Cape Town – They were two of the most marketable figures again in the lead-up to this season’s Mzansi Super League (MSL).

But it took until around the halfway mark of a hitherto slow-burning tournament for onlookers to see the best qualities of established Twenty20 global megastars AB de Villiers and Chris Gayle.

Suddenly both came off, albeit for different causes, in an all-Highveld clash at the Wanderers on Sunday, as De Villiers’ Tshwane Spartans outfit put Gayle’s Jozi Stars out of their 2019 misery with a dramatic, come-from-nowhere victory.

The Stars imploding once more as a batting unit – from foundations in a chase that were laid in quite swashbuckling fashion by the big Jamaican left-hander – saw them recede to an embarrassing nought from six in the win column and elimination from contention (surely?) from the knockout phase even with four full fixtures left for them.

They may now simply serve as kingmakers for others in the scramble for top-three berths, currently dominated by Eric Simons’ unbeaten Nelson Mandela Bay Giants charges and the small-town outfit of Paarl Rocks.

It has been a remarkable fall from grace for a Bullring-based side who were champions in the inaugural edition last summer, and now having to win at least three of their remaining matches to draw level with the Durban Heat (bottom team in 2018, with a 3/10 record) and stave off becoming the standalone, least productive outfit for wins in a single MSL campaign.

Their squad has not been significantly different this year, although they have surrendered in-form all-rounder Dwaine Pretorius to Paarl Rocks, and Dane Vilas to Durban Heat.

So it was really only a crumb of comfort that Gayle belatedly came to the party on Sunday in his final match on South African soil … perhaps for all time, as he is now 40, increasingly plodding in the field and between the wickets, and unlikely to earn an Mzansi gig even if the financially-questionable tournament reaches a third edition next season.

That both he and De Villiers sparkled with the blade, however, helped add to a growing feeling that the local public are beginning to warm to MSL 2019, especially with Springbok World Cup-winning rugby hysteria subsiding as the oval-ball off-season takes proper hold.

It may be too late now to bolster unimpressive attendance figures at the Wanderers specifically, with the Stars such early goners, but Gayle – later confessing to having felt a little poorly on the day – at least signed off in his 400th T20 match worldwide with some pizzazz.

After a paltry total of 47 runs from his previous five knocks, he bettered that in one against the Spartans by bludgeoning 54 off 27 balls (strike rate exactly 200) against their lively seam attack.

The “Universe Boss” was particularly severe on Lungi Ngidi, as he smashed him for three fours and a six onto the old wooden benches in the Proteas strike bowler’s opening over, although he had earlier survived two or three clear-cut runout attempts as nippy Temba Bavuma forgot his partner operates with all the pace off the mark – and even when at supposed full tilt – of a sumo wrestler.

Ngidi, to his credit, regained composure to only leak 19 further runs from his remaining three overs, and play his part in the Spartans’ gutsy clawback collectively in the field.

Earlier, a similarly hitherto underwhelming De Villiers, still SA cricket’s most idolised figure, also notched his own first half-century of the tournament, a 33-ball innings of 53 easily eclipsing his previous best of 19 at Paarl.

He had to summon his rich experience and nous initially, as the pitch was trickily two-paced and required some poking of the ball around before any batsman (perhaps excluding the no-rules-apply Gayle, that is) could feel reasonably comfortable.

But then, at a venue where he has produced some withering white-ball innings for his national side in the past, De Villiers suddenly began to strike it really cleanly and with increasing velocity until he holed out in the final over of his team’s knock.

His resurgence should help lure a healthy enough crowd to SuperSport Park on Friday when the Spartans entertain Faf du Plessis’s Rocks in a match that could have a major effect on determining the play-offs places.

Sunday’s earlier, Western Cape derby between the Cape Town Blitz and Paarl Rocks, a full-blooded contest that the Boland-based side edged by two runs, coaxed a solid number of the Newlands faithful.

Maligned though it is in some circles, the MSL is beginning to bubble more promisingly now.

*Follow our chief writer on Twitter: @RobHouwing

London – Tottenham Hotspur sacked manager Mauricio Pochettino on Tuesday following a miserable start to the campaign that has seen last season’s Champions League finalists slide down the Premier League table.

Tottenham sit 14th in England’s top flight after picking up just three wins from their opening 12 games, and were eliminated from the League Cup in September by fourth-tier Colchester United.

“The club can today announce that Mauricio Pochettino and his coaching staff Jesus Perez, Miguel D’Agostino and Antoni Jimenez have been relieved of their duties,” Tottenham said in a statement.

Pochettino, 47, joined Spurs from Southampton in 2014 and transformed the club’s fortunes despite failing to win a trophy in his five-and-a-half years in charge.

His side have become Champions League regulars over the past four seasons, culminating in a dramatic run to the club’s first ever European Cup final in June, which they lost 2-0 to Liverpool in Madrid.

However, domestically results have been on the decline since February.

Only the faltering form of Arsenal and Manchester United allowed Spurs to cling onto a top-four finish last season as they won just three of their final 12 league games.

That form has continued at the start of this season with Pochettino leaving the club already 11 points outside the Premier League top four and 20 behind leaders Liverpool.

“We were extremely reluctant to make this change and it is not a decision the board has taken lightly, nor in haste,” said Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy.

“Regrettably domestic results at the end of last season and beginning of this season have been extremely disappointing.

“It falls to the board to make the difficult decisions – this one made more so given the many memorable moments we have had with Mauricio and his coaching staff – but we do so in the club’s best interests.”

The job done by Pochettino was all the more remarkable given the tight budget he was afforded by Levy for transfers and wages in comparison to Tottenham’s Premier League rivals, as the club built a new stadium at a cost of over £1 billion.

Spurs were forced to play at temporary home Wembley for the entirety of the 2017/18 campaign and most of last season before moving into their new 62,000 capacity ground in April.

After 18 months without signing a single player, Levy finally loosened the purse strings to buy Tanguy Ndombele for a club record £63 million ($79 million) in July and added Giovani lo Celso on loan and Ryan Sessegnon in the summer transfer window.

However, injuries have prevented that trio making an instant impact, while Pochettino bemoaned the disruptive effect of Christian Eriksen, Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen all entering the final year of their contracts.

“Mauricio and his coaching staff will always be part of our history,” added Levy.

“I have the utmost admiration for the manner in which he dealt with the difficult times away from a home ground whilst we built the new stadium and for the warmth and positivity he brought to us. I should like to thank him and his coaching staff for all they have contributed. They will always be welcome here.

“We have a talented squad. We need to re-energise and look to deliver a positive season for our supporters.”

Cape Town  – South Africa’s Brad Binder has won the Moto2 race in Valencia and with that victory takes the runner-up spot in the championship, just three points behind Alex Marquez.

Binder, who spent much of the race in second place, made his move on the last lap, getting past Tom Luthi and winning by the narrowest of margins.

Series champion Marquez crashed out of the race while in 5th position.

Binder will now make the move to MotoGP with KTM after completing his fifth victory of the year.

Cape Town – Former Cricket South Africa CEO Haroon Lorgat’s controversially binned T20 Global League in 2017 had one thing going for it that the reworked, currently active Mzansi Super League boasts in smaller volume: genuinely big, proven names from the international landscape.

His larger, eight-team model – which would have featured Benoni and Bloemfontein-based franchises, both absent from the now two-season MSL – would have seen the following marquee players: Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo (West Indies), Lasith Malinga (Sri Lanka), Kevin Pietersen, Eoin Morgan and Jason Roy (England) and Brendon McCullum (New Zealand).

At the time, they still counted among the major bums-on-seats players on the world T20 tournament circuit.

It is not the fault of the new, Thabang Moroe-led CSA regime, of course, that the already wobbling, six-team MSL could not lure the likes of Pietersen and McCullum: they have retired in the interim period.

Unavailability, for varying reasons, also cannot be avoided: for example, two of the three big Caribbean names, Pollard and Bravo (the latter represented Paarl Rocks last season) were non-starters for the 2019 MSL.

But it has meant, detrimentally, that only two of the cancelled Global League’s marquee overseas players – Gayle and Jason Roy – have kept that status for the current-version MSL, which is off to a rocky start both in gate-receipt and weather disruption-related terms.

The newcomers are Alex Hales, Tom Curran (a late starter for Tshwane Spartans after activity for England in their just-completed T20 series in New Zealand), Wahab Riaz (also initially absent through Pakistan duties) and Isuru Udana.

Sri Lankan all-rounder Udana entered the equation late as a replacement for David Willey, the England player deemed to require an easing of his workload.

Considering that the ill-fated Global League was also expected to find franchise homes for the likes of Chris Jordan, Dinesh Ramdin, Sam Billings, Mitch McLenaghan, Mohammad Hafeez, Yasir Shah and Dawid Malan, the much-discussed MSL which stepped into the void looks more of a cut-price exercise when it comes to cosmopolitan feel – something that is usually considered beneficial as events of this kind are supposed to be a key cut above purely domestic franchise cricket because of the relative galaxy of international figures infusing them.

Especially as CSA has transformation requirements, affecting the composition and volume of locally-based personnel, the overseas-based players are under deeper pressure to justify their berths and not simply be seen as globetrotting journeymen making up numbers to bolster the perception of an “international” ingredient.

While Gayle, the so-called “Universe Boss” because of his formidable reputation for power hitting worldwide, naturally remains a drawcard on paper, he is also 40 years old now, noticeably cumbersome in the field and a stand-and-deliver sort of batsman not renowned for sprinting for sharp singles or pushing hard for twos and threes.

The MSL also features several non-marquee overseas players who have either been used very sparingly by their home countries in T20 internationals (the Cape Town Blitz’s Liam Livingstone has two England caps, for example) or are past their primes for highest-level combat: Jozi Stars’ Australian all-rounder Dan Christian, 36, played the last of his 16 T20 internationals more than two years ago and has an unflattering batting best for his country of nine and premier bowling figures of three for 27.

Are some of the overseas participants taking up spots that could, a little ironically, better be allocated to locally-based players?

The next couple of weeks, as the tournament develops, could provide some answers …

*Follow our chief writer on Twitter: @RobHouwing