A bizarre one-in-a-thousand injury brought an abrupt halt to a match that had been shaping up nicely for Cape Town, barely half an hour into its scheduled 100 overs. Having just arrived at the crease after another freak but relatively brief delay caused by the sprinkler system around the pitch area suddenly activating, UWC batter Lwando Tywaku at the non-striker’s end had been responding to a single called by his partner, when the fielder’s throw-in hit the edge of the table and ricocheted off in a sharp change of direction to strike Tywaku from behind and just below his helmet as he completed the run. Such a trajectory and interception point probably couldn’t have been repeated if it were deliberately practised again a thousand times over, but such probabilities meant little as the unfortunate victim went down immediately. It soon became clear that he wasn’t going to get up again unaided either, and ultimately an ambulance had to be summoned to transport Tywaku to hospital for tests. Happily he made a full recovery later in the day and was discharged, but after such a scare it seemed appropriate not to continue the match.
Earlier, the visitors had won the toss and elected to bat first, but might quickly have been re-evaluating that decision after opening bowler Lloyd Wingrove nipped out both opening batters in his first over. First-change seamer Nicholas Scott soon added a further scalp of his own in another first-over strike, and though the match still had a long way to go when the accident occurred, the home side could not have been blamed for eyeing a potential bonus-point win that would’ve moved them up to second spot on the Premier League points table. In the end, they had to settle for moving up to now just one point behind second-placed Rondebosch with eight matches left to play, so everything remains to play for.
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