JOHANNESBURG - The Highveld Lions simply didn’t bat well enough to maintain a constant challenge in the Sunfoil Series this season.
Sure, like every other side they were in the mix coming into the final round of the competition, but nothing summed up their woes more than the first innings of their last match against the Knights at the Wanderers. Facing the opposition’s mammoth total of 443, the Lions crumbled to 87 all out.
“The batting all season in our first innings has not been good enough,” said Lions coach Geoffrey Toyana. In eight innings in the Sunfoil Series the Lions found themselves 70/4 or worse. Pushing for victory from those kinds of positions became a very difficult task.
“There’s not one single reason for the problems; there were some technical flaws, but mental issues also. This was an inexperienced group of batsmen, and we can’t run away from that. When we won the competition two seasons back, we had Alviro Petersen and Neil McKenzie who were vital and you can’t replace that kind of experience in just a year.”
In addition to those two, the Lions also lost the services of Thami Tsolekile - banned for his part in the RamSlam match-fixing scandal - and Pumi Matshikwe, too, while for big chunks of this season they’ve also been without Stephen Cook, Temba Bavuma and Dwaine Pretorius owing to national call-ups.
It has tested the depth of talent in the franchise but despite the problems, Toyana remains optimistic. “We’ve kind of been victims of our own success. Dwaine has been unbelievable for us when he’s been around, with both bat and ball, and then he gets called up to the national team. Wiaan (Mulder) plays for the (SA) Under-19 team and comes back injured ... it has been hard.”
“But we’ve given some younger guys an opportunity and we just have to be patient with them. You look at a guy like Nicky van den Bergh, who had an unbelievable season for us, he’s been one of the main positives with the bat,” said Toyana.
Van den Bergh was the Lions’s fourth highest run-scorer with an aggregate of 469 runs in his first full season with the franchise. And while Dominic Hendricks with 571 runs and Rassie van der Dussen with 540 had reasonable campaigns, consistency was lacking.
The bowling had operated reasonably well in the first half of the competition when Hardus Viljoen was fit and Mulder available. Viljoen missed three matches but with 25 wickets was still the Lions leading wicket-taker and Mulder with 23 was the second highest despite missing half of the competition.
“Hardus was superb ... we really missed that pace in the last few weeks. You could see from the Knights with their two big guns (Duanne Olivier and Marchant de Lange) how important pace is, they took nearly 100 wickets between them in the competition,” said Toyana.
The Lions will have to put the disappointment of their fifth place finish in the series behind them as they look ahead to the defence of their Momentum One-Day Cup crown, which starts with a match against the Warriors at the Wanderers on Sunday.
They will have Cook and Bavuma available for the first few matches of the competition before that pair head off to New Zealand to hook up with Proteas Test team. Equally as important is a change in fortune for the Lions big money off-season signing, Reeza Hendricks.
Having struggled all season, the elegant right hand opener suggested that there may be a return to some good form with a second innings century against the Knights at the Wanderers.
“He’s an important player for us and getting that hundred could be very big for him ahead of the 50-over competition in which we really want to make a big push.”
The Lions will be looking to Hendricks to fill the role Petersen played so memorably last summer when he scored five centuries.
“We did play some quality 50-over cricket last season and Alviro’s runs were important for us, so we will need someone to step up and take over that responsibility,” added Toyana.