North-West innings spirals out of control v Northerns
The North-West Dragons won the toss and elected to bat first in their CSA 4-Day Series match against the Northerns Titans at Centurion on Sunday, but their innings soon spiralled out of control and they were bowled out for just 148.
Northerns had reached 18 for one in reply when bad light stopped play.
Junior Dala set the ball rolling when his short ball outside off-stump saw a hooking Grant Mokoena (4) looping the ball to mid-on.
Aya Gqamane, curving the ball back into the right-handers, then trapped both Lesego Senokwane (14) and Shaylin Pillay (18) lbw, before Senuran Muthusamy (13), swivelling on a pull shot, hit the ball straight to midwicket as the Eastern Cape product finished with figures of three for 40 in 13 overs, doing most of the damage in a marvellous bowling display by the Titans.
Dala then returned to claim his second wicket, Khanya Cotani (0) edging a drive and being well-taken in the slips by Donovan Ferreira, as North-West crashed to 83 for six.
JP King (38) and Duan Jansen (37) provided some resistance with a seventh-wicket stand of 47, but the entire innings was all over in four hours, just 56.2 overs.
Apart from Gqamane and Dala, the Northerns production line of fast bowlers looks promising with both Merrick Brett (11-5-20-2) and Matthew Boast (14-4-41-1) impressing on their first-class debuts for the Titans. Left-arm spinner Neil Brand also collected two late wickets.
The Titans were only able to bat for six overs before play was prematurely ended by an approaching storm, but Brand reached 14 not out in that time. Jiveshan Pillay was with him on four not out, after the dismissal of Modiri Litheko for a duck.
He was undone by some fine bowling by Renaldo Meyer: a big inswinger the previous ball led to an unsuccessful lbw appeal, but the next delivery was perfectly pitched, Litheko came forward to defend, but a beautiful away-swinger found the edge of his bat to have him caught behind.
Lions v Dolphins
Conditions were all in the batsmen’s favour in Potchefstroom on Sunday as the KZN Dolphins amassed 181 for two against the Central Gauteng Lions in their match, before play was washed out in the afternoon.
The Lions did manage to make an early strike when the all-effort Codi Yusuf fired the ball into the blockhole and trapped Tshepang Dithole lbw for 3.
But Proteas batsmen Sarel Erwee and Keegan Petersen were determined and focused as they added 99 for the second wicket, before Malusi Siboto drew a slip catch from Petersen (58).
While Erwee ploughed on to 75 not out off 168 balls, Marques Ackerman was able to turn a slow start into 40 undefeated runs off just 47 balls, the Lions bowlers perhaps being guilty of giving the left-hander an excess of leg-side scoring opportunities.
Yusuf finished the day with one for 37 in 13 overs and Siboto had taken one for 35 in the same number of overs.
In order to have a chance of claiming the four-day title in this final round of fixtures, the Lions have to beat the Dolphins and also get 5.74 more bonus points than them.
At the moment, the Dolphins have collected 1.62 more points than the Lions.
WP v EP
In the match between the two other teams in contention for the title, the Eastern Province Warriors batsmen feasted on the Western Province attack as they piled up 347 for nine at Newlands.
An excellent top-order display laid the foundation, with the extremely talented Jordan Hermann setting the tone with 81 up front, Diego Rosier (59) and Matthew Breetzke (52) then both scored half-centuries, and Rudi Second chipped in with 48.
FS Knights v Boland
In the other match, the Free State Knights bowled the Boland Rocks out for 212 in Paarl, and had made 99 for three in reply.
The promising Michael Copeland led the way for Boland with 55, while veteran off-spinner Aubrey Swanepoel took five for 67 in 24.4 overs for the Knights.
Opener Matthew Kleinveldt was the mainstay of the Free State reply, with 50 not out.