Excitement in the air as South African domestic cricket gets underway

South Africa’s leading cricketers have been counting the minutes until they could return to proper action and their wait will finally be over at 10am on Monday morning as the CSA 4-Day domestic series gets underway and marks the return of serious competitive action for the first time since March.

And the opening round of action is full of interest as the defending champions, the Imperial Lions, travel to Durban to take on the fast-rising Dolphins, last season’s runners-up, the Titans travel to Cape Town to play their arch-rivals the Cobras and a rapidly-developing Knights side host the Warriors in Bloemfontein.

In a star-studded Titans team, reliable all-rounder Grant Thomson is wearing the captain’s armband and he gave a taste of the enthusiasm with which his team is approaching their return to action.

“Playing at Newlands there will always be good cricket and I’ve yet to experience an easy game against the Cobras, they are always highly competitive,” Thomson said. “And I think the competition as a whole is going to have a phenomenal standard because there are great players in all the teams, and Proteas scattered throughout. To play the Cobras first up is going to be a great test for us and we will see where we are first up.

“We’ll be able to test our skills and also see what our new players have to offer. Hopefully we can step up together and put together a good performance, our Proteas have been working really hard and Aiden Markram and Theunis de Bruyn are both specially hungry and Dean Elgar looks in fantastic nick and Heinrich Klaasen scored a double-hundred in a warm-up game.”

Lions captain Temba Bavuma is expecting similarly fiercely-congested cricket, starting with the Dolphins at Kingsmead and then from all other the teams as they try to stop his team from becoming the first in the franchise era to win three successive four-day titles.

“All the Proteas are taking part for at least the first two rounds, so it’s going to be massive and the sort of standard we look forward to – strength versus strength and the type of cricket from which we can really test ourselves,” Bavuma said. “We need to try and win back the confidence from the public after a lot of uncertainty and we are all raring to go after what has felt like a really long time off the field.”

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