Church bells ringing in Potchefstroom

I have been in Potchefstroom, the university city about 100kms west of Johannesburg, for three days at the South Africa training camp. Many international teams and sports people make use of the facilities; athletes regularly train here, the Australian cricket team are fond of the location and Spain will base themselves here during the football World Cup next year. A couple of English counties are also planning pre-season trips as well.

As you arrive from Johannesburg, Potch – as it is known – just sort of appears almost out of nowhere. There are few tall buildings to catch the eye and the only clue was a sign in Afrikaans welcoming you to the town. I heard a random fact that it has the highest concentration of churches per head of population in South Africa. Anyone know if that’s true? There were certainly plenty of bells ringing on Sunday morning.

It’s a quiet time of the year at the moment with most education establishments having broken up for the holiday season. Occasionally I would see a truck or jeep laden to overflowing with furniture as students moved out. “We don’t get many tourists at this time year,” a local waitress told me.

Senwes Park itself is a very pleasant cricket ground, almost a mini replica of Centurion Park with large grass banks and little wooden chalets dotted around. The pavilion is an elegant building and includes a range of memorabilia from the North West province’s history. The walls are dotted with shirts from teams who have played or trained here, some with messages of thanks.

However, the main reason I came here after starting the tour in East London was to see how the South Africans were shaping up ahead of the Test series. They were certainly put through some tough training sessions in very warm conditions and it was interesting to see some of the methods they used.

To try and simulate a match situation a centre-wicket net was set up and batsmen would spend about 90 minutes in there as though playing a proper innings. The bowlers ran in hard and the batsmen would rotate the strike with the process continuing for different combinations of players. The rest of the squad were spilt between traditional nets and fielding drills.

Paul Harris was given a real working over by one of the coaches as he had tennis balls fired at him at great speed. To begin with he couldn’t get a hand on them, but by the end he was catching a fair few. Morne Morkel, not the most natural of close catchers, was given some advice from Graeme Smith, but the tall fast bowler is unlikely to find himself in the slips.

Local kids took the chance to fill up their bats and shirts with autographs from their heroes. They were all happy to oblige and were in relaxed spirits. In three days it will be time to get serious.