Having lost the toss yet again (a fate that has now befallen Cape Town in all but one of their last eleven matches), the visitors were obliged to field first as Primrose took first use of a low, slow track. Some aggressive initial strokeplay brought the home side 27 off their first five overs, but Luke Petersen in his new role of opening bowler nevertheless induced two mishits in his first four overs to peg them back to 32 for two. Sadick Davids and Sharhidd Taliep repaired the damage by adding 43 for the third wicket in 14 overs though, building a platform for a renewed assault at 75 for two after 20 overs.
With strokeplay not particularly easy though, the pair throughout had never been quite able to break free, Donovan Holman bowling a miserly spell of off-breaks to concede just 15 runs from his nine overs. He also finally achieved the breakthrough Cape Town were looking for, when Dominic Telo dismissed Davids by diving forward at point to hold the second of his three catches. Cape Town then exploited the opportunity of new batsmen at the crease to dismiss the next two cheaply, leaving Primrose struggling at 88 for five with just 19 overs remaining.
Taliep remained however, and now found sterling support from Khaleed Martin. Essentially restricted to just singles interspersed with the occasional two and three, the pair nevertheless kept the scoreboard ticking over nicely while coaxing the total towards a level that made its successful defence in the prevailing conditions an increasingly realistic option. The 50 partnership thus came up in eleven overs, and Taliep reached his own 50 off 76 balls in the next over, having managed just four boundaries along the way.
At 155 for five with five overs remaining and two well-set batsmen at the crease, the home side had thus once more positioned themselves for a strong final assault, but once again it was prevented from materialising. Erstwhile opening bat Sean Hendrieck had already demonstrated a useful ability with the ball in Cape Town's previous Limited Overs match against Rygersdal, and the introduction of his medium-pacers into the attack at about this point quickly collapsed the platform that Primrose had spent the last 50 minutes building. Bowling full and straight, in a seven-ball burst he captured three wickets at the cost of just a single, including those of both Martin and Taliep. The tail could manage nothing further thereafter, Hendrieck wrapping things up nicely for the visitors with four for six in eleven balls as, with help from Marc de Beer, Primrose's last five wickets fell for 14 runs in less than four overs.
Left to score a somewhat tricky but definitely not unmanageable 171 to win, Cape Town's run chase started on a bizarre note when they were unable to score a run during the first five overs, while in addition losing their first wicket to a run out in attempting a single to break the stranglehold. Dylan de Beer finally got things underway by lofting the first ball of the sixth over for four, and would thereafter hit another boundary in each of the next five overs he faced in a counterattack that brought 24 runs from his last 27 balls before he fell.
His dismissal brought Dominic Telo and Marc de Beer together, and within the next half an hour the match's destiny was effectively determined. It was during this period that Telo was dropped once (on 2*) and de Beer twice (on 20* and 27*), all off the bowling of the luckless Saliem Toefy. Two of them were fairly straight-forward efforts too, and the home side were thereafter gradually ground down over the next 16 overs as the pair put together what would prove to be a match-winning stand of 70 for the third wicket.
In fact, while Telo and de Beer were together and maintaining the required rate of four to the over, the result looked increasingly like a foregone conclusion. Scoring fluently was never easy though, and once Firaaz Booley finally broke the stand the pendulum slowly began to swing once more as the required run rate began nudging ever upwards. The smouldering ember of Primrose's growing hope then took flame when Booley dismissed Telo as well in the last over of his impressive spell of left-arm spin - the second Cape Town wicket to fall within five balls - bringing two new batsmen to the crease with a daunting 37 still needed from the last eight overs.
Those two new batsmen were Damian Thornton and Rory O'Brien though, and they weren't prepared to indulge Primrose in a nerve-wracking push-and-prod-for-scrambled-singles game. Taking the fight to the bowlers, their aggressive approach thus obliged the home side to turn to their quickies. Cape Town relished the extra pace though, the pair hitting cleanly over the top in taking 22 off the last ten deliveries to storm to victory with 20 balls to spare - making a mockery of what had only moments before been looking like a rather tight finish that was going all the way down to the wire.
Match photos