Border buoyed by new recruits
Capture of hard-hitting top order batsman Coulentianos a coup
Border Cricket are excited by their new crop of contracted players that were announced last week and will run out for the senior provincial team in the 2020/021 cricket season.
The big coup for Border is the capture of the hard-hitting top order batsman Wesley Coulentianos who joins from Easterns after a successful season that saw the union win the CSA T20 Cup in September and also just miss out on the semifinals of the CSA Provincial One-Day Challenge.
Coulentianos was also part of the Easterns team named the joint winners of the 2019/2020 CSA Three-Day Provincial Cup in March, sharing the trophy with KwaZulu-Natal when the season was stopped early due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The 26-year-old brings his winning mentality to a young Border team that needs his experience and runs to improve on a 2019/2020 season where they finished bottom of their pool in the Three-Day Provincial Cup and the One-Day Challenge, winning only two matches in both competitions.
Border lost to eventual winners of the T20 cup, Easterns, in the semifinal of the competition, meaning it was not all doom and gloom for Border.
Coach Mfuneko Ngam said: “We had a disappointing season last season, but we hope to turn this around as we set new goals and look into the areas of improvement [for next season].”
Coulentianos boasts an average of 39.31 over his 4128 runs in the longer format of the game with 10 centuries and 21 fifties in 72 matches showing he has the concentration to bat long and score big. He also has 1014 runs at an average of 40.56 in list-A one-day matches and 145 runs from 10 innings at a strike rate of 84.30 in the T20 format.
Coulentianos is a former SA schools player and also has experience of playing club cricket in England for Denby Cricket Club in the Derbyshire Premier League and can bowl left-arm orthodox spin.
The other 10 contracted players for the 2020/2021 season are Clayton Bosch, 27, Jerome Bossr, 21, Joshua Dodd, 24, Phaphama Fojela, 35, Bongolwethu Makeleni, 26, Mncedisi Malika, 22, Jason Niemand, 21, Bradley Williams, 25, Nonelela Yikha, 18, and Malwande Zamo, 23. Acting CEO of Border Cricket, Stuart Fortuin said: “We are very pleased with our contracted players which forms a fairly young team, with a few experienced players.
“Fojela keeps proving that age doesn’t matter and has kept taking wickets at vital times, and has also contributed with the bat this season [that has just ended].”
Ngam congratulated one of their stalwarts Aya Gqamane, “who after several sterling performances for Border and Warriors has received a Warriors contract”.
Fortuin said that they wished that they could contract more players to retain some of the talent the province produced.
“Unfortunately we only get 11 contracts [that Cricket SA pays for] but of course we have many great players in the province.
“We are the breeding ground for young black talent but this talent is always being poached by other bigger provinces.
“At present I am engaging with big businesses to try to sponsor us to contract more players so our talent does not leave the province,” Fortuin said.
He was, however, looking forward to next season: “We are looking forward to the team as a whole doing well next season.”
We are the breeding ground for young black talent but this talent is always being poached by other bigger provinces.
Acting CEO of Border Cricket, Stuart Fortuin
I think the main factor will remain the main factor. Why do guys go? It is for change of environment, for the development of their game
Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber