Cobras Trounced by Improving Redbacks
Despite having low expectations in one day cricket this season Cape Cobras were expected to at least be competitive in their round one clash with South Australia. Enjoying home ground advantage Cobras went in with a line up reliant on swing bowling and a bit of spin. South Australian Captain Matthew Elliott won the toss and elected to bat first.
Elliott himself was one of the stars of one day cricket last season scoring two centuries along the way, however today wasn't his day as he went for 8. Next we saw an entertaining run a ball partnership between debutants Carter (44) and Rickman (53), when Rickman went with the score at 94 Cobras were in the game. A couple more quick wickets including that of Dan Christian for a duck and the match was evenly poised with South Australia at 4/114. Young batsman M Doshi then came in and pretty much took the game away from Cobras with a whirlwind 81 from 69 balls. Some solid contributions including 44 from another debutant P Boxall gave the Redbacks an imposing total 281. It could have been much worse for Cobras as SA still had six overs remaining when they were bowled out. William Fitzstanford was the pick of the bowlers with 4/51 from 9 overs, Charl Langeveldt also bowled well in taking two wickets.
Langeveldt and Smith successfully appeal for the wicket of Paul Rofe
The Cobras were never in the chase really. Graeme Smith coming off 711 runs last season fell first ball of the innings to Shaun Tait and was soon followed by Yannick Porter and Ben Allen. Cobras were pretty much gone at 3/26, Jacques Kallis (24), Ian Vernon (42) and Justin Kemp (14) all tried in vain to get the scoreboard moving along, but the lack of partnerships saw the South Africans crash to all out 135 off 37 overs. P Boxall capped off a great game with 3/18 from 9 overs. The pace and bounce of Tait (2/20) was also too much to handle.
South Australia celebrate at Tait dismisses Graeme Smith
Cobras manager Simon Fitzsimmons had this to say; "We played poor cricket in the second half of that game, the pitch was a belter and I thought we actually did well to bowl them out in 44 overs, 282 is a big chase but on that sort of deck it is very gettable, I think our batsmen went out there thinking they had to go for it from the first ball." "Obviously we are disappointed with the result but it's only round one, we aren't expected to do that well in one day cricket so the result itself wasn't what got me down, I really did expect us to put up a bigger challenge though."
Cobras are likely to make several changes for their round two clash, in form batsman Frank Hammett should come into calculations while the ease in which the Redbacks batsmen scored off Monde Zondeki is a worry for Fitzsimmons too.
South Australia 281 (44) [M Doshi 81, F Rickman 53, G Carter 44, W Fitzstanford 4/51]
defeated
Cobras 135 (37) [I Vernon 42, J Gillespie 3/16, P Boxall 3/18]
by 146 runs
