ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2016

After earning a draw at Cape Town and now led by A.B.de Villiers, South Africa must have hoped for a change of fortune in the next Test at Johannesburg. Instead, after an even first innings, they found themselves on the receiving end of one of Stuart Broad’s irresistible bursts as they were routed for 83, Broad 12.1-6-17-6. Only at Centurion, the rubber lost, did South Africa gain a consolation win. And the ‘off’ season visit of New Zealand in August offered further evidence that the side has finally begun to heal the scars. Even so, the damage of two heavy defeats was not so easily undone; South Africa, top of the rankings by a significant margin a year previously, by the end of the 2016 season found themselves in fifth place. The pattern of the domestic season was unaltered except that Griqualand West, deferring to the wish of the South African government that provincial sports teams should reflect the country’s political structure, changed its name to Northern Cape. The principal first-class tournament, the Sunfoil Series, was won by Titans with a record of six wins and only a single defeat that was perhaps less convincing than it appears on paper. The side’s powerful batting was given to an occasional fragility that led to the single defeat, in a low-scoring encounter with Knights in January; and the same weakness seemed to call Titans’ prospects into doubt in the penultimate game when Lions forced them to follow on. But they recovered to hold out for a draw, and sealed the title in a thrilling final match when their opponents Cobras, having led by 121 on first innings, fell 11 short of a modest victory target of 136 (Rowan Richards 7-40). And in the end, Titans’ six wins were hard for the other sides to argue with: Knights could claim five but these were offset by the same number of defeats so the side finished only third; while the record of second-place Lions (four wins and two defeats) was clearly inferior to that of Titans. At provincial level, the second-string Sunfoil Cup was divided into two pools of seven teams each with every side playing one match against each of the other six matches in its pool, and in addition four ‘cross-pool’ games, so that each team played ten matches in total at the pool stage. It would be fair to say there was no dominant side in either pool. Western Province and North West won half their games in Pool A, with bonus points carrying the former side to first place despite the loss of three games compared with two for the runners-up. And in Pool B, no side won more than four of its ten games. KwaZulu-Natal Inland, unbeaten, ended narrowly ahead of Eastern Province. When the two pool champions met in the four-day final, it was the Pool B champions KwaZulu-Natal Inland that secured a solid win after dismissing Western Province for 137 in the first innings. In terms of individual performances in the domestic season as a whole, mention must be made of Titans’ 32-year-old opening batsman Heino Kuhn. Leading the first-class run aggregates with 1159 at 57.95, and having made only one appearance for his province (Northerns), he became only the sixth batsman to record a thousand runs in a season of franchise cricket (1126 at 62.55). In all first-class matches, three other batsmen reached the thousand mark: Grant Mokoena (Easterns and Titans), Daryn Smit (KwaZulu-Natal and Dolphins), and Stephen Cook (North West and Lions), of whom the last-named forced his way into the Test side. The season’s highest wicket-taker was the left arm fast-medium Rowan Richards of Northerns and Titans, now rapidly qualifying to be called a veteran, who claimed 58 victims at 19.25 and enjoyed an excellent season even before his heroics in the decisive final round of franchise matches. He was closely followed by Tabraiz Shamsi of Easterns and Titans, another left-arm bowler but purveying that rarest merchandise of googlies and chinamen; he took 57 wickets at 330 South Africa in 2015/16