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Morkel: Rowles JSK Signing Was Years in the Making

Albie Morkel says Joburg Super Kings tracked Jason Rowles for over a year before paying R2.9m for the 18-year-old.

By Saleem Sial · 15 Oct 2026

Joburg Super Kings did not stumble on Jason Rowles at the Season 5 auction. Head coach Albie Morkel says the franchise had tracked the left-arm spinner for more than a year before paying R2.9 million for him, the highest bid of the mini-auction. Rowles, still eighteen and finishing school, cost more than the re-signing of Faf du Plessis, and Morkel insists the fee was the end of a long process, not a gamble on the day.

The story starts at a Joburg Super Kings camp last year, where Rowles impressed the coaching staff while still in Grade 11. The franchise kept watching from there, and by auction day the plan was set: Rowles was a target, not a name that came up in the room. For a teenager, that kind of patience from a franchise is rare, and it explains why Morkel pushed back against the idea that the signing was an impulse buy.

Rowles is a schoolboy at St David's Marist Inanda, and his game covers two disciplines: left-arm spin and top-order batting. He is also playing in the CSA T20 Emerging side, which gives him competitive cricket beyond school fixtures. Morkel says the franchise will not overload him in his first season, a deliberate choice for an eighteen-year-old joining a dressing room full of senior players.

Those senior players are part of the plan. Du Plessis, Kieron Pollard, James Vince and Jason Holder give Rowles experienced heads to learn from, and the backroom has been rebuilt around the same idea: Rivash Gobind and Wandile Gwavu as assistant coaches, Allan Donald on bowling and Pierre de Bruyn on fielding. It is a support system designed to let a young player develop without carrying a team.

The Super Kings' first home game is against Sunrisers Eastern Cape at the Wanderers on Saturday 23 January 2027. Whether Rowles plays from the start or waits for his chance, the franchise has already made its judgement clear: he was worth a year of watching and the biggest cheque of the auction, and the fee means expectations will follow him from the first game he plays. The rest of the auction day underlined the approach, with Faf du Plessis returning after a bidding war and Kieron Pollard, Andries Gous and Blessing Muzarabani joining the same squad, so Rowles arrives as one part of a rebuild rather than a lone bet. The fee set the tone for the auction.

Source: https://www.sa20.co.za/news/morkel-rowles-jsk-signing-was-years-in-the-making-not-an-auction-gamble