The home side had won the toss and chosen to bat first, and a wicket in the first over coupled with a shower of wides provided an early indication that there would be no shortage of incident. Thus the match got off to a frenetic start - by the end of the fourth over the score was already 40 for two - and if anything the pace only accelerated throughout the remainder of Western Province's innings.
An early turning point was the life given to the home side's star batsman Ryan ten Doeschate (a Holland international) at mid off when just 13*, when a simple catch was grassed. With the hitherto fluent Derrin Bassage (who had cruised to 43 from 48 balls in taking main responsibility early on for keeping the scoreboard ticking over) being bowled by the very next delivery, Cape Town could have had two new batsmen at the crease, with neither having yet faced a ball. However, the chance had been lost, and the foundation laid for the batting blitzkrieg that was to follow.
That impending slaughter took a while to materialise though. By taking four wickets in the first 19 overs the visitors were still hanging in there, despite having leaked runs at virtually five to the over throughout - although chiefly due to the now-dismissed Bassage. Even the newly-arrived Stephen George had a somewhat streaky start - getting off the mark with a miscued single over extra cover's head (although he did then hit his next ball for six, to hint at what was to come).
By the start of the 26th over the reprieved ten Doeschate was ready to hit top gear though, and he proceeded to smash 24 runs off the next three overs from the spinners - in the process reaching an 84-ball fifty with his second six. It signalled the beginning of an unstoppable Western Province charge, with ten Doeschate's last 29 balls faced bringing him 43 runs. Indeed, at this point George was little more than a spectator, contributing just nine runs to their 63-run fifth-wicket partnership that took just 12 overs to compile.
Unfortunately for Cape Town though, all this was just the warm-up act. Once joined by Siya Sibiya following ten Doeschate's dismissal by the heavily-punished Luke Petersen, George took over the run-smashing role in astounding fashion, accelerating into overdrive when the home side took their batting powerplay. When it was called Western Province stood at 172 - five overs later when it ended, they had 243 on the board! George was the primary driving force, producing an unbelievable display of clean power-hitting that left the visitors all but helpless. Having scored a sedate 15 runs from his first 28 balls faced at that point, the last 21 deliveries of his innings produced an astonishing 67 further runs - including seven fours and a further six sixes (five of them being towering straight drives back over the bowlers' heads). George's seven sixes in all were the most hit by one batsman in any of the Cape Town First XI's prior 176 matches over the past eleven-and-a-half seasons.
With Sibiya playing his part by producing a regular flow of fours from his bat too, their fifty partnership consequently needed just 38 balls to compile - although the real massacre of Cape Town's bowling is better indicated by the second fifty of their hundred partnership, which took just 16 balls to post! Both fell in successive overs hitting out - George for 82 off 49 balls and Sibiya for 44 off 32 - Marc de Beer catching one himself to give Matthew Olsen a second wicket and then having the other caught off his own bowling as a small compensation for having been hit for five fours in an over shortly before. However, by then there were just three overs remaining, and Western Province had already long since left the highest one-day score conceded by the Cape Town First XI during the past eleven-and-a-half seasons in their wake. Rowan Minords added the final touches with an undefeated 20 from twelve balls at the death, and Cape Town found themselves facing the task of scoring 300 from 45 overs in order to retain any hope of remaining in the competition.
Despite their batting heroics of the previous day against Somerset West, it was fanciful in the extreme to harbour any real expectations of Cape Town actually achieving this - it therefore came as little surprise that they never came remotely close. Facing an altogether different quality of bowling, additionally supported by a far better fielding effort than they themselves produced, the visitors instead collapsed in a heap to Western Province's seam attack - such that their last-wicket pair was at the crease before even half of their allotted overs had been bowled.
Left-arm quickie Ryan van Niekerk started the slide, needing just nine deliveries to send the first two Cape Town batsmen packing without scoring. He added a third scalp in the form of Mark Ritchie as well before his opening spell had ended. Ritchie and an injured Dominic Telo had been alone in the Cape Town top nine to reach double figures, but nevertheless neither could make it out of the twenties. The withdrawal of van Niekerk from the attack provided no respite for the visitors either, as the equally pacy Rushdie Hendricks replaced him to produce an even more devasting spell - his figures at one stage being 4-1-4-4 as Cape Town's batsmen were knocked over faster than targets at a fairground shooting gallery.
With Western Province captain Gio Colussi subsequently also getting in on the act with his gentle seamers, Cape Town's humiliation had thus been all but completed at 75 for nine. All that remained was for Olsen to have a little fun of his own, swinging lustily to hit three sixes and three fours in the space of eleven balls as the last pair added a carefree 49 in six overs to at least reduce the home side's final winning margin to under 200 runs. Thus Western Province's ultimate 175-run victory gave them a perfect four wins from their four pool matches and a spot in the Limited Overs League's semi-finals, leaving Cape Town to lick the wounds of having suffered the biggest losing margin by a number of runs in eleven-and-a-half seasons, with a now meaningless match against Kuils River still to be played in February.
