- SA all-rounder Dwaine Pretorius provided the most tornado-like batting showing at the 3TC cricket festival.
- Centurion favourites Aiden Markram and AB de Villiers also grasped the opportunity for significant runs.
- Glenton Stuurman, from reasonably unfashionable Oudtshoorn, looked nerveless and guile-laden as a seamer.
The usually popular but necessarily deserted famous grass banks at SuperSport Park were a seasonal, parched yellow on Saturday.
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At least for the earliest part of the day, batting-team players seated in the shade of the balconies huddled beneath blankets, their facemasks giving them an even greater sense of reclusiveness and anonymity.
Part-time off-spin bowlers like Reeza Hendricks and Aiden Markram kept their caps on while they went about their business, forbidden from handing their headwear to the umpires under the numerous health protocols.
Welcome to winter cricket in South Africa, Covid-19 style.
The inaugural, charity-driven 3TeamCricket event – is it too premature to brand it a season opener? – was also held in a smouldering political climate, if you like, given the high profile of the Black Lives Matter cause in the lead-up and its unmistakably heavy stamp on the occasion itself.
There was a further captaincy change to one of the trio of line-ups, too, as regular Proteas white-ball skipper Quinton de Kock was a late withdrawal for “unforeseen personal circumstances”.
But while it helped a lot if you were a thoroughly modern devotee of the game – this slug-fest sometimes made even Twenty20 look positively traditionalist — the novel spectacle was enjoyable enough televised fare.
Whether 3TC finds a more regular place in a cricket landscape already bulging with three major formats plus dubious offshoots like T10 and England’s now-delayed “The Hundred” remains to be seen.
Personally, I would be alarmed if it ever crept into the traditional summer: as a pre-season sort of festival it feels well less problematic.
What mattered was that a galaxy of familiar figures got a good gallop, and there will be increased appetite now for more conventional forms of the game to find a place on the spring 2020 agenda in the milder, northern parts of the country.
In broad terms, the exercise seemed to demonstrate that the bulk of the country’s foremost cricketers, either rookie or more seasoned, have kept themselves in decent physical nick despite the limitations of months of lockdown.
Predictably, the 3TC event was weighted even more heavily than the other white-ball formats in favour of batsmen, especially with the teams confined to eight players and huge gaps thus apparent in the field.
Several well-known stroke-players duly cashed in, on the true surface and in the cool-to-mild sunshine.
As SuperSport commentary newcomer and SA all-rounder Chris Morris noted while watching a plethora of spectacular, tee-off strokes: “It looks like batsmen have been playing golf in the off-season.”
Main statistical honours went to Aiden Markram, of the eventually gold medal-winning Eagles outfit under veteran superstar AB de Villiers.
The formidably gifted, powerful but somehow not yet entirely finished-article right-hander began his 2020/21, if you can call it that, with a flourish, blazing 70 runs across the two-portion innings for his side off 33 balls before perishing to a catch in the deep.
He had a fruitful alliance with De Villiers, another lengthy Centurion-based favourite and some 11 years his senior at 36, who began his own vigil reasonably conservatively before finding his rhythm in typically outrageous, brutal fashion for 61 off 24 deliveries.
The noisiest, brightest fireworks, however, came from a different source: Dwaine Pretorius.
A fairly regular part of the SA national furniture at limited-overs level, but holder of only three Test caps to this point as a largely bowling-orientated all-rounder, the 31-year-old from Randfontein reminded that he can use the long handle to very telling effect.
His own half-century (50 not out) came off just 17 balls, meaning a red-hot strike rate of a touch under 300.
Once or twice, in a departure from the mostly front-of-wicket bruising he handed out, he showed a defter, softer touch to his arsenal.
Pretorius’s assault in one eventful over on Tabraiz Shamsi – the rusty left-arm unorthodox spinner dragged down several deliveries to his detriment after a solid enough start – produced 28 runs as he peppered the dry grass, well beyond the boundary ropes.
De Villiers also went bam-bam-bam at one point, lashing a four and two sixes in three balls off Jon-Jon Smuts, while stalwart Test captain Faf du Plessis gave Proteas colleague Lungi Ngidi a 6,6,6,4 treatment in a similar salvo.
So yes, this was a day requiring strong stomachs and vital variational skills from bowlers … and even those simply weren’t enough at times as perfectly decent deliveries “disappeared”.
It wasn’t all carnage for them: Anrich Nortje got in as many as six dot balls in the 18 he bowled with generally very healthy gas, Andile Phehlukwayo kept a consistently acceptable lid on things and two seam novices, the wiry, still-teenaged Gerald Coetzee and inventive, cool-headed Oudtshoorn product Glenton Stuurman seized the opportunity to put ticks against their names as well.
*Follow our chief writer on Twitter: @RobHouwing
