Klaasen blasts Durban Super Giants into SA20 final

It’s probably best that whatever Nandre Burger did or said to trigger Heinrich Klaasen is never repeated. 

It cost Joburg Super Kings this match and put the Durban Super Giants into the SA20 final at Newlands on Saturday where they will face a rematch with the Sunrisers Eastern Cape, who beat them in Qualifier One at the same venue on Tuesday. 

The Super Giants’ innings took turn towards happiness from the time Klaasen’s mood changed when he took offence to Burger’s celebration of Bhanuka Rajapaksa’s wicket in the 13th over. 

With Durban’s run rate under eight an over and their top order already in the dug out, the Super Kings had control.

Burger’s celebration looked innocuous — a finger to the lips, followed by a little wave — but Klaasen took offence, approaching the Super Kings huddle where they were congratulating Burger and the bowler Doug Bracewell and declared his disgust. 

At the time Klaasen had scored 13 off 11 and not hit a boundary. Then, as he said in a television interview at the break between innings, “something triggered me on the field to get into the battle a bit more.” 

An attempt at making peace by Super Kings captain Faf du Plessis was dismissed. At the second strategy break in the DSG innings, Klaasen sought Burger out, delivering another verbal spray accompanied by the kind of glare a parent reserves for a naughty child, which Burger walked away from.

Klaasen, in a bruising session of controlled fury, started to switch gears. He began by smashing his first boundary, an inside-out drive over long off for six against Imran Tahir stage and followed it immediately with a second, straighter one that, that was followed by a four in the same direction and a third six, again into the sight screen. A total of 29 runs came off that 15th over, bowled by one of the Super Kings’ primary weapons and the floodgates opened.

Further carnage ensued; 14 came off an over bowled by Sam Cook, 29 runs were scored off Cook’s next over as Wiaan Mulder, who has quietly had an excellent tournament, joined in the mayhem.

Durban blasted 102 runs in the last six overs, with Klaasen clobbering seven sixes and three fours in his innings of 74, which came off only 30 balls. Mulder notched up his third half-century of the tournament, an innings that lasted 23 balls in which he struck three fours and three sixes.

Burger had the last laugh — although not the last word — when he dismissed Klaasen and again said something, which upset the tournament’s leading six hitter. 

Tensions remained heightened through the remainder of the match. Reece Topley and Leus du Plooy went chest to chest and later Donovan Ferreira had an angry exchange with a handful of the Durban players that ended with Klaasen showing him the direction of the dugout. 

Some may find it unedifying, but it also shows how much the players care, and how as the tournament reaches the conclusion of its second season, some intense rivalries are starting to form. 

Making the battle a verbal one certainly worked for the Super Giants. But importantly it was accompanied by prodigious skill; from Klaasen’s breathtaking six hitting, to Naveen ul-Haq’s clinical accuracy, which netted him 2/27 and Keshav Maharaj’s captaincy, which has got the best out of a group of players who last year narrowly missed out on a play-off spot after they won just one of their last four matches..

On Saturday, they get to play for the R34-million first prize.