Busy off-season looms for SA players

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

SA’s season has ended but that does not mean the players are taking a break until the national squad regroups to tour Sri Lanka in July.

A dozen players - among them 10 of the 15 who returned on Monday from the World T20 in Bangladesh - are signed up to play in the Indian Premier League (IPL), which starts in the United Arab Emirates next Wednesday.

Coaching staffs in the IPL will feature several South Africans, while the county scene is rife with prominent SA players.

The Delhi Daredevils are the favoured IPL franchise for South Africans this year. Quinton de Kock, JP Duminy and Wayne Parnell will all turn out for the team - which will be coached by Gary Kirsten and captained by SA-born Kevin Pietersen.

AB de Villiers and Albie Morkel will play for Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), David Miller and Beuran Hendricks will turn out for King’s XI Punjab, and Jacques Kallis and Morne Morkel will keep each other company at Kolkata Knight Riders.

The lone rangers are Dale Steyn, who is with Sunrisers Hyderabad, Chennai Super Kings’ Faf du Plessis and Marchant de Lange, who is on the Mumbai Indians’ (MI) squad list.

De Lange’s inclusion will raise eyebrows, what with his worrying injury record. Would his winter not be better spent quietly at home?

“The players can make so much money in the IPL that if we told them they couldn’t go a lot of them would retire from SA cricket and go and play there anyway,” Jacques Faul, the chief executive of the Titans, De Lange’s SA franchise, said yesterday. “Besides, I’d rather have him playing in the IPL than on the county circuit.”

The IPL is six-and-a-half weeks of high tempo action in which each team plays 14 round-robin games. However, in England, each county plays at least 39 matches - 16 of them four-day first class fixtures - adding up to 87 days of cricket that run from April to September.

Then there’s the small matter of the equivalent of R521 739 that De Lange will earn for his six-and-a-half weeks of trouble.

But there is no shortage of South Africans who have opted to take up county contracts. Graeme Smith has already joined Surrey, and Alviro Petersen, Ashwell Prince, Jacques Rudolph and Kyle Abbott will play for Somerset, Lancashire, Glamorgan and Hampshire respectively. Rory Kleinveldt and Richard Levi are at Northamptonshire.

Other South Africans involved in the IPL are the Proteas’ team director Paddy Upton - who will coach the Rajasthan Royals - bowling coach Allan Donald - who will act as bowling coach for RCB - and Jonty Rhodes, MI’s fielding coach.