Ken Borland

Barring the sporting equivalent of a miracle or the intervention of the weather, the Imperial Lions are well on their way to a second successive victory in their 4-Day Domestic Series match against the Warriors in Port Elizabeth.

The Lions took their first innings score to 389 all out on the second morning on Tuesday and then a fine all-round bowling display saw the Warriors skittled for just 118.

Tladi Bokako set the tone up front with brilliant figures of 13-5-14-2, but he had excellent support from Delano Potgieter (2-22) and Malusi Siboto (2-40) and Sisanda Magala wrapped up the innings with three for 37.

Leading by 271 runs, the Lions then reached 125 for three by stumps, with Wesley Marshall following up his superb 145 in the first innings with a fluent 48 off 60 balls, with 10 fours. Ryan Rickelton (32*) and Wiaan Mulder (23*) then added 40 before close of play.

Already 396 runs ahead, the Lions will be contemplating a declaration sometime on Wednesday that will give them almost a day-and-a-half in which to bowl out the Warriors a second time.

Aiden Markram has already shown that his game has all the equipment needed to succeed at Test level and the 26-year-old definitely also has the confidence and form to ensure he will soon be opening the batting again for the Proteas as he led a decent Titans batting effort on the second day of their match against the Cape Cobras at Centurion.

Markram followed up his century in each innings last week against the Warriors with a classy 80 not out that led the Titans to 136 for one when lighting and rain ended play just before 4pm. He collected 13 fours and was particularly authoritative on the drive.

He received strong support from Neil Brand (38*) as the pair added 104 for the second wicket after Corbin Bosch had produced a brute of a delivery that brushed the glove of Dean Elgar to have him caught in the slips for 9.

The Cobras began the day on 351 for five and took their score to 411 all out, with all-rounder Calvin Savage scoring a useful 40 and Bosch adding 28.

Thando Ntini finished with three for 66 and there were two wickets apiece for Lizaad Williams and Okuhle Cele.

In Durban, the Knights have erased the Dolphins’ considerable first-innings lead of 137 with just two wickets down as they reached stumps at the halfway stage of their game on 150 for two.

Opener Matthew Kleinveldt is doing a great job for the Knights on 67 not out, but the Dolphins have picked up a key wicket with Raynard van Tonder being caught at silly mid-off off left-arm spinner Senuran Muthusamy for 46 shortly before bad light stopped play.

The Dolphins had earlier reached 253 all out in their first innings thanks to Grant Roelofsen’s tenacious 73 and Prenelan Subrayen’s hard-fought 44, a crucial contribution considering the Dolphins were 169 for seven when he came to the crease. Fast bowler Daryn Dupavillon backed up his seven wickets with a useful innings of 19 as he and Subrayen added 40 for the ninth wicket.

Paceman Gerald Coetzee and off-spinner Patrick Botha took three wickets apiece.

The Sunfoil Series – the four-day domestic franchise competition – came down to the most thrilling of conclusions last weekend with the Knights claiming the title by just 1.78 points, the equivalent of 89 runs over a tournament that lasted 10 weeks, once again proving that, at least in the minds of the players and the aficionados of the sport, it is the premier trophy in the local game.

Nicky Boje, the Knights coach, confirmed that the four-day competition was the main target in their minds this season, and the other franchise coaches made similar comments through the campaign.

The thing about four-day cricket is that it provides the most all-encompassing test of a player’s skills and of a team’s quality – it’s essentially 40 days of cricket, 96 overs a day, so an examination that can last 3840 overs.

And it still came down to the narrowest of margins, so small in fact that Knights captain Theunis de Bruyn gave a large part of the credit for his team’s triumph to a partnership of just 10 runs between the last pair in their penultimate game against the Cape Cobras.

Akhona Kula and Tshepo Ntuli took the Knights’ first innings in Paarl from 143 for nine to 153 to get them one batting point – 150 is set as the milestone for the first batting bonus point, make 149 and you get zero. Even though the Knights went on to lose the match by 151 runs, that single point made their life a lot easier in the final game against the Highveld Lions because it meant they were targeting 430 in 100 overs rather than around 480.

“It allowed us to believe a little bit more,” De Bruyn said, and we all know belief plays a massive role in any achievement.

I just wish Cricket South Africa had a bit more belief in their four-day competition. It would be unrealistic to expect huge crowds to attend, but they could certainly do more to generate greater interest in the tournament that makes our Test cricketers. They have scheduled media sessions with the franchises before T20 and Momentum One-Day Cup games, why not before Sunfoil Series matches?  Their decision to no longer pay for a scorer to sit in the press box during four-day games suggests their attitude is to cut investment in the competition rather than promote it.

Scorers are an essential help to the media in terms of getting all their stats and figures correct, and it is heartening that CSA’s official statistician, Andrew Samson, is very much a long-format man.

The Oracle, as our media call him – I’m not sure what the BBC Test Match Special team call him but he is also their official statistician – has just brought out a book, The Moon is Toast, which is a celebration of all the quirky statistics the wonderful game of cricket throws up, written in the format of a year-long diary.

Copies of the book are available from http://tinyurl.com/hgbulfp and the wry humour of Samson makes what could become a boring read into an entertaining delight.

Long-form cricket obviously lends itself to more statistical gems than the wham-bam! of limited-overs cricket and the greater scope for all sorts of possibilities to occur was shown by the dramatic conclusion of our own four-day competition.

The longer the game, the greater the chance of an amazing comeback, just as the New South Wales team did in their recent Sheffield Shield game against Queensland at the Sydney Cricket Ground. They were two for two in their first innings before going on to make 603 for six declared which, Samson tells me, is only the fourth time in all first-class cricket that a team has lost their first two wickets for two or less runs but still gone on to score more than 600.

The South African example is Griqualand West recovering from one for two and then three for three to make 602 all out against Rhodesia in Kimberley in 1930, thanks to a double-century by the exotically-named Xenophon Balaskas, the Test all-rounder.