Cape Town finished off their initial three-game home fixture start to the 2022/23 Premier League in fine style, recording a second successive comprehensive bonus-point victory to climb to third place on the points table. On this occasion the win was achieved at Claremont’s expense – a team that had beaten Cape Town very comfortably in all three of their encounters the season before – so when also combined with the way in which it was achieved, it was an especially sweet triumph. In fact, the match followed an eerily similar pattern to the one the week before against Brackenfell, when matters proceeded in exactly the same fashion: in both cases the visitors had seemingly seized the initial advantage for themselves by electing to bat first, only to be bundled out cheaply on a livelier than expected pitch instead – before a rampant Cape Town opening partnership then put an already truncated run chase to bed very quickly.
The home side had been strongly reinforced for the match by the rare availability of both Proteas international Kyle Verreynne (who had last appeared for the side in January 2020, more than 40 matches previously) and Western Province and South Africa U19 opening bat Ethan Cunningham. Both spoke to an expected bolstering of Cape Town’s batting strength, but in the end it was largely the bowlers who stole the show for the Plumstead-based outfit instead.
As Brackenfell had done the week before, Claremont believed that they had secured an important advantage for themselves by winning the toss and avoiding having to bat last on the Boon Wallace Oval pitch. However, once more Brendan Young wasted little time in putting the new ball to good use for Cape Town, striking in the very first over – prior to adding the valuable scalp of Derbyshire middle-order batter Harry Came to his belt before the end of the initial ten-over PowerPlay too. Claremont’s own Western Province representative Daniel Smith resisted initially, striking three early boundaries before switching to milking the back-up bowling with a regular accumulation of singles, but the return of opening bowler Darren Rolfe dispatched him first ball with the help of a full-length diving catch by keeper Nathan Schultz that fell firmly into the “catches win matches” category. With him gone, Cape Town thus had an opening at one end to work with, and within 25 minutes had reduced their guests to 81-6 as a result.
Still, Claremont skipper Josh Breed stood firm to seal up the other end securely. Not that this was an undue worry for Cape Town, as apart from two early back-foot boundaries off his counterpart Geoff Dods – who himself had needed just two deliveries to dispatch the visitors’ other batting kingpin Matthew de Villiers – Breed proved unable to break the stranglehold that Cape Town’s bowlers then increasingly imposed. He did find a measure of support from the lower middle order to at least dry up the flow of wickets, but with the home side’s spin pairing of Matthew Olsen’s off-breaks together with Kyle Schreuder’s left-arm orthodox fare being allowed to twirl their way through over after over in tandem almost unchallenged, the runs all but dried up completely for Claremont – in the 20 overs between overs 26 and 46 they could eke out just 38 runs, almost 80% of those being singles as they failed to find the boundary even once. Just as bad, rare attempts to hit out just resulted in further wickets, and by the time that Young and Rolfe returned for the final four overs of the innings, the visitors were already eight down. Breed was still there, eventually completing his 101-ball fifty in the final over of the innings, but Rolfe cleaned up the last two wickets immediately thereafter to leave Cape Town a victory target of just 138.
That was always unlikely to be a challenging assignment, but the home side’s opening pair of William Hantam and Mathew Goles made a complete mockery of it after lunch. Hantam cracked two successive fours in the second over of the run chase to set the tone early on of what was to come, and thereafter things happened quickly. The team fifty was consequently posted in the eighth over already, with Breed’s leg-breaks twice being carted for two sixes in an over. The carnage was shared around though, such that Claremont had tried six different bowlers by the 17th over. It made little difference though, as Hantam cruised to a 47-ball fifty that included three sixes and five fours.
Hantam hit a fourth six not long thereafter as well to raise the hundred partnership in the 18th over, but though he then fell to off-spinner Matthew Elsworth as the first of two wickets in successive overs by him, by then the proverbial horse had already long since bolted. Goles subsequently narrowly missed out on a well-deserved fifty of his own by edging to slip, having hit a six and five fours en route, as the home side lost a third wicket inside five overs. However, by then just nine more runs were needed, which Verreynne quickly knocked off to wrap up the win with a full 25 overs still left unused.
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