Peter Robinson: Transvaal pre-season training (19 Sep 1996)

19 September 1996

Transvaal pre-season training

By Peter Robinson

Reproduced with permission from The Star Newspaper

A soggy start to the summer down in Vredenberg notwithstanding, Transvaal move on to the second stage of their pre-season preparations with a four-day training camp starting at the Wanderers today.

With Ray Jennings now in his second season as coaching manager, Ken Rutherford again captaining the provincial team and Jimmy Cook the senior coach, Transvaal have begun the season making positive noises, despite the washout against Boland down on the West Coast two weeks ago. In all, 29 players will attend the camp (Dean Laing and Richard Snell are away in Hong Kong with the South African sixes team) from which A and B squads for the season will be chosen.

The camp will form the most intensive build-up to a season so far for Transvaal and will be followed by two one-day matches at the Wanderers next week against Natal on Tuesday and Northern Transvaal on Thursday. Apart from Jennings and Cook, Mark O`Donnell, Rodney Ontong, Hugh Page and Andrew Kramer will assist with the coaching. Outside experts - for instance, Clive Rice and Fanie de Villiers will talk about bowling in four-day and one-day games - have been brought in and aspects of the game such as fitness, injuries and psychology will be dealt with by Jeff Lunsky, Evan Speechly and Ken Jennings.

The camp concludes on Sunday with a 45-overs match between A and B teams.

TRAINING SQUAD Adam Bacher, Mark Benfield, Gerard Brophy, Daryll Cullinan, Zander de Bruyn, Clive Eksteen, Gareth Flusk, Neil Fusedale, Doug Gain, Andrew Hall, James Henderson, Steven Jack, Stefan Jacobs, Mark Johnston, Rowan Lyle, Wayne Kidwell, Hussein Manack, Neil McKenzie, Malan Morkel, Ahmed Omar, Anthony Pollock, Nic Pothas, Ken Rutherford, David Terbrugge, Geoffrey Toyana, Ross Veenstra, Trevor Webster, Graeme Yates, Michael Yates.