Windies ace to blow back in at Newlands

THE big man is back in town. Okay, not just yet, but West Indies Twenty20 superstar Kieron Pollard will be arriving next week in Cape Town to join up with the defending RamSlam T20 Challenge champions, the Cape Cobras, for the upcoming campaign.

Pollard is returning for his second season at the Cobras after a hugely successful stint last year. The Trinidadian had a rapturous Newlands enthralled during the victory in the T20 Challenge final over the Knights with a whirlwind innings of 43 from just 23 balls before following it up with a bowling spell of 3/21.

Those types of performances were typical of Pollard throughout the competition as he showed his world-class status in the shortest format.

He scored 243 runs at an average of 81, and even more tellingly at an astonishing strike-rate of 171.12. With ball in hand he was equally dangerous, finishing second on the tournament’s wicket-takers list with 14 scalps at 14.57.

And it was not surprising when Pollard was awarded the T20 Player of the Season prize at Cricket South Africa’s awards evening.

However, it was not only Pollard’s personal contributions that endeared him to the Cobras. Like fellow Windies professionals at Newlands before him, it was the effect he had on the younger players within the dressingroom that had a telling effect.

Desmond Haynes, the great Barbados opening batsman, was particularly good with a generation of Western Province batsmen, namely Jacques Kallis, Herschelle Gibbs and HD Ackerman.

Similarly, Pollard guided inexperienced Cobras batsman Omphile Ramela last season, with the 28-year-old often helping the former Maties captain after practise sessions in helping to set up his innings game plans.

This reaped immediate rewards for Ramela and the Cobras, as the left- hander shared a match-winning partnership of 68 runs in just six overs in the T20 Challenge final with Pollard.

Ramela’s confidence grew and he built on that performance in the four-day competition, where he struck a doublecentury and another ton in consecutive matches to earn selection for the SA A tour to India last winter.

Pollard is expected to available for the duration of the tournament, although he could miss a couple of games midway through the series as he has been selected in the Windies’ T20 squad for two internationals against Sri Lanka on November 9 and 12.