After having lost their opening Limited Overs encounter to Claremont, this victory thus resuscitated Cape Town's hopes of reaching the Semi-Final. These hopes were boosted enormously by Western Province Cricket Club's simultaneous defeat of Claremont, but they still remain slim at best - given the peculiar order of permutations used to determine the Pool Winner in the event of teams ending the Round Robin section with equal points. Essentially, Cape Town need to win both of their last two matches (against the undefeated WPCC and the so-far winless Kuils River), while hoping that Claremont somehow manages to lose to either Kuils River or Tygerberg as well - both of whom they should easily outclass on paper. These, however, are all considerations that still lie in the future.
Winning an important toss in seamer-friendly conditions at the Boon Wallace Oval, Cape Town had little hesitation in inserting their guests. An edged boundary off the first ball of the match notwithstanding, debutant seamer Rory Cullinan struck as early as his third delivery, immediately putting Tygerberg on the back foot - a position from which they never really recovered. With all the visiting batsmen already groping against a seaming ball, Cullinan mixed his deliveries up well - the slower ball proving to be particularly productive for him. Thus, with Rory O'Brien displaying some sharp keeping skills standing up to the wicket, the first five Tygerberg batsmen were all back in the hut by the time that the fielding side's 15 Powerplay overs had been completed.
Cullinan completed a most impressive debut by taking his fourth scalp in his final over, all bowled on the trot, and at 59 for six there was no real way back for the visitors. Clinton du Preez did threaten to find one for a while, hitting five fours in his first 31 balls faced, but Cape Town's back-up bowling continued knocking over the batsmen at the other end with almost rhythmical regularity. Thus it was once more left to Matthew Olsen's off breaks just to clean up the tail, and again he duly delivered by capturing the last two wickets in nine deliveries - without conceding a run in return.
With Tygerberg's rapid demise leaving some 50 minutes still left for play before the lunch break was expected to be taken, the umpires let Cape Town start their own innings in that time. It was not an uneventful period either, as amid an early flurry of wides and no-balls, the home side themselves lost an early wicket - again through the bowler's deflection onto the non-striker's stumps from one of those no-balls. Nevertheless, three boundaries in the space of seven balls got Byron van der Merwe's innings underway in style, and in the ten overs faced by the home side before the interval, they laid the foundation for victory by rushing to 40 for one.
Despite losing their second wicket almost immediately upon the resumption of play, van der Merwe was in irrepressible form. His 35 contained no fewer than eight boundaries, evenly distributed around the park, such that when he miscued playing one shot too many, only 34 were still needed from 27 overs. Van der Merwe's replacement Marc de Beer merely continued where he had left off though, storming to an undefeated run-a-ball 28 that knocked off those remaining 34 runs in just six overs. Thus Cape Town concluded one of their more dominant performances in recent times, cruising home with a full 21 overs to spare for their third successive seven-wicket winning margin over Tygerberg - although whether it will be enough to ensure their further progress in the Limited Overs League remains to be seen.
