WBHS holds out against top cricket team
The sixth rank team defends its wining record against Waterkloof's top-rated team.
WESTVILLE Boys’ High School’s cricket team toppled Pretoria’s Waterkloof High School at the weekend.
According to certain rankings, Waterkloof is currently the top cricket school in the country so their tour to KZN to play Westville Boys’ High School at the weekend, who are currently ranked 6th, was viewed with some degree of excitement by the cricketing fraternity.
Both teams had played each other once before in a 20/20 format and Westville came through victorious.
WBHS won the toss and elected to bowl.
Jesse Smit of WBHS immediately removed the visitors’ opening batsman, a sign that the ball was going to be difficult to judge on the damp track which seemed to favour the seamers.
Bowlers of the day, Simon Von Staden with three wickets for 18 runs and Tyrone Koen with three wickets for six runs, put the visitors to the sword.
Waterkloof were soon 95/9 with their final batsman retiring injured after he was struck on the knee by a full toss.
It would have appeared to the casual observer that the WBHS’s batsmen would canter to victory when they went in to bat but the cloudy, muggy and damp conditions persisted and they immediately found the going just as tough as their opponents.
Low scoring totals can be tricky at times and the batsmen had to apply themselves more than usual to play that rare bad ball.
Both openers went out, caught at mid-wicket and and third batsman Nick Pentz who had scored most of the runs the previous week, was run out.
This placed the middle order under pressure to produce the runs. The match went down to the 33rd over, with Jesse Smit and Garryth Jackson wrapping up the victory.
Westville won the match by two wickets to keep their record intact against Waterkloof. In the process they have sent out a warning that their team of 2013 is going to be difficult to beat.
