AMANZIMTOTI Cricket Club’s first team played their first warm-up game in preparation for the new season.
The team wants to test themselves against a couple of good premiership clubs.
As such, three warm-up games have been organised. First up was the game played on Sunday, 28 August against UKZN. On 4 and 18 September the team will take on Pinetown and Umlazi.
The UKZN encounter was a really tight game. UKZN won the toss and put Toti in to bat first. Runs were hard to come by on a slow, spongy pitch coupled with good bowling. Toti’s batters tried hard to play themselves in before chasing runs. Jarryd made a solid 38. Wesley looked very comfortable, compiling 60 well constructed runs. Teagen made a busy 24, Ryan 16 and Mike 14. Toti finished their 40 overs on 169 for nine.
Toti used six bowlers in ther effort to keep the pressure on the UKZN batters. JJ bowled eight overs and took 2 for 21 runs, Hennie bowled four overs for 16 runs, Wesley six overs one for 38, Teagan eight overs one for 30, Jarryd seven overs one for 21 and the star of the show RJ, with seven overs three for 28. Toti bowlers never allowed the opposition batters to get comfortable at the crease and their relentless pressure started to tell on their illustrious opponents. Their plan to target RJ when he came on to bowl failed as he took a wicket with his first ball.
As the baby in the team, UKZN was keen to get him into the attack as they believed that if they could smash his bowling around for a few overs, then they could get themselves ahead of the run rate required. This never happened and RJ, guided by senior Toti players, bowled his first six overs for only 16 runs and took three wickets in the process. His last over cost him 12 runs but it was desperation batting and not bad bowling that got them those runs. Needing 17 runs off the last two overs, Teagan only allowed them two runs off the 39th over. JJ then capped an outstanding bowling performance in only allowing seven runs off the last over of the game. An eight run win against a class premiership team was a tremendous effort by all 11 players, but there is still a lot of work to be done if Toti wants to challenge for top spot when the season begins.
