The defeat was a double whammy too, as their potential relegation rivals United and, to a lesser extent, Durbanville, both pulled off wins in the same round of games to move even further clear of Cape Town. Durbanville should be all but safe now in fifth place with three wins under their belt and two matches' worth of points still available to them, but for the seven teams below them anything can still happen in what is going to be a very tense last two rounds of matches.

Painfully for Cape Town though, it is probably a case of being so near to safety but yet so far. Only twelve points currently separate them from the University of Cape Town's seventh spot on the log - ordinarily within close enough range that a good win from their last match would rocket them up the log to the safety of a mid-table position. Unfortunately however, the problem lies in the fact that Cape Town is the only team in the bottom half of the log that has only one game remaining to play - all the others still have two games in hand. Therefore, while Cape Town sit impotently by during the upcoming penultimate round of matches while all their relegation rivals play and add bonus points to their tally, they may well find that when the final round of matches starts, the gap to the safety of ninth spot may be too large to close even should they take the maximum possible 25 bonus points from their last match.

Cape Town were actually still in the frame at the start of the second day's play in their match against the University of the Western Cape to claim what would have been one of the surprise victories of the season - the visitors held a mere 17-run lead with just three first innings wickets still in hand. Had the home side been able to knock over the tail quickly to restrict the first innings deficit to negligible levels and bag another crucial 1.5 bowling points, anything was still possible. Once again, however, Cape Town let themselves down badly with a remarkably poor all-round performance. They never really looked like taking a wicket on the second morning, while Sean Kristal continued untroubled from his overnight score of 89 to complete his marathon effort and reach an exceedingly patient 211-ball hundred. In fact, the visitors added a further 32 runs without loss in 7½ overs at the start of the second day's play before declaring, dashing the home side's hopes of any further bouns points and consigning them a tricky 49-run first innings deficit.

Both Cape Town opening batsmen were dismissed cheaply before that deficit was erased, and the writing on the wall began to take on legible proportions. Provided that they could crystalise some resistance around him, Cape Town still had hope while their professional specialist batsman Dominic Telo remained though, having been drafted into the side for the second day's play. Barring one spurt of three fours in an over however, even he was unable to dominate the students' tight seam attack. He did manage to guide the leaking ship through to lunch though, by which stage the home side was already four down and holding an overall lead of just 23. When play resumed after the interval though, UWC immediately introduced their spin attack of Bevan Bennett's legbreaks in tandem with Robert van der Ross's offbreaks. Telo fell to the first ball he received from van der Ross, the beginning of a shameful capitulation in which some abysmal strokeplay enabled the spin pairing to share the last six Cape Town wickets evenly between them in less than an hour.

Left with the hopeless task of defending a victory target of just 74 from a full 61 overs, the home side wasted little time in introducing their own spin twins into the attack. In stark contrast to what their UWC counterparts had just demonstrated though, the home side's tweakers looked largely innocuous. Kristal thus continued merrily where he left off in the first innings, in fact displaying a far greater fluency this time around to finish with 143 undefeated runs in the match. The visitors consequently knocked off the required runs in just an hour, to cruise to a crushing eight-wicket win some 15 minutes before Tea - their sixth outright victory of the season and fourth in succession, which enabled them to take over the lead in the Two-Day League with two games remaining to be played.

On the first day Cape Town had lost yet another toss, and were inserted in heavily overcast conditions that assisted movement off the seam. The home side thus almost immediately found themselves two down through edges to slip, but as the sun came out to gradually improve conditions, Mark Ritchie and Dylan de Beer strung together a third wicket stand of 51 to hold up the students' further progress until some 45 minutes before Lunch. Ritchie was at his obdurate best, batting over three hours and facing 144 deliveries for his 35, and shared another stand of 61 for the fifth wicket with his captain Damian Thornton. At 125 for four Cape Town had reason to be satisfied with their progress thus far but, as would happen again later in the match, once the spin combination of Bevan Bennett and van der Ross was put into action they crumbled like the proverbial cookie. Within five overs they thus disintegrated to a dismal 139 for nine, and the visitors had firmly seized the initiative. Thornton had just reached a fluent fifty by then, but was thereafter reduced to scratching singles in a gritty last-wicket attempt to eke out as many extra runs as possible.

The visitors didn't have the best of starts themselves in reply, but with Kristal digging in to form an enduring presence and the home side's lack of bowling penetration again making itself felt, they nevertheless rolled remorselessly onwards. It was thus left to some brilliant individual fielding efforts to peg them back, Rory O'Brien demonstrating some deft glovework to effect a smart stumping, Dylan de Beer holding a one-handed screamer at point off a full-blooded crack and Shane Martin achieving a run out with a direct hit from the boundary. Nevertheless, with Kristal proving immovable (it took him 38 overs to reach his fifty), the students had the continuity they needed to build a succession of established partnerships around him. Fine as they therefore were, all these fielding efforts really achieved was to break the stands before they could fully start to blossom, rather than ever allowing the home side to reclaim the initiative. UWC's relentless progress thus overhauled Cape Town's modest total some five overs before the close, although losing their seventh wicket almost immediately thereafter kept the home side in the game. However, the second day's play would show that Cape Town would come no closer than this to any chance of winning the game.

Match photos