Kovsies broke their four-match winless streak in the Varsity Cricket tournament when they overcame UJ by four wickets with 12 balls to spare and also threw a spanner in UJ’s aim of reaching the semifinals.
The Power Play Plus Over proved valuable for the Bloem students as they racked up 30 runs to turn the game on its head, after their stared defeat in the face.
The Johannesburg students set Kovsies a modest target of 140, thanks to 61 runs from opening batsman Yaseen Valli, but the target proved too much for the Bloem students as regular loss of wickets curtailed their ambitions of securing their first victory.
UJ got off to a steady start as openers Yaseen Valli and Grant Roelofsen took the total to 33/0 after five overs before Keagan Rafferty tasted immediate success, striking with the first ball of the sixth over, dismissing Roelofsen for 14.
Valli lost Roelofsen, run out, in the eighth and was joined by captain Neels Bergh, who helped take the score to 50/2 after 8.4 overs. Jacobus Dreyer struck off the final ball of the 11th over when he trapped Bergh LBW. Valli continued to anchor the innings as he was joined by Harry van Straaten at the crease.
The pair called for the Power Play Plus Over in the 16th over and amassed 11 runs off the bat, which meant they added 22 runs to the total. Valli brought up his half-century in fine style, smashing a delivery for a maximum in the 18th over. He followed that up with another six off the very next ball but would lose his wicket attempting a third. He fell for 61 off 53 balls and shared a 72-run fourth wicket partnership with van Straaten.
UJ concluded their innings on 139/5 after van Straaten was run out in the penultimate over for 17.
The Kovsies innings got off to a very cagey start as they reached 28/1 after five overs after losing Dreyer to the bowling of Matthew Varner in the second over.
Leus Du Plooy and Andries Gous increased the tempo and took the total to 55/1 after 8.2 overs with Gous smashing a six to bring up the milestone. It also brought up the 50-run partnership between the pair.
Kovsies momentum would soon hit a snag when van Straaten bagged two wickets in three balls in the ninth over, removing Gous for 31 and Michael Erlank for a duck. The Bloem students reached 10 overs with the score on 65/3 and required a further 75 runs off 60 balls to claim their first win of the tournament.
The writing was on the wall when Kovsies lost du Plooy for 24 as Ndumiso Mvelase beat the batsman and Roelofsen did the rest with some nifty glove-work.
Two run outs in the 14th over seemed to be the final nail in Kovsies’ coffin but Corne Dry (31*) and Anton Muller (16*) had other ideas.
In the 17th over and with 35 runs needed to win off 24 balls, the pair called for the Power Play Plus Over and made the most of it by smashing three boundaries on their way to accumulating 30 runs in the over.
It was a canter from there as the pair got the remaining runs in the 18th over to secure their first victory of the tournament.
Scores:
UJ: 139/5 (Y Valli 61, H van Straaten 17; K Rafferty 2/25, J Dreyer 1/10)
UFS-Kovsies: 140/6 (A Gous 31, C Dry 31*; H van Straaten 2/24, M Varner 1/25)
Teams:
UJ: Yaseen Valli, Grant Roelofsen, Delano Potgieter, Neels Bergh (captain), Harry Van Straaten, Jayden Broodryk, Umar Asad, Ndumiso Mvelase, Keith Dudgeon, Matthew Varner, Damien Hutchinson.
UFS-Kovsies: Jacobus Dreyer, Andries Gous, Leus Du Plooy, Michael Erlank, Ian Finlay, Dirk Bruwer, Anton Muller, Corne Dry, Keagan Rafferty, Sinebhongo Ntshona (captain), Flippi Cronje.
