| Hard work and play Tuesday, 23 October, 2001, BBC Sport Online columnist Neil McKenzie talks about rugby, barbecues and dancing on the tables after his team make it to the final of the triangular series. The SA team in South Africa has achieved objective number one in the one-day triangular series here. This was making the one-day final to be played in Durban on Friday afternoon and evening. Our match against Kenya at Newlands was a good display by most of the guys and I was very pleased with my own personal performance. It is interesting to note that our opposition for the final is not cut-and-dried as everyone had thought it would be. Kenya's victory over India last Wednesday evening in Port Elizabeth has thrown the cat among the pigeons and Wednesday's game has become a semi-final for both teams. It would be very surprising if Kenya were to beat India again as the form books among most cricket observers is that India should go through quite comfortably. As for our team, we're just happy to be in the final and we don't mind who we play against. We'll just go out there and do our best, play to our own high expectation levels and hopefully come off the winners. Over the weekend in Cape Town was great off the field. PR skills We arrived on Saturday morning from East London where we beat the Indian team in our last group match with them. A bit of the provincial patriotism and friendly banter took place on the plane-ride down as the FreeStaterstook on Jacques Kallis, Herschelle Gibbs and Gary Kirsten's Western Province in the semi-final of rugby's Bankfin Currie Cup. We were lucky enough to go the game, tickets courtesy of Jacques' great PR skills with the WP rugby guys. We all sat in the press seats but unfortunately we had no pen and paper in hand and thus we could not display our "critic" skills by being on the other side of the laptop for a change. Be that as it may, the Province rugby boys came out of top, and this is bound to fuel further conflict and create a huge divide in our camp for Saturday's Currie Cup final against Pollock/Klusener/Ford/Rhodes' Natal side and WP's fleet-footed and blow-waved beach-heads. As for my side, the Lions were taken out in the Shark Tank by the Natal Sharks in the early match so my allegiances for Saturday's game will be clearly resting with the referee; I hope he has a good game! Today the guys have taken it quite easy, some having already headed off to Durban while the others decided to remain in the shadow of the famous Table Mountain and catch up on shopping, beaching and sleep. In closing, I met up with some of my old school mates on Saturday evening after the rugger and had a good old SA braai (barbeque) before we headed off to one of the city's well-known watering holes where the patrons end up dancing on the bar counter. Hopefully we'll be dancing some more on the bar-counters in Durban after Friday's encounter on the cricket field. For the time being, this is Neil McKenzie from SA for BBC Sport Online. |