Double delight for Morris
Player rosters completed for Mzansi Super League.
The day began with the Cricket South Africa staff member who refused to get too carried away because “last year we had a draft as well”, but by mid-afternoon yesterday the Mzansi Super League was so much closer to reality as the six teams drafted their 16-man playing squads amidst a feeling of growing excitement at Montecasino in Johannesburg.
With many of the participants having been through the subsequently cancelled Global T20 League draft last year as a “practice run”, it was fascinating to see the strategy employed by the six teams and the different priorities they all faced.
While Rashid Khan being picked by the Durban Heat as the first marquee overseas player and all-rounder Chris Morris going to the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants as the first local pick were not surprises, there were several eyebrow-raising moments.
The Centurion-based Tshwane Spartans refused to pick Albie Morkel, the captain of the Titans team that has won the last two domestic franchise finals at SuperSport Park, going instead for two burly, but quality all-rounders in Robbie Frylinck and Rory Kleinveldt. Morkel was gratefully snapped up by the Durban Heat, whose coach Grant Morgan called it “a massive acquisition”.
The Paarl Rocks seemed determined not to choose any overseas players, even though they had to pick at least three of them, and eventually settled on little-known Irish all-rounder Paul Stirling and Kolpak player Cameron Delport to join their marquee overseas player in West Indian Dwayne Bravo.
They had earlier fallen foul of the rules regarding reserve prices and had to go to the back of the queue for the seventh round after trying to select Kolpak all-rounder David Wiese. The Durban Heat made the same mistake with Wayne Parnell, but they refused to let it stop them from accumulating a power-packed team, which Morgan said had “plenty of meat on the bone”.
The Cape Town Blitz, under Ashwell Prince, chose their key players and then resolutely populated the rest of their squad with Cobras players, while the Tshwane Spartans were probably the most daring in terms of their picks, including a thoroughly left-field selection of Sri Lankan all-rounder Jeewan Mendis.
Eric Simons of the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants stuck to explosive T20 stars like Jason Roy, Morris, Jon-Jon Smuts, Junior Dala and Christiaan Jonker.
Some of the surprise names who failed to secure a contract were Richard Levi, Rilee Rossouw and Hardus Viljoen, Kiwi Colin Munro, Zimbabweans Brendan Taylor and Kyle Jarvis, Zubayr Hamza, England seamer Chris Jordan, Sri Lankan all-rounder Thisara Perera, veteran Pakistanis Shoaib Malik and Sohail Tanvir and Dolphins all-rounder Senuran Muthusamy.