An investment in the playing depth of our DP World Lions men’s team paid off at the weekend with the successful defence of the CSA T20 Challenge title, with head coach Russell Domingo expressing his delight with how the newer faces in the team performed.
The DP World Lions clinched the crown with a commanding eight-wicket win with 29 balls to spare over the Titans, a triumphant conclusion to a campaign in which #ThePrideOfJozi played nine matches and won seven of them. The champions used 17 players in the competition, with Connor Esterhuizen, Evan Jones, Delano Potgieter and Mitchell van Buuren the only players to appear in all nine games.
Last season’s triumph was played over a double-round of fixtures and 18 players were used by Domingo. Proteas stars like Ryan Rickelton, Rassie van der Dussen, Wiaan Mulder, Reeza Hendricks, Temba Bavuma and Bjorn Fortuin were able to play just about every match.
With this season’s CSA T20 Challenge happening at the start of the season, as opposed to the end of the 2023/24 campaign, our DP World Lions had to dig a bit deeper into their resources.
Rickelton, Hendricks, Van der Dussen and Mulder all scored more than 200 runs last season; this season it was Esterhuizen leading the way with 199, closely followed by Hendricks and Van der Dussen, who played 10 games between them. Wandile Makwetu was the other chief run-getter.
Nqaba Peter was the leading wicket-taker last season with 20 scalps in 10 games, earning him a deserved call-up to the Proteas team, which meant he could only play five matches this campaign. Bjorn Fortuin (18), Codi Yusuf (16) and Lutho Sipamla (14) were the other main wicket-takers in 2023/24.
This season our Pride contributed the two leading wicket-takers in the entire competition, Junaid Dawood and Kwena Maphaka both taking 13 wickets, while Sipamla and Evan Jones contributed 16 scalps between them.
“Every trophy is special but to defend the title with largely a different team feels very special indeed,” Domingo said. “Having a lot of Proteas away gave opportunity to other players and I am very pleased that they put their hands up. Junaid and Kwena were leading wicket-takers, I thought Mitch did a great job as captain before Bjorn returned, and Connor and Wandile gave very good performances.
“We make sure we learn every day, whether we win or lose. The Titans gave us a hiding in the first game, but that was a wake-up call to make sure we weren’t complacent. This is a tough competition, the boys needed to step up and they did,” Domingo said.
While Domingo’s intention had been to rotate seamers Sipamla, Yusuf and Tshepo Moreki through the season, Sipamla took his opportunity at the end of the tournament to write himself into the history books, his figures of four for 12 at the DP World Wanderers Stadium at the weekend being the best ever in a CSA T20 Challenge final.
“It was a really big performance from Lutho, he’s had a lot of injuries and missed a lot of last season. I wanted all the seamers to play five games, but Lutho has done really well at the back end. He works extremely hard and it was a fantastic spell,” Domingo said.
“We didn’t want to bowl too full on that pitch, we wanted to hit hard lengths and the bowling was as good as we could have hoped for. We spoke long and hard before the final about tactics.
“I’m a bit old-fashioned in that I like to have wickets in hand, be more circumspect up front, especially at the DP World Wanderers where the ball does a bit. A lot of people think the first six overs are the most important, but I think the last six are.
“Aiming for around 40 in the powerplay has served us well. We might have to do it differently next season, but with this group of players it was the right formula. We also worked hard on batting well in the middle overs, running the ones and twos, being smart, and we also had to cut down on the extras in the field,” the delighted Domingo said.
