Cape Town had begun the second day's play with their chances of clinching this vital win looking somewhat precarious, as they not only led by just 17 runs overall with effectively two second-innings wickets already down (due to the season-ending injury suffered by Damian Thornton during the Limited Overs Semi-Final the previous Sunday), but also the threat of rain interruption hung heavily in the air. Some definitive and forceful batting from the outset was thus required from the home side in order to prevent a non-negotiable victory from slipping through their fingers, and fortunately overnight batsmen Francois Vermaak and Wayne Hendricks provided just that. Cracking nine boundaries between them in the first eleven overs of Day Two, they extended their second-wicket partnership to 70 from 20 overs before Vermaak was rather unluckily adjudged lbw pushing well forwards, breaking a run of what was looking like six half-centuries for him in as many matches.
Hendricks continued on in imperious fashion though, twice hitting three fours in an over to reach his second fifty of the season an hour into the day's play, achieved off 88 balls with no fewer than ten fours. By then he was receiving run-a-ball support from Dominic Telo, who also found the boundary with metronomic regularity in reaching his own second half-century of the match from just 47 balls, containing a six and eight fours. The pair thus put Cape Town in total control of proceedings, adding 110 together in 23 overs before both holed out in successive overs - although not before Hendricks had reached a Cape Town First XI career-best 74 from 134 balls with 13 fours.
By this point the threatening rain had arrived and departed again for good, its negligible effect on the match being just 20 minutes of play lost - equating to a mere six overs. With one thing less to worry about, the home side thus had just to concentrate on countering Tygerberg captain Denver Carolus's legbreaks. Far and way his side's most dangerous bowler, he claimed five of the first six wickets to fall - to add to the six he had captured in the first innings - taking his tally to 31 scalps from the five matches that he has played in this fixture. With the back-up bowling being plundered in the search for quick runs, Carolus and seamer Luwaaz September had to shoulder the full burden of the Tygerberg bowling attack, September picking up two scalps of his own as the pair bowled the final 25 overs of the innings in tandem. Conscious of the potential that the visitors' unpredictable batting line-up may fire, as was amply demonstrated by Torrick Rodgers's first-day onslaught, Cape Town captain Jonathan Holgate delayed his declaration until some 20 minutes after Lunch, before ultimately settling on a target of 228 to win from the minimum of 65 overs remaining to be bowled in the day's play.
The home side's new-ball bowlers again did their job with early inroads, and within the first hour of their innings Tygerberg had slumped to 32 for three. This time there was to be no salvation from Jenkin Adams and Rodgers (who this time around received not a single ball of spin to face) though. Once Shane Martin had thus cracked Adams's customary resistance, he and Darren Rolfe benefited from a steady supply of skied catches as the top half of the visitors' batting line-up perished attempting a succession of big hits, leaving Cape Town with matters apparently well on course for victory at 95 for seven immediately upon the resumption of play after the Tea interval.
Randall Florence gave an early indication that the tail had some fight to offer though, taking on the home side's left-arm spinners to score a forceful 48 from just 41 balls before being deceived by a Matthew Olsen off break. He had fought a lonely battle deprived of support at the other end though, so once Tygerberg had been reduced to 142 for nine with some 20 overs still left for play, Cape Town was ready to conduct the final rites. Unfortunately for them though, the visitors' last-wicket pair then demonstrated what might have been possible for the Ravensmead outfit, Carolus and Shenandoah Botha producing the best batting performance of the innings in quite untroubled fashion against anything that Cape Town could throw at them. Sorely missing the striking power of Kirk Wernars - absent from Day Two due to representing Western Province in a first-class match - the home side seemed powerless to stop the pair's sensible batting approach, which produced a steady stream of runs inside the Final Hour that not only threatened to deny Cape Town their victory, but suddenly also introduced a potential Tygerberg win into the equation for the first time. Posting their 50-partnership for the tenth wicket from just 81 balls, the 200 was brought up shortly thereafter, shrinking the target to an eminently achievable 27 needed from the last 24 minutes of play. Thankfully for Cape Town there was to be no against-the-odds fairytale ending for Tygerberg though, as almost immediately thereafter Tom Main finally made good for the mauling that his left-arm spin had suffered throughout the match, trapping Botha lbw with his arm ball to secure the win that kept alive Cape Town's hopes of making it back to the 1A next season.
That final stand was the only point on Day Two in which the visitors had controlled matters though, in contrast to the first day's play that had been an altogether more evenly-contested affair. The home side had elected to bat first, but could eke out just eight runs from the first eight overs sent down by the visitors' distinctly medium-paced opening bowling pair. Vermaak did strike three fours thereafter in fairly quick succession to suggest a change in fortunes, but he fell less than ten minutes after Florence had already achieved a double breakthrough in his second over, thereby toppling Cape Town to 41 for three.
From that point onwards the remainder of the home side's first innings essentially represented the respective personal successes of two men - their premier batsman Telo versus Carolus's legbreaks. While Telo stood firm at one end to reach his seventh score of fifty or better this season - in the process becoming the first Cape Town First XI batsman of the past 13 seasons to reach 800 runs in the course of a season, Carolus ran through the middle order at the other end, assisted by some good catching in the field. Telo reached his fifty in the same over in which Carolus captured his fifth wicket, perfectly indicating the way in which these two had stood out head and shoulders above everyone else.
This left Cape Town floundering at 130 for eight as a result, having badly fluffed their chances of posting the dominant total needed to dictate the rest of the match. However, Telo at this point finally found some solid support from Geoff Dods, who batted most competently to reach his career-best score for the First XI, adding 52 for the ninth wicket with Telo in the process. André Fisher eventually induced the false stroke from Dods needed to break the stand and claim his second wicket some 30 minutes after the Lunch interval, after which Carolus quickly claimed his sixth scalp to wrap up the innings for a well-recovered yet still rather disappointing total of 183.
Nevertheless, hope remained that Cape Town could still force a match-winning first-innings lead when Rolfe dismissed both Tygerberg opening batsmen before double figures had been reached - a belief that was subsequently reinforced when Dods ended a blossoming innings from Carl Nyman to leave the visitors in equal trouble at 32 for three. However, that brought Rodgers to the crease, and he immediately produced an astounding innings of power hitting that turned the innings completely around. While Adams managed just six scoring strokes from his 59 balls faced in the same period, Rodgers smashed the home side's spin pairing of Main and Olsen to all parts and beyond - cracking an all-boundary fifty from just 25 balls with six sixes and four fours, making it the second-fastest fifty scored in any of Cape Town's 195 league matches contested over the past 13 seasons (only a 21-ball effort by former Zimbabwean international Neil Johnson for Almar on the opening day of the 2000/01 season was faster). Their fifty partnership thus came from just 49 deliveries, and as Rodgers extended his run of uninterrupted boundaries to a total of 70 runs from 42 balls faced (representing nine sixes and four fours - the most sixes struck in a match by a batsman in any of Cape Town's last 195 matches, let alone the most in any one innings) before taking his first single, the hundred partnership duly followed from 116 deliveries.
By then Cape Town had reverted to the pace of Wernars though, and immediately Rodgers looked like a completely different batsman. Now suddenly tentative and uncertain, it didn't take Wernars long to send a stump cartwheeling - and when Dods followed up on this straight away with two further wickets in the next over, the home side was suddenly back in the picture at 133 for six. However, despite Olsen recovering to maintain the pressure and induce a steady procession at the other end, Jethro Hill stood firm to keep inching Tygerberg closer - ultimately sharing in a bright last-wicket stand of 29 from just four overs that secured a slender but unfancied eleven-run lead for the visitors.
Match photo's