Bafana end losing streak and more sports news ...

Bafana end los­ing streak with nar­row vic­tory: Bafana Bafana broke their run of six con­sec­ut­ive losses when they defeated Madagascar 1–0 in an inter­na­tional friendly played at the GWK Stadium in Kimberley on Saturday after­noon. However, it was by no means an impress­ive per­form­ance by Bafana who seemed to lack ideas and urgency for the major­ity of the match. Substitute Katlego Mphela (pic­tured) scored the only goal of the match in the 64^th minute when the Mamelodi Sundowns striker col­lec­ted a well-placed through ball from Man of the Match Richard Henyekane to steer his shot past Madagascar goal­keeper Hector Kandy ...

The match was inten­ded to form part of Bafana’s pre­par­a­tions for next year’s World Cup, which will be held on these sunny shores in June, but it was a rather dull and unin­spir­ing per­form­ance by the South Africans as they struggled to find their rhythm against a team ranked a lowly 131^st on the Fifa world rank­ings. In fact, the vis­it­ors could have come away from this match with a draw after hav­ing a goal dis­al­lowed by Botswana ref­eree Joshua Bondo seven minutes from time.

Madagascar must have felt at times as though they were play­ing against 12 men with Bondo unfairly award­ing a pen­alty to Bafana in the 42^nd minute when he ruled that Henyekane was brought down by Kandy inside the pen­alty area. In fact, tele­vi­sion replays clearly showed that the con­tact between the vis­it­ing ‘keeper and the Bafana striker was made out­side the area, prov­ing that Bondo had got it hor­ribly wrong. However, justice was done when Kandy pulled off a bril­liant save from Siphiwe Tshabalala’s spot kick to deny Bafana a goal. Based on this per­form­ance, the 73^rd ranked Bafana have a long way to go if they hope to pose a threat to the major teams at next year’s 2010 spec­tacle. Hopefully, coach Joel Santana can get more out of his player’s for future inter­na­tional encoun­ters – after all the fans deserve better.

Celtic beat Maritzburg in goal bon­anza
Bloem Celtic defeated Maritzburg United at the Woodburn Stadium in Pietermaritzburg last Wednesday even­ing to lift them­selves to fourth on the Absa Premiership Log after six out­ings. The vis­it­ors tri­umphed 4–2 in an enter­tain­ing encounter cour­tesy of two goals from Prince Olomu (pic­tured left) and one apiece from Johannes Motlhaping and Sandile Ndlovu.

Maritzburg replied with goals from Nigerian winger Felix Obada and Fadlu Davids, but it was not enough to pre­vent the home side from suf­fer­ing their second loss of the sea­son and drop­ping to sixth in the stand­ings. Maritzburg’s next out­ing is against sev­enth placed Ajax Cape Town at Newlands today and the KwaZulu-Natalians will be hop­ing for a bet­ter per­form­ance against the Cape team. The match is also likely to be the pick of this week’s fixtures.

Results (left to right)
Last Wednesday
Free State Stars 3 — Golden Arrows 1
Orlando Pirates 1 — Black Aces 0
Bloem Celtic 4 — Maritzburg Utd 2
SuperSport United 4 — Moroka Swallows 2
Santos 1 — Jomo Cosmos 1
Ajax Cape Town 1 — AmaZulu 0
Bidvest Wits 4 — Mamelodi Sundowns 2

Yesterday
Jomo Cosmos 1 — SuperSport United 3

Today’s fix­tures
Ajax Cape Town vs Maritzburg Utd
Orlando Pirates vs Platinum Stars
Bloem Celtic vs Kaizer Chiefs
Mamelodi Sundowns vs AmaZulu
Black Aces vs Free State Stars
Moroka Swallows vs Bidvest Wits
Golden Arrows vs Santos

Sharks stay on top with scrappy win over Cheetahs
The Sharks stayed on top of the Currie Cup stand­ings when they defeated the Cheetahs 24–13 in a scrappy encounter at the Absa Stadium in Durban on Saturday. It was an uncon­vin­cing per­form­ance by the home side who com­men­ted a string of unforced errors, which kept the door open for the vis­it­ors to pull of an upset right to the very end. The Sharks fiddled and faffed around for most of the 80 minutes and, based on this per­form­ance, did not look like cham­pi­on­ship win­ners. Nevertheless, they man­aged to come away with a win and five import­ant Currie Cup points, which kept them at the top of the Currie Cup log on 40 points, one clear of second placed Western Province.

The Sharks found the going tough against the Cheetahs who should have won this game had it not been for their indif­fer­ent goal-kicking and some poor fin­ish­ing. The home side opened the scor­ing in the 11^th minute cour­tesy of a pen­alty from their Argentinean fly­half Juan Hernandez, which was quickly fol­lowed by a try from burly centre Waylon Murray (pic­tured) that was ini­ti­ated from a break­away by eighth­man Ryan Kankowski. The mobile No 8 then fed wing Odwa Ndungane who delivered a poor pass to vet­eran full­back Stefan Terblanche who some­how man­aged to catch the ball centre­metres from the turf and then loft a pass to Murray who cantered in for an excel­lent try. Hernandez duffed the con­ver­sion, but the Sharks were again on the score­board minutes later when hooker Craig Burden scored after a pas­sage of broken play. Hernandez added the extra points and the Sharks were sud­denly 15–0 up and threat­en­ing to run away with pro­ceed­ings des­pite hav­ing been pinned in their own half for the first 10 minutes.

However, the Cheetahs had the bet­ter of the second quarter of the match and scored a try in the 35^th minute through eighth­man Ashley Johnson after a fine run down the touch­line by wing Lionel Mapoe. Flyhalf Jacques-Louis Potgieter missed the con­ver­sion to leave the Free Staters trail­ing by 10 points, but the Free State No 10 added a pen­alty on the stroke of half-time to cut the defi­cit to just seven points and set the stage for an intriguing second half.

The Sharks weren’t tak­ing any chances in the final 40 minutes as they brought out their big guns in the form of return­ing Springboks John Smit, Adrian Jacobs and Ruan Pienaar, but the vis­it­ors were unfazed and con­tin­ued to pres­sur­ise the Sharks although they were not rewar­ded with any early points for their efforts. Terblanche scored the first points of the second half when he slot­ted a well-taken drop goal after a solid scrum by the home side to make it 18–8 after 50 minutes.

However, the Cheetahs, never a side to lie down without a fight, scored seven minutes later after Potgieter sprin­ted all of 40m before off­load­ing to centre JW Jonker who dot­ted down for an excel­lent try. Potgieter again duffed the con­ver­sion, but the Cheetahs were in strik­ing dis­tance at 18–13 and look­ing men­acing. However, Hernandez kicked two pen­al­ties in quick suc­ces­sion in the 65^th and 70^th minutes to put the Sharks 24–13 to the good leav­ing the Free Staters too much to do to pull off a vic­tory. The Sharks’ next out­ing is against the lowly Leopards in Durban on Friday even­ing while the Cheetahs tackle the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria on Saturday.

Griquas on course for semis while Bulls, WP win eas­ily
Griquas stayed on track for a Currie Cup semi-final berth when they defeated a never say die Lions out­fit 36–31 in Kimberley on Saturday after­noon. The win moved the dia­mond miners to third on the log with 38 points, six clear of the fourth placed Bulls who thumped bot­tom of the log Boland Cavaliers 72–16 in Wellington in another match played on Saturday.

The Lions star­ted well against the men from Kimberley and were ahead after just two minutes, cour­tesy of a well-taken try by Johan Jackson, which was con­ver­ted by Earl Rose. However, Griquas fought back hard and replied with three pen­al­ties in quick suc­ces­sion by fly­half Naas Olivier who had a great game with the boot. Derick Minnie scored another try for the Lions while fly­half Herkie Kruger added a pen­alty to make it 15–9 in favour of the vis­it­ors before Olivier kicked his fourth pen­alty after 35 minutes to close the gap to just three points. And that’s the way mat­ters stayed until half­time to leave both teams con­fid­ent of pulling off a victory.

Griquas lev­elled mat­ters shortly after the restart through another Olivier pen­alty only for Kruger to quickly reply with a pen­alty of his own to put the Lions 18–15 to the good. However, the home side stunned the vis­it­ors five minutes later by scor­ing two excel­lent tries in the space of just two minutes. First wing Trompie Nontshinga and then Olivier took advant­age of some weak defence to cross their opponent’s line with the fly­half con­vert­ing both efforts to put Griquas 29–18 ahead.

Although clearly shocked by what had just happened, the Lions refused to lie down and replied with two pen­al­ties from Kruger and a con­ver­ted try by centre Alwyn Hollenback to go 31–29 ahead. However, Griquas were not going to be denied a home vic­tory with full­back Riaan Viljoen cre­at­ing the win­ning try for scrum­half Sarel Pretorius (pic­tured) who had just come back onto the field after 10 minutes in the sin bin.

Viljoen ran hard from a long way out before throw­ing a dummy and then passing to Pretorius who threw another dummy before stretch­ing over for a con­ver­ted try to put his team 36–31 in front with less than five minutes remain­ing. And it remained that way until the final whistle to give the dia­mond miners their eighth vic­tory of the sea­son in 11 out­ings – not bad for a team that wasn’t expec­ted to be in con­ten­tion for a semi-final berth at this late stage of the sea­son. Griquas’ next out­ing is against Western Province at Newlands on Saturday. The Capetonians are still second on the log after com­fort­ably defeat­ing per­en­nial losers the Leopards, 37–3 in Potchefstroom. The Lions face the Boland Cavaliers in Johannesburg on Saturday with a big win most likely being on the cards for the home side against a team who, along with fel­low whip­ping boys the Leopards, should really not be com­pet­ing in the Premier Division of the Absa Currie Cup.

Great week for South African box­ing
This past week has been an excel­lent one for South African box­ing with both Simphiwe Nongqayi (pic­tured right) and Kaizer Mabuza (22–6-3, 13KO’s) record­ing excel­lent points vic­tor­ies over highly rated inter­na­tional oppos­i­tion. Nongqayi (16–0, 6KO’s) trav­elled all the way to Cancun, Mexico to cap­ture the International Boxing Federation (IBF) junior ban­tam­weight title last Tuesday, while Mabuza dethroned Sergey Fedchenko in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine on Thursday to take Fedchenko’s IBF Inter-Continental junior wel­ter­weight title.

Nongqayi’s win over the fear­some Mexican, Arce, was espe­cially note­worthy con­sid­er­ing that the dimin­ut­ive South African was detained in Germany en route to Mexico for over seven hours for not hav­ing the neces­sary visas. However, Nongqayi shrugged off this unpleas­ant incid­ent and ignored a hos­tile home crowd to out­box the hard punch­ing Arce and pre­vail by scores of 117–112, 116–112 and 117–111. Mabuza was con­sidered a rank under­dog against Fedchenko who had never been beaten in 23 con­tests and was mak­ing the second defence of the title he won from Swedish based Ugandan, Peter Semo in May 2008. But he, too, was undeterred and pro­duced a mas­ter­ful dis­play of box­ing to tri­umph by scores of 117–112, 115–112 and 114–114 to relieve the Ukranian of his title.

Meanwhile, in local action, Macbute ‘Mac Man’ Sinyabi (55kg) retained his South African junior feather­weight title in East London on Friday even­ing when he knocked out chal­lenger Tendani Munyai (55.52kg) in the second round of a sched­uled 12 round con­test. The fight began at a fren­etic pace with both men throw­ing lots of leather, clearly not intent on leav­ing mat­ters in the hands of the judges. The Mdatsane based cham­pion scored the first knock­down of the fight in the open­ing stanza, but walked into a hard right from the chal­lenger early in the second round, which put him on the canvas.

Munyai, sens­ing an oppor­tun­ity to end the fight, applied the pres­sure as soon as Sinyabi got to his feet and nearly dropped the cham­pion for a second time. However, Sinyabi held on to the chal­lenger as though his very life depended on it, thereby buy­ing him­self pre­cious time to clear his head and recover. And recover he did as he landed a power­ful right cross fol­lowed by a wicked left hook to put the chal­lenger on the seat of his trunks for a second time.

Although Munyai man­aged to beat the count, the writ­ing was now on the wall as Sinyabi landed another hard right cross to his foe’s jaw, which sent Munyai to the deck for a third time. The chal­lenger beat the count once again, but this time there was to be no escape as the heavy-handed Sinyabi applied the fin­ish­ing touches in bru­tal fash­ion. A pul­ver­ising right cross fol­lowed by a crush­ing left hook sent the hap­less Munyai crash­ing to the can­vas for a fourth and final time, prompt­ing ref­eree Lulama Mtya to imme­di­ately wave off pro­ceed­ings at 2 min, 56 secs of the second round.

It was a very sav­age knock­out, with ring­side para­med­ics tak­ing sev­eral minutes to revive the stricken Munyai who must have been left won­der­ing what hit him. The 22-year-old Sinyabi raised his record to 13–1 (13KO’s) with the win and has now stopped 11 oppon­ents inside two rounds or less.

“People must here me now, there is no fighter here in South Africa that will go 12 rounds with me, I am the best and I will be a real world cham­pion one day,” said Sinyabi whose only set­back as a pro­fes­sional was a first round knock­out defeat to World Boxing Association (WBA) Pan African Bantamweight cham­pion Bongani Mahlangu in January 2007. Munyai lost for the fifth time as a pro­fes­sional against nine wins and two draws and it would be a good idea for the young Limpopo fighter to take a break from the sport to allow him­self time to recover from this dev­ast­at­ing knockout.

In other fights on the bill, Mandisi Mkile (48.85kg) scored a second round tech­nical knock­out over Thobani Mbangeni (47.75kg) in a junior fly­weight con­test while Phathutshedzo Nemukongwe (when con­fron­ted with names like this I’m glad I’m a sports writer and not a ring announ­cer) out­poin­ted Simphiwe Mabona (48.25kg) on points over eight rounds in another junior fly­weight bout. Nemukongwe (48.98kg) raised his record to 12–3-1 (4KO’s) with the win while Mabona dropped to 15–12-3 (9KO’s).

In upcom­ing action, Soweto’s Takalani ‘Panther’ Ndlovu (29–5, 18KO’s) takes on Spaniard Kiko Martinez (20–2, 15KO’s) in an elim­in­ator for the IBF feather­weight cham­pi­on­ship at the Nasrec Indoor Arena in Johannesburg on Friday even­ing. The 31-year-old South African has been a pro­fes­sional fighter for over a dec­ade now, but has never really lived up to his con­sid­er­able poten­tial des­pite chal­len­ging for a num­ber of fringe world titles. Should Ndlovu lose on Friday, he will more than likely be reg­u­lated to the status of a jour­ney­man, with younger fight­ers view­ing him as a stepping-stone to fur­ther their pugil­istic ambitions.

Sri-Lanka and the rain spoil South Africa’s party
Proteas cap­tain Graeme Smith won the toss and elec­ted to bowl against Sri-Lanka in the host nations open­ing ICC Champions Trophy match at SuperSport Park in Centurion yes­ter­day. It proved to be the wrong decision as the Lankans car­ted the Proteas all over the park to notch up an impress­ive 319 for eight wick­ets off their allot­ted 50 overs.

Tillakaratne Dilshan plundered 106 runs off just 92 balls to lay the found­a­tion for the Sri-Lankan vic­tory and was well sup­por­ted by Kumar Sangakkara (54) and former skip­per Mahela Jayawardene (77), who piled on the agony for the Proteas. Paceman Dale Steyn (pic­tured) was the pick of the South African bowl­ers, cap­tur­ing three wick­ets for 47 runs off nine overs.

The Proteas could only man­age 206 for seven wick­ets in response, before the heav­ens opened, for­cing the umpires to call a halt to pro­ceed­ings after 37.4 overs with the Proteas 55 runs behind the required Duckworth/Lewis score. Smith weighed in with a well played 58 from just 44 balls and mas­ter bats­men Jacques Kallis with 41, but a lack of big part­ner­ships meant the Proteas were unable to get going against a well organ­ised and dis­cip­lined Sri Lankan attack. Spinner Ajantha Mendis was the des­troyer in chief for the vis­it­ors, cap­tur­ing three wick­ets for 30 runs off seven overs.
It was a dis­ap­point­ing per­form­ance by the South Africans who were hop­ing to start their cam­paign on a high note, but they were out­classed by the Lankans who out­played them in every depart­ment. Indeed, the win has now estab­lished Kumar Sangakkara’s men as the early favour­ites for the tour­na­ment, while the loss has placed enorm­ous pres­sure on Smith and his team ahead of tomorrow’s encounter against New Zealand, at the same venue.

Scoreboard
Sri Lanka
T Dilshan c Morkel b Steyn 106
S Jayasuriya lbw Steyn 10
K Sangakkara c and b Duminy 54
M Jayawardena c Duminy b Parnell 77
T Samaraweera c Van der Merwe b Parnell 37
A Mathews b Steyn 15
T Kandambi c Duminy b Parnell 6
D Kulasekara run out (Van der Merwe/Steyn) 1
M Muralidharan not out 0
Extras (5lb, 5w, 3nb) 13
Total (for 8 wkts) 319  (50 overs)
Fall of wick­ets: 1–16, 2–174, 3–181, 4–297, 5–297, 6–314, 7–317, 8–319
Bowling: Steyn 9–2-47–3, Parnell 10–0-79–3, Kallis 7–0-43–0, A Morkel 4–0-39–0, Botha
9–0-53–0, Van der Merwe 10–0-42–0, Duminy 1–0-11–1

South Africa
G Smith b Mendis 58
H Amla b Mathews 2
J Kallis c Mathews b Mendis 41
A de Villiers c Jayasuriya b Malinga 24
J Duminy b Mendis 0
M Boucher lbw Mathews 26
A Morkel not out 29
J Botha c Mathews b Malinga 21
R van der Merwe not out 3
Extras (2w) 2
Total (for 7 wkts) 206  (37.4 overs)
Fall of wick­ets: 1–9, 2–90, 3–113, 4–113, 5–142
Bowling: Malinga 7.4–0-43–2, Kulasekara 7–0-44–0, Mathews 8–1-43–2, Muralidharan 8–0-46–0, Mendis 7–0-30–3
Result: Sri Lanka win by 55 runs on Duckworth/Lewis method.

Somdev shines as India sink South Africa
India’s Somdev Devvarman defeated South African Rik De Voest 3–6, 6–7(3–7), 7–6 (7–5), 6–2, 6–4 in the open­ing reverse singles rub­ber of the Davis Cup World Group play­off in Johannesburg on Sunday to book his coun­try a place in next year’s Davis Cup World Group. Devvarman’s vic­tory put India in an unas­sail­able 3–1 lead in the tie and Yuki Bhambri rubbed salt into South Africa’s wounds when he out­played Izak van der Merwe in the final singles match to make the final score 4–1 in India’s favour.

The vis­it­ors won both singles rub­bers on Friday when Devvarman defeated Izak van der Merwe 7–6(7–5), 6–3, 6–4 and Rohan Bopanna dis­patched Rik de Voest 2–6, 6–4, 6–2, 6–4. The South Africans won the doubles rub­ber on Saturday when Jeff Coetzee (pic­tured) and Wesley Moodie turned back the chal­lenge of Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna by default after Bhupathi suffered a pulled groin muscle in the third set. It was the first time in ten years that South Africa has reached the World Group play­offs – what a pity they couldn’t pro­duce the goods against a team deprived of their top player in Leander Paes who with­draw from the tie at the last minute, cit­ing injury.

Darren demol­ishes the field at Selborne
Darren Fichardt (pic­tured) was far too good for the rest of the field at the Vodacom Business Origins of Golf Tour when he cruised to vic­tory by seven strokes at the Selborne Golf Estate on the KwaZulu Natal south coast on Friday. The 34-year-old made it look all too easy on his way to a record-equalling biggest vic­tory mar­gin on a wet and windy final day. The Pretoria pro­fes­sional now ties Thomas Aiken, who won the Final at The Links in 2004 by seven strokes, for the biggest vic­tory mar­gin on the series.

Fichardt simply des­troyed the com­pet­i­tion, clos­ing with a superb 67 to win on 18-under-par with Jbe’ Kruger and Keenan Davidse shar­ing second place on 11-under-par. Fichardt went into the final round with a three-stroke lead and was never chal­lenged although sev­eral play­ers, includ­ing defend­ing cham­pion Jean Hugo, did their best to make a con­test of it on the final day. However, none of their efforts could pre­vent the exper­i­enced Fichardt, a man with seven Sunshine Tour and two European Tour vic­tor­ies to his credit, from secur­ing a well-deserved victory.

Final Scores (Top 10 fin­ish­ers only, RSA unless spe­cified)
198 — Darren Fichardt 65 66 67
205 – Jbe’ Kruger 68 69 68, Keenan Davidse 70 67 68
207 — Adilson da Silva (BRA) 70 70 67
208 — Jaco Ahlers 65 74 69, Peter Karmis 70 67 71, Thabang Simon 69 68 71
209 — Tyrone Mordt 71 70 68, Jean Hugo 68 70 71, Reggie Adams 66 68 75

Photo Credits:
Bafana end los­ing streak with nar­row vic­tory: Photo – Katlego Mphela — Source – www.soccerbible.com
Celtic beat Maritzburg in goal bon­anza: Photo – Prince Olomu Source – www.psl.co.za
Sharks stay on top with scrappy win over Cheetahs — Photo – Waylon Murray Source – www.daylife.com
Griquas on course for semis while Bulls, WP win eas­ily — Photo – Sarel Pretorius Source – www.netprosolutions.com
Great week for SA box­ing — Photo – Simphiwe Nongqayi Source – www.boxingmexico.blogspot.com
Sri-Lanka and the rain spoil SA’s party — Photo – Dale Steyn Source – www.seshdotcom.wordpress.com
Somdev shines as India sink SA — Photo – Jeff Coetzee Source – www.zimbio.com
Darren demol­ishes the field at Selborne Photo – Darren Fichardt Source – www.daylife.com