying.

“Kolpak has been around for a long time, and so it’s surprising to me that it is been touted as the reason for all evils only because we lost the recent Test series to India [3-0 in October].

“I do not want this idea to become a convenient excuse for what basically were bad performances against India.

“When I was playing domestic cricket, we had quite a number of Kolpak players in our domestic teams also but then there was no talk of this subject.

“Let’s be honest about it, India are a really good side and they will probably beat all teams at home and the fact is that we did not play that well during the tour.

“Now one may argue that I am saying this because I have signed to play for Surrey next year as a Kolpak player but my story is slightly different as I have a few years of international cricket under my belt.

“The fact remains that this whole issue has gained importance just due to recent bad performances.”

Amla spoke from the United Arab Emirates, where he is playing for the Karnataka Tuskers in the Abu Dhabi T10 — a fact that on its own is indicative of some of South African cricket’s problems beyond Kolpak.

Having served as the Blitz’ batting consultant, free of charge, Amla has done his bit for the MSL.

But, if the game was in better shape at home, wouldn’t he prefer playing in the MSL to some gimmick far away?

You didn’t need to be at St George’s Park on Wednesday to answer that question.

First published by TMG Digital.