Times Media - February 10
TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg
When the Dolphins lost four wickets in 15 balls in the T20 final at Newlands yesterday, the Cobras seemed on course to win their third trophy in six seasons in the shortest format.
But, when the Dolphins sent the Cobras crashing to 20/4 with the first 33 deliveries of the chase, the visitors looked set for their first win in the 11 summers the competition has been played.
Both scenarios deserved their romance. In the end the gods winked in the direction of the Dolphins, who squeaked to victory by two runs to put something shiny in their cabinet for the first time since they shared the first-class championship in 2005-06.
The result was perhaps pre-ordained because the perennially successful Cobras, who have already won silverware this season in the shape of the one-day cup, have claimed or shared seven trophies in the same period.
The Dolphins totalled 146/8 and held the Cobras to 144/7 in reply. As an example of the format designed to showcase batting at its most brutal, the game failed. As a contest, it was a spectacular success, and you won’t find many brutalised bowlers taking issue with that.
When Jacques Kallis took the ball to bowl the 18th over the Dolphins were cooking on 127/4 - 47 of them slugged by Morne van Wyk - at a runrate of 7.5.
From that point, in the space of nine of his deliveries, Kallis reduced the Durbanites to 139/8 with a devastating burst of raw pace that would have made many in the capacity crowd wonder why he retired from test cricket in December.
After all, if Kallis, at the age of 38, can take four wickets in an innings for just the second time in 135 T20 games, how much more proper cricket could be left in that body?
Not that the Newlands faithful had much time to ponder the question, what with Kallis’ wicket added to the pile of debris that rose in the first seven overs of the Cobras’ innings as Mthokozisi Shezi, Robbie Frylinck and Kyle Abbott refused to bowl a bad ball.
But Stiaan van Zyl and Sybrand Engelbrecht refused to panic and forced the Cobras back into the match with a superb stand of 91 in 10.4 overs, a partnership built as much on the pace of their running between wickets as it was on the power of their hitting.
Their dismissals, which came 12 balls apart - Van Zyl for 46, Engelbrecht for 56 - should have killed off the Cobras’ challenge. That did not happen because Justin Kemp, who hammered 21 not out off 12 balls, was not ready to quietly into Cape Town’s endless evening.
When Frylinck steamed in to begin the last over, Kemp had smashed his team to within 14 runs of victory. With one ball remaining, he needed to hit a six to tie the match.
Frylinck pitched the fateful delivery full and on the stumps. Kemp heaved for all his worth and sent a flat and furious blow flying towards the midwicket fence. The ball teased the baying crowd before bouncing not three metres inside the rope, and going for four - close, but no super over.
With that, the faces of the Cobras players were rendered uncomfortably numb and the cheeks of the Dolphins were stained with the sweetest tears.
* This piece was written with the help of a television broadcast - the reporter was not present at the event.
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