South African Sports News – 17 March

Two wins and a draw for Bafana
Bafana Bafana’s month long train­ing camp in Brazil is going well. The national side got in some much needed match prac­tice against local teams over the last couple of days play­ing to a goal­less draw against Volta Redonda on Saturday, troun­cing Fluminese 8–0 on Sunday and then defeat­ing Boavista 3–0 on Monday.

Bafana’s goals against Fluminese came in the form of braces from Siphiwe Tshabalala and Kermit Erasmus (pic­tured) with Reneilwe Letsholonyane, Tlou Segolela, Richard Henyekane and Dylon Claasen also get­ting in on the action with a goal apiece. The matches were played at the Granja Comary in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where Bafana are hold­ing their camp.

In the match against Volta Redonda, Bafana head coach Carlos Alberto Parreira used two sets of teams for each half – giv­ing vir­tu­ally every player a chance to play. The match came after an intens­ive week of train­ing since the squad’s arrival in Brazil last Tuesday. Midfielder Teko Modise cap­tained the first half team, while defender Matthew Booth led the second half side.

The South Africans had the bet­ter of the exchanges and should have won the game, but Franklin Cale failed to con­vert a pen­alty in the 65^th minute after a Volta Redonda player was adjudged to have handled the ball in the box. However, instead of find­ing the back of the Net, Cale only suc­ceeded in blast­ing the ball over the crossbar.

“Today was not really about win­ning at all costs. We are really work­ing on per­fect­ing our shape; get­ting a sys­tem going and imple­ment­ing the things we have been try­ing out with the coach this week. This game was a good start for us and over the next few games we will end up where we want to be, it takes time but we have to keep on work­ing hard until we get it right,” explained striker Katlego Mphela.

Although it is of some con­cern that Bafana can some­how fail to score against a side as lightly regarded as Volta Redonda the res­ults against Fluminense and Boavista were encour­aging and seem to sug­gest that the South Africans are mov­ing in the right dir­ec­tion. Bafana play some more warm up games when they take on local sides Cruzeiro today and Botafogo on Saturday.

Meanwhile, in domestic action that took place over the week­end, Golden Arrows, Orlando Pirates, Ajax Cape Town and SuperSport United all advanced to the quarter-finals of the Telkom Knockout Cup. Arrows edged past Platinum Stars 2–1 at the Charles Mopeli Stadium on Saturday while Pirates squeaked home 1–0 against Bloemfontein Celtic at the Orlando Stadium just a few hours later.

In Sunday encoun­ters, Ajax nar­rowly defeated Moroka Swallows 1–0 at Newlands Stadium while SuperSport thrashed Black Aces 5–1 at the Puma Rugby Stadium to power their way into the last eight. It was a wel­come return to form for the Professional Soccer League (PSL) cham­pi­ons who lost their last two league out­ings of the season.

In other Telkom Knockout matches this week­end AmaZulu pit their skills against Maritzburg United at the Moses Mabhida Stadium, Wits square off against Jomo Cosmos at the Bidvest Stadium, Santos face the mighty Kaizer Chiefs at Newlands Stadium while Free State Stars do battle with Mamelodi Sundowns at the Charles Mopeli Stadium. The win­ners of each game will join Arrows, Pirates, Ajax and SuperSport in the quarter-finals.

Warriors wal­lop Lions to clinch title
The Chevrolet Warriors crushed the bizhub Highveld Lions by 82 runs to clinch the Standard Bank Pro20 title at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth on Friday even­ing. It was a very one-sided final with the home side dom­in­at­ing pro­ceed­ings from start to finish.

The Warriors took full advant­age of win­ning the toss by elect­ing to bat on the easy paced wicket and were soon reap­ing the rewards of their wise decision as open­ers Jacques Kallis and Ashwell Prince got stuck into the Lions’ bowl­ing. Kallis and Prince showed their class as they put on an excel­lent part­ner­ship of 129 before the left-handed Prince was bowled by seamer Shane Burger with his score on 69 (54 balls). Prince’s valu­able knock included nine fours and two sixes and was his first Pro20 fifty.

Kallis’ innings was a little more cir­cum­spect, but the Proteas stal­wart was nev­er­the­less in top form notch­ing up his half cen­tury off 45 deliv­er­ies before sky­ing a deliv­ery from seamer Robbie Frylinck to Neil McKenzie at point. Kallis’ con­tri­bu­tion was 55 (47 balls) and included six fours and a six.

With the total on 156/2 and only 11 balls remain­ing the Lions were hop­ing to restrict the Warriors to 170 or below but their hopes were dashed by the bru­tal hit­ting of Proteas wick­et­keeper Mark Boucher (pic­tured) who raced to 27 not out off just eight balls. Boucher’s innings included four huge sixes in the final over (bowled by the hap­less Zander de Bruyn) to steer the Warriors to a daunt­ing 186/2 off their 20 overs.

The Lions made a pos­it­ive enough start to their innings with open­ers Jonathan Vandiar and Neil McKenzie scor­ing at just over a run a ball, but when McKenzie (five) had his stumps dis­turbed by Makhaya Ntini with the total on just 19, one sensed that this wasn’t going to be the Lions’ night. And that’s exactly what happened as the Gauteng out­fit lost wick­ets at reg­u­lar inter­vals to fin­ish on a dis­mal 104 all out, giv­ing the Warriors a mem­or­able 82 run vic­tory and their second domestic trophy of the sea­son after they won the MTN40 cham­pi­on­ship in January.

Spinners Johan Botha (2/17 off four overs) and Nicky Boje (2/15 off four overs) were a thorn in the side of the Lions bats­men and were well sup­por­ted by Ntini (2/28 off three overs), Rusty Theron (2/22 off 2.5 overs) and Wayne Parnell (1/10 off three overs) as the Warriors never relin­quished their grip on the match. The top score in the Lions’ innings was a paltry 15 with Richard Cameron, Frylinck and Vaughn van Jaarsveld all reach­ing the figure.

The Warriors thor­oughly deserved their vic­tory as they com­pre­hens­ively out­played the Lions in all facets of the game although truth be told it was a rather pre­dict­able res­ult when one con­siders the home side were the over­whelm­ing favour­ites going into the match.

Scores in brief
Warriors: 186/2
Lions: 104 all out
Result: Warriors won by 82 runs
Man of the match: Ashwell Prince/Nicky Boje

Bulls keep march­ing on
The Vodacom Bulls returned to the top of the Super 14 log with an impress­ive 50–35 vic­tory over the Highlanders at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria on Saturday after­noon. The defend­ing Super 14 cham­pi­ons were in excel­lent attack­ing form as they notched up their third fifty-point haul in four games and exten­ded their win­ning run in Super 14 matches at Loftus to 14 con­sec­ut­ive games.

The Bulls made the per­fect start against a jaded look­ing Highlanders side as they struck early and earned their bonus point after only 26 minutes. Even though the score-line was respect­able, the Highlanders were always play­ing catch-up after going behind early, and the res­ult was never in doubt.

The Bulls opened their account in the fourth minute when hooker Gary Botha strolled over the line in the corner and three minutes later left wing Francois Hougaard went over almost in the exact same place as he too found the gap on the out­side without any res­ist­ance. Right wing Gerhard van der Heever (pic­tured left) then got in on the action with what could argu­ably be the best try of the com­pet­i­tion thus far.

The Highlanders man­aged to fight their way into the home side’s 22m area, only to loose pos­ses­sion going for­ward. The ball was quickly sent wide to the fleet-footed Van der Heever who jinked inside, and then out­side to find a gap and out­pace four Highlander defend­ers over 70m for a bril­liant indi­vidual try.

Van der Heever’s stun­ning score looked like being the pre­cursor to the open­ing of the floodgates, but iron­ic­ally it was the Highlanders who scored next when full­back Israel Dagg cap­it­al­ised on a Bulls back­line error to sprint 40m and dot down. Undeterred by their sud­den lapse in con­cen­tra­tion the Bulls claimed the bonus point try shortly after­wards when Zane Kirchner’s kick and chase was lost by Dagg, snatched up by Dewald Potgieter and sent wide to centre Wynand Olivier who dived in at the corner.

Pierre Spies got his first try after 30 minutes as another ball was lost out of the air and this time Stephan Dippenaar picked up and passed inside for the tower­ing No 8 to dot down under the posts. The hard work­ing Dagg got his second just before the inter­val as a simple scis­sor move­ment deceived the Bulls defence and kept the Hurricanes hopes alive.

The Bulls decided to change tac­tics in the second half as they found them­selves up against a reju­ven­ated Highlanders side striv­ing for the bonus point. Tries by Tim Boys and Robbie Robinson kept the score­board tick­ing for the vis­it­ors and when Dagg got his hat trick from a quick tap pen­alty late in the game the Highlanders had some­thing to talk about on their long jour­ney back home. However, by that stage the Bulls had already notched up their half cen­tury with Hougaard and Spies going over for fur­ther tries to make the final score 50–35 in favour of the home side.

With only one game left to play before they begin their over­seas tour, the Bulls are now one point clear of the Vodacom Stormers at the top of the log and can head over­seas with a per­fect score of 25 points from five games if they defeat the Hurricanes at Loftus on Friday night. The way the men in blue are play­ing at the moment there is no reason to doubt that they will get the bet­ter of the eighth placed Canes who were thumped 37–13 by the high rid­ing Stormers at Newlands on Saturday evening.

Scorers
Bulls 50 – Tries: Gary Botha, Francois Hougaard (2), Gerhard van den Heever, Wynand Olivier, Pierre Spies (2). Coversions: Morne Steyn (6). Penalty: Steyn.
Highlanders 35 – Tries: Israel Dagg (3), Tim Boys, Robbie Robinson. Conversions: Matthew Berquist (3), Dagg (2).

Results (from left to right; SA teams in bold)
Friday
Chiefs 19 — Crusaders 26 — Hamilton
Waratahs 73 Lions 12 — Sydney
Saturday
Brumbies 24  Sharks 22 Canberra
Bulls 50 Highlanders 35 Loftus Versveld, Pretoria
Stormers 37 Hurricanes 13 Newlands, Cape Town
Sunday
Reds 50 Western Force 10 Brisbane

This year’s Super 14 has been a highly suc­cess­ful one thus far for the Stormers and the Bulls although the same can­not be said for the other com­pet­ing South African teams. The Cheetahs (two wins from four games), Sharks and the Lions (both without vic­tor­ies after five games) are all strug­gling and will be des­per­ate for wins this weekend.

The Cheetahs take on the Stormers at Newlands in Cape Town on Saturday after­noon and will be con­fid­ent of upset­ting their more fan­cied rivals des­pite the homes side’s strong form this sea­son. The Free Staters are a dan­ger­ous out­fit with a excel­lent pack of for­wards and a back­line packed with speed­sters and will fancy their chances of put­ting one over the Stormers who showed they are by no means invin­cible at home after going down 19–17 to the Brumbies last month.

Upcoming fix­tures (SA teams in bold)
Friday
Blues vs Brumbies — Auckland: 08.35am
Bulls vs Hurricanes — Loftus Versveld, Pretoria: 07.10pm
Saturday
Crusaders vs Lions Christchurch: 06.30am
Highlanders vs Sharks Dunedin: 08.35am
Western Force vs Waratahs Perth: 01.10pm
Stormers vs Cheetahs Newlands, Cape Town: 05.05pm

Ernie ends long drought
Ernie Els (pic­tured) finally man­aged to win a pro­fes­sional golf tour­na­ment after two years of try­ing when he defeated coun­try­men Charl Schwartzel by four strokes to take hon­ours in the $8.5m (R62.56m) WGC-CA Championship in Miami, Florida on Sunday. The 40-year-old Els shot an 18-under 270 as opposed to Schwartzel’s 14-under 274 to clinch his first vic­tory since the 2008 Honda Classic.

“This means so much. I didn’t think it was ever going to hap­pen again,” Els said after shoot­ing a bogey-free, six-under-par 66 final round to end his long vic­tory drought. Els and Schwartzel turned the World Golf Championships (WGC) event into an all South African shoot-out in windy con­di­tions at Doral’s Blue Monster.

The duo star­ted the final round dead even and although Els never once trailed his younger coun­try­men, he took a long time to gain the ascend­ancy (the pair were still level with only eight holes remain­ing) and apply the fin­ish­ing touches to secure vic­tory. In the final assess­ment it was the 14^th hole that proved to be the key as Els sank a 25-foot par-saving putt to retain a one-shot lead before pulling away over the remain­ing holes to clinch the win.

Although Schwartzel played excep­tion­ally well over the four days, his final round 70 was just not good enough to beat Els who col­lec­ted $1.4m (R10.3m) for his second WGC vic­tory and 17^th on the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) Tour. Irishman Padraig Harrington, German Martin Kaymer and American Matt Kuchar tied for third spot, a fur­ther three shots back on an 11-under 277.

The 25-year-old Schwartzel, who was a house­guest at Els’ Florida estate last week and will be again this week, seemed sat­is­fied with second. “It just shows me I can play against the best in the world. All credit to Ernie. He played flaw­less golf. Both of us gave it our all. He just played a bit bet­ter,” remarked Schwartzel.

Els now has his sights firmly set on next month’s Masters. The South African ace has won three majors, but never at Augusta, where he has come close to claim­ing a green jacket more often than he cares to remem­ber. "Next week I’m going to work hard again,” said Els. “I’ve got to get these things I’m work­ing on drilled a bit more and be really com­fort­able with it and get my ball flight drilled for Augusta. But you know, two years ago when I won (the Honda Classic) I got all car­ried away and thought I was going to win Augusta,” he added.

There will be no bold pre­dic­tions this time. Instead, Els will let his clubs do the talk­ing as he pre­pares to do battle with the cream of the world’s golfers in one of the world’s most pres­ti­gi­ous tournaments.

Top 10 fin­ish­ers (US unless stated)
270 – Ernie Els (RSA) 68–66-70–66
274 – Charl Schwartzel (RSA) 67–70-67–70
277 – Matt Kuchar 71–71-67–68, Martin Kaymer (GER) 70–72-69–66, Padraig Harrington (IRL) 70–68-67–72
278 – Alistair Presnell (AUS) 72–70-72–64, Alvaro Quiros (ESP)
72–69-69–68, Graeme McDowell (NIR) 74–68-70–66, Paul Casey (GBR) 69–72-68–69, Bill Haas 71–66-70–71

Lange clinches Argus in sprint fin­ish
Team Medscheme’s Malcolm Lange (pic­tured) won his third Cape Argus Cycle Tour after out-sprinting a high-quality break­away group to win the pres­ti­gi­ous 109km event in Cape Town on Sunday. The 36-year-old Lange’s other Argus vic­tori­ous came in 1998 and 2003 and it was his 407^th win in a career span­ning 19 years. South African cham­pion Christoff van Heerden (MTN Energade) fin­ished second while Daryl Impey (Team Radioshack) was third.

The break­away group of 12 riders, which included seven-time Tour de France win­ner Lance Armstrong (Team Radioshack), moved clear of the pelo­ton shortly before the climb of Chapman’s Peak Drive with 36km to go. Lange’s Medscheme team rode a clever, tac­tical race, for­cing the front group to split in the strong cross­winds and get­ting Lange, Johann Rabie and Nicholas White into the break along with nine other riders.

“That was our pre-race plan. We decided to use the wind to our advant­age and try and split the race up just before Chapman’s Peak. I know that my chances of win­ning are best from a small group and that suited us per­fectly,” explained Lange afterwards.

Joining the Medscheme trio in the break were David George, Rene Hasselbacher (both safindit), Dean Edwards, Tiaan Kannemeyer (both House of Paint), Armstrong, Impey (both Team Radioshack), Burry Stander (Team Specialised), Bjorn Glasner (Team Kuota) and Van Heerden (MTN Energade).

As the break reached the final kilo­metre, the 38-year-old Armstrong attacked strongly, but the strength of the head­wind blun­ted the Tour de France legend’s efforts. Edwards, a potent track sprinter, then sprin­ted his way into the lead, but he made his move a tad too soon and Lange moved out from his slip­stream with 150m to go to snatch vic­tory by more than a bike length in two hrs, 39 min and 55 sec.

“I was inspired to win today. Our team­mate, Arran Brown, won last year and is out injured, so we really wanted to defend the title for the team,” said Lange. “I owe this win to my team. They were bril­liant and we rode a tac­tic­ally per­fect race,” added the champion.

The Argus is the world’s largest cycle race and attrac­ted around 35 000 par­ti­cipants on Sunday.

Top 10 fin­ish­ers (SA riders unless stated)

1. Malcolm Lange – Team Medscheme 2hrs, 39min, 55sec
2. Christoff van Heerden – MTN Energade
3. Daryl Impey – Team Radioshack
4. Burry Stander – Team Specialised
5. Rene Hasselbacher  (AUT) – Team sainfo
6. Dean Edwards – House of Paint
7. Bjorn Glasner  (GER) – Team Kuota
8. Johann Rabie – Team Medscheme
9. Lance Armstrong  (USA) – Team Radioshack
10. Nicholas White – Team Medscheme

(All top 10 fin­ish­ers were cred­ited with the same time)

SA fin­ish tenth after loss to Black Sticks
New Zealand clinched a ninth place fin­ish at the Men’s field Hockey World Cup in Delhi after defeat­ing a cour­ageous South Africa in a high-scoring nail-biter, which ended in a pen­alty shoot-out. The Black Sticks, trail­ing 3–4 till the final minute of reg­u­la­tion play, equal­ised in the last second when Andrew Hayward scored his third pen­alty corner goal of the match.

Both teams failed to break the dead­lock in 15 minutes of extra-time and New Zealand won the shoot-out 5–4 with cap­tain Dean Couzins fir­ing in the cru­cial ninth goal. New Zealand fin­ished eighth in the last World Cup, while South Africa improved two places from their 12^th pos­i­tion in the same tournament.

Sporting Links:
South Africa 2010 World Cup
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2010 World Cup Host Cities
2010 World Cup Accommodation
Things to Do in South Africa

Photo Credits:
Two wins and a draw for Bafana — Photo – Kermit Erasmus: Source – timeslive.co.za
Warriors wal­lop Lions to clinch title — Photo – Mark Boucher: Source – itsonlycricket.com
Bulls keep march­ing on — Photo – Gerhard van der Heever: Source – daylife.com
Ernie ends long drought — Photo – Ernie Els: Source – golf.about.com
Lange clinches Argus in sprint fin­ish — Photo – Malcolm Lange: Source – nicwhite.co.za