Ben Lam's 11-minutes of carnage leaves South African fans scratching their heads over Sharks' defence

Hurricanes winger Ben Lam's second-half burst propelled the Hurricanes away from the Durban-visitors in their home opener at Sky Stadium.
The prolific try-scorer left multiple Sharks' defenders clutching on two dazzling runs.
The first came after juggling a cross-field kick, then a scamper down a tight sideline corridor leaving young fullback Aphelele Fassi empty-handed before sliding over from a couple of metres out.
His second try came from a counter-attacking kick return as he called for the ball from Jordie Barrett before cooking Sharks flanker Tyler Paul with an in-and-out move one-on-one. With Paul left stranded, Lam coasted through the empty Sharks' backfield to score another long-range beauty.
Lam touched down for his 29th Super Rugby try in his 41st game, a strike rate of 0.70. It has been all uphill for Lam since taking over the 11 jersey from former All Black Julian Savea in 2018 when he scored a season-leading 16 tries.
Many Kiwi fans see a black jersey in Lam's future.
While on the other side, South African fans were concerned with the defence shown by the previously undefeated Sharks, including 22-year-old Springbok hopeful Aphelele Fassi who has been a star in the opening two weeks.
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Go to commentsHi all. Thanks for commenting. JD is right: the headline is not mine. My headline was what ended up as the first sentence: “Why is Super Rugby Pacific so exciting this season?”. I am certainly not claiming that teams from one competition are better than the teams from another. This type of discussion is entirely subjective (as the teams do not play each other, and even with the players face each other in their national teams, it is in different systems, conditions, etc.). The season being exciting has nothing to do how well the Wallabies will do against the Lions, or against New Zealand.
My sole purpose here was to try explore quantitatively a ‘qualitative’ impression (that the season is exciting).
On Graham’s point about extreme results skewing the results, and Ed’s comment on removing outliers, this is precisely why I report the median values as well as the averages. The median is not skewed by outliers. If the margins of 5 games are 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10 points, the median margin is 5. If there was one blowout and the margins were 3, 4, 5, 8 and 57 points, the median margin is still 5.
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