The Orange Army Keeps Marching On
Sunrisers Eastern Cape keep marching in step
Sunrisers Eastern Cape won their second title in two years. They also won the SA20 Spirit of Cricket Award for the second year running. In both seasons, they have displayed the Sunrisers spirit, which Aiden Markram defined as ‘characteristics that you can't necessarily coach. It's sort of either have it or you don’t. This group of players has it. It's a culture of never-say-die attitude, always giving your 100% and more, and fighting tooth and nail every ball out there. It's enjoyable off the field, we enjoy playing together on the field.’
If you missed the article on their season one success:
When he was 24, Andy Birrell was at a crossroads. He had talent, but everyone around him considered him to be an into-the-wind dribbler type and not a world-conquering star. So, he was relegated to the fringes of his provincial side. With no great expectations of his talent, he had to find a profession.
Cricket didn’t pay much, and he couldn’t live on what was paid to him as a fringe player. Like his father, he was a cricket badger. In their home, they discussed the sport at the breakfast table and on the drive to school. He grew up in a cricket atmosphere. His dad, a teacher profession, stayed close to the game by coaching cricket at his school.
Like his father, the young man couldn’t tear himself from the game. Also, like his father, he had a teaching qualification. But, unlike his father, he chose to go all in. It was the mid-1980s and Adi Birrell chose coaching. His fluency in Xhosa led to his deployment in the townships.
The coaching job wasn't what he expected. Some of the schools he coached didn't have facilities and in others, they were in serious disrepair. Birrell developed negotiation skills in double quick time. With that side sorted, Birrell learned quickly that for most of his students, the focus had to be less on the game and more on the people. If he had been deployed 10 years later, in the Brixton area, Birrell would have seen the young boy who was sent away from cricket because he didn't have the required kit.
His mother was a charwoman who went for periods without consistent work. In those barren periods, the boy slept on an empty stomach and survived on the sandwich and milk combo he ate at school. As a teenager, the boy would not take to the field while his cousin was playing because they shared a single pair of spikes. And in 2007, while Birrell led Ireland to a history-making run at the World Cup, that boy was putting food on the table as a bowler for hire for affluent schools in need of serious pace in their bowling attack.
10 years later, that boy, Ottniel Baartman, moved 741 km from home to sign with the Knights. He used his salary over the next few months to build his mother a house. After a lifetime of living in a corrugated iron shack, his mother and sister finally got to live in a brick-and-mortar home.
Baartman was one of the three pillars of the Sunrisers Eastern Cape’s lethal pace attack. The second pillar is Dan Worrall who gives those who watched West Indies in the 1980s a sense of deja vu when he stands at the top of his run-up. The right-armer begins his run-up almost at mid-off and runs in at an angle like Malcolm Marshall. His technique is homespun. To generate extra speed as a youngster playing backyard cricket, Worrall adopted a long run-up. Close to his mark was a little tree which he was forced to run around.
There were no great expectations for Worrall and his home-brewed technique. He was often overlooked for representative teams and only worked with a bowling coach after he arrived at Melbourne University at 19. Worrall only considered cricket as a possible full-time job at 21, after South Australia offered him a rookie contract.
The third pillar is Marco Jansen. The 23-year-old allrounder was in the system since he was 13. At around 16, Claude April Gordon Parsons was brought in at CSA’s expense to coach and upskill Jansen and his brother Duan. At 17, the Jansen twins were part of the South Africa Under-19 team, bowled to Virat Kohli in the nets and debuted for North West. Jansen was also part of the Durban Heat team in 2019.
The differences in the backgrounds of SEC’s top wicket-takers and masterminds of their title-winning 2024 campaign are a cross-section of their varied skills. Baartman has pace and accuracy and keeps a toe-crunching yorker up his sleeve. Dan Worrall is an old-fashioned swing bowler with a few slower-ball variations to deceive batters. Marco Jansen's left-arm seam from a height of 2.06m or 6.8ft brings into play all the angles. He has extra bounce and can swing the ball.
Baartman, Worrall and Jansen carried the Sunrisers to the title. They were the top three wicket-takers in the tournament. No other bowling attack was as productive.
The Sunrisers were supposed to begin their campaign on the 10th of January, but it rained in Gqeberha. It was the first time that Birrell had the entire squad in one place, and so he replaced what should have been a post-match debrief with a teachable moment “When you meet someone, ask him his name, call him by his name. Thandi serves us our food. Shami is the caterer behind. We’ve got Trevor outside here. We’ve got Brent outside here. Know the people’s names that you shouldn’t know,” he said.
Birrell believes that life feeds into sport and sport feeds into life. One cannot be on the field what they are not when off it. One can’t just aspire to do the little things on the field when they are cavalier about things off-field. Something as small as creating time for the fans, acknowledging and thanking the people around you - from the back-room staff to the people responsible for the upkeep of the facilities at the various grounds they play at - ‘keeps you humble and grounded.’
The message resonated with the Sunrisers’ captain, Aiden Markram, who instinctively doffs his cap when he greets you. “Doing the little things right is almost your everyday behaviour. How you treat people on a day-to-day basis, being appreciative of everything that you have and trying to make a positive difference to everyone around you,” he says.
On the field, this egoless behaviour is seen in small things like backing up every throw, chasing the ball in pairs and making sure that you're in the right position in the field. It feeds into Birrell’s 1% theory of innovation. “It is the theory of doing small things that might make a difference, but they also might not. But if you do enough of those small things, then you do get an advantage over your opposition. And so it was all the time thinking about what, what you can do with your team that other teams might not be doing. And so you get a strategic advantage by doing that.”
The Sunrisers’ coaching staff was as focused on the minutiae as well as the big moves that in addition to the Riser of the Day Award that was given to the player of the match, they had the Eddie the Eagle Award, a brainchild of Ryan Cook, the fielding coach.
“Fielding is something that you can control and making sure that you try and make an impact in the field, whether it's saving one run or trying to take a spectacular catch to change the momentum of the game, trying to get a run out. I think those are the little things that can add up and make a big difference,” says Simon Harmer.
The award inspired good-natured competition for the award in the team. Walking into the dressing room with dirty clothes was a badge of honour in the Sunrisers team. Everyone was throwing themselves around, diving to save runs, even if it was saving a single run. No one shied away from doing the dirty clothes work. Everyone on the team appreciated the value of one run, even when they had the opposition’s backs against the ropes.
There were four instances of teams bowling out the opposition for less than 100 runs. Sunrisers did it on two of those occasions and bowled out Pretoria Capitals for the lowest total, 52, in the tournament’s history. The complementary relationship between the bowlers and the fielders was so good that the Sunrisers won two of the three nine-wicket victories of the tournament.
Another stat; there were 11 close matches in the tournament, that is matches won by a margin of 10 runs or less, or with six or fewer balls remaining. SEC was involved in five and won four. The edge was found in the hard-run singles and run-saving dives in the field.
The philosophy of doing the little things right could have died in infancy had the players on the bench refused to buy into the philosophy. According to social scientists, our senses are highly attuned to negative stuff around us. We have a negativity bias. We see a hostile face in the crowd and miss all the friendly smiles. There is an old Russian saying that goes; a spoonful of tar can spoil a barrel of honey. All it would have taken was one or two unhappy members of the squad to upset the balance of the dressing room.
“I think it's important that you get the buy-in from the guys that are sitting on the bench. Guys like Sarel Erwee rock up every day with the same energy, pouring energy into the team. The same goes for Aya Gqamane, who normally comes on and helps in the field. Every time he comes on he's electric, he's always putting energy into the team, always looking after himself off the field and doing the extra work, trying to get 1% better,” says Simon Harmer.
Tom Abell, one of Sunrisers’ leading run-scorers, concurs with Harmer, “Those guys are the heartbeat of the team. It's a lot easier for the guys playing and getting the opportunities to buy into a philosophy, but for those guys to help, day in, day out, throwing balls, helping with the drinks, it shows they are real good teammen. They looked after those who were playing and their needs. They were absolutely phenomenal. In every competition, it's going to be a squad effort, a team effort and we certainly couldn’t do it without them. There was always a time when you needed them to step in and they did so phenomenally well.”
Staying true to Birrell’s one per cent theory, the reserves brought in 1% additions by sharing insights on venues and opposition players, tirelessly throwing balls in the nets, keeping the dressing room morale on a positive note in victory or loss, and keeping the regular starters on their toes by improving their game.
With the field and bench on their back, Baartman, Worrall and Jansen carried the Sunrisers to their second title in as many years. They took a combined 55 wickets at an economy of 7.27 in the tournament. No other pace attack has been that productive. 47 of those wickets were caught in the field and by the wicketkeeper. As they did in season one, Sunrisers Eastern Cape showed that the strength of a team is greater than the sum of its parts.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS