The visitors had set their hosts a target of 220 to win from 50 overs, which based on the latter's less-than-impressive first innings batting effort had seemed a perfectly safe platform from which Cape Town could launch their own push for victory.  Indeed, after 21 overs Kuils River had limped to 44 for four without showing any real inclination to chase down the target, and the visitors appeared well on course for their third successive Two-Day win.  Home team captain Stanton Marinus attempted to counter-attack by hitting 17 off four balls from Matthew Olsen, but when he then fell to the next delivery to give the off spinner his second wicket and reduce the home side to 62 for five, with him seemingly went Kuils River's last faint hope of challenging for the win.

However, that brought Solomons to the crease.  With little to lose and secure in the rock-solid support that he had in Marvin Dreyer at the other end (the pair had added 52 together in the first innings), Solomons immediately set about redressing the 158 still needed from the last 26 overs with a will.  Pulling, sweeping and flicking with disdain, he blazed three sixes and a four in his first twelve balls faced to herald the change in fortunes.  With bowler after bowler thereafter being smashed out of the attack, Cape Town was powerless to contain him, and he scorched his way to fifty from just 36 balls by hitting his sixth six.

By then Dreyer, who had been missed at slip when still 13*, had hit a six and two fours of his own, but his contribution faded into the background as Solomons blazed yet another six and four more fours off the next three overs to register the hundred partnership between the two from just 91 deliveries.  He fell shortly thereafter for 82 from 55 balls with seven sixes and seven fours, caught on the boundary to give Andre Olwagen his second scalp, but by then Cape Town's grip on the match had been shattered and the equation was done to a manageable 46 still wanted from nine overs.  Dreyer stayed to the end to provide the necessary momentum and continuity, just missing out by one run on scoring a pair of fifties in the match.  Thus, notwithstanding the nail-biting tension that kept everyone glued to the edge of their seats right up to the very end, Kuils River ultimately got home with just three balls to spare by hitting their 15th six of the innings.

It was a fine win by the home side, and one that fully justified their jubilation upon achieving it.  However, through their inability to come anywhere close to matching that level of positive play earlier in the match, they had unfortunately already robbed themselves of much of the benefit that an outright win ordinarily offers.  As a result, the win earned them barely seven points more than Cape Town themselves took from the match, leaving Kuils River still some eleven points behind the Plumstead-based outfit on the Two-Day log, in an unchanged fourth spot.

The root of the problem lay in Kuils River's rather pedestrian first-innings scoring rate, which had limited their total to a mere 116 on the board when the 60 overs available for batting bonus points ran out.  This left them still 84 runs adrift of Cape Town's total, and thus obliged to bat on in order to retain any say in the match's outcome.  Dreyer and Solomons led the subsequent push that brought 50 additional runs from the final available ten overs, Dreyer completing a 124-ball fifty in company with the far more fluent Solomons.  This reduction of Cape Town's ultimate first innings lead came at a heavy cost though, as Cape Town's stand-in captain Marc de Beer seized the opportunity on offer to demolish the rest of the batting line-up - claiming his side's first hat-trick of the past twelve seasons, the last five wickets tumbled inside three overs to net Cape Town a further 7.5 bowling bonus points for an unprecedented ten in total.  It was indeed a bonus haul for the visitors, and one that in retrospect should take much of the sting out of their subsequent defeat.

Cape Town then extended their 34-run lead to 219 overall over the course of the next 46 overs.  Byron van der Merwe had ensured a solid start to their second innings, until Craig Ephraim undermined that platform by dismissing both openers in the same over.  Still, Dominic Telo kept the visitors going forward either side of lunch with a solid half-century, but the need to step up the scoring rate to enable a declaration handed Aldo Jantjies three scalps after the interval as the Cape Town batsmen went after his off breaks.  With Kuils River's fielders proving to be far more secure under the high ball than their counterparts, they accepted a steady diet of catches as Cape Town hit out, Rory O'Brien finally producing enough clinical hits to leave Cape Town 50 overs to bowl at the home side.

The quality of play on the stiflingly hot first day was markedly inferior though, with neither the bat nor the ball able to dominate proceedings.  As a result the first day's play was largely aimless and altogether forgettable.  With the pitch doing neither side any favours, the bowlers found keeping the scoring rate down a far easier proposition than taking wickets, leaving it to the batsmen to make the running by having to risk their wickets continuously in return for any hope of scoring runs.

Thus it was that the visitors' progress was initially rather slow - they managed just 18 runs from the first 14 overs - after De Beer had again won a most useful toss to spare his bowlers from having to toil in the blazing heat.  In the energy-sapping conditions the back-up bowlers weren't long in being  introduced though, allowing Telo immediately to set about addressing the ailing scoring rate.  Despite a slowish outfield and Kuils River's somewhat defensive response by immediately dropping a sweeper back onto the cover boundary for him, Telo still managed to produce a fairly fluent innings in the conditions - until becoming Shaun Williams's second victim in 14 deliveries after miscuing one inventive stroke too many.

That brought De Beer and Neil McLellan together though.  With the former still enjoying a run of good batting form following his hundred in his previous knock, he took on the spinners to loft two sixes and a four straight back down the ground, while McLellan provided solid support to see Cape Town to lunch without further loss.  After the break the pair took their stand passed the fifty-mark while stepping up the pace, McLellan hitting three crisp boundares of his own before both perished on the attack within ten minutes of each other.

With the home side's bowlers rattling through their overs at a brisk pace, the remainder of the visitors' innings thereafter became a scramble for batting bonus points from the last few available overs.  They had to bat beyond 60 overs to ensure putting a decent total on the board, but initiated by O'Brien with an effective 22 from 28 balls, Cape Town managed 54 from their last ten overs to secure three batting points.  However, the price for this was a second wicket for Ephraim - and an additional 1.5 bowling bonus points for Kuils River.

With their target score thus successfully posted, Cape Town then retained the initiative upon taking the field, with Olwagen again providing the early breakthroughs with the new ball.  Dismissing both home team opening batsmen within his first four overs, Olwagen continued his remarkable run of bowling form to place Kuils River under pressure from the outset.  Although the next wicket was a further hour in coming, the home side never found momentum thereafter.  Thus, when the visitors did capture a third wicket in the last over before tea, reducing Kuils River to 37 for three, the Plumstead-based outfit would've been happy with their overall progress throughout the first two sessions of play.

Unfortunately however, the match lost focus badly in the final session.  With Cape Town spurning numerous chances to dismiss Heathcliff du Plooy both before and after the tea interval (the closest they came was when he retired with cramps for half an hour), and the home side batsmen being well and truly pinned down and making little attempt to break free from the shackles, the Kuils River innings inched almost imperceptibly forwards at and below two runs an over for the remainder of the day's play.  Thus only one further wicket fell in the more than 30 overs sent down in that time, while just 67 further runs accrued.  Du Plooy exploited his good fortune to drop anchor and stay until the close, whilst his partner Dreyer fared no better in terms of scoring rate.  Du Plooy subsequently compounded the error by falling early on the second morning, and though Dreyer survived long enough thereafter to reach his fifty, the more than two hours that the pair needed to piece together their 37-run fifth-wicket stand had already gone some way towards determining the shape of the match's ultimate destiny in a number of respects.

Match photo's / Wagonwheels & Pitch Maps