Two weeks ago, both Ethy Mbhalati and Roelof van der Merwe were not at a good place in their cricket careers.

Van der Merwe, a stalwart for the Titans over the past eight seasons, could since the beginning of February not make the team that eventually won the Momentum one day series.

Mbhalati is another stalwart who already enjoyed his benefit-year at the Titans last season. But he also struggled with his bowling in the run-up to the semi-finals of the Momentum series to such an extent that he was left out of the team for the play-offs.

The two men, however, showed last week what material they were made of when they were the two heroes in the Titans huge victory over the Warriors in an important Sunfoil four-day game in Port Elizabeth.

The Titans desperately needed a good win to improve their position in this series. After Henry David had won the toss, he elected to bat first. Although Heino Kuhn (41) and Theunis de Bruyn (78) contributed generously, the Titans’ first five-wicket yet tilted with regularity.

Van der Merwe was involved in two reasonable partnerships, but when he and David Wiese got together to defend the sixth wicket, they wreaked havoc. Their 138-run runs for this wicket had the Warriors bowlers properly losing their steam.

Wiese finally hit 81 runs, while Van der Merwe went on to reach the third first-class century of his career.

The Titans were eventually all out for 448 in their first innings. Before the men from the Eastern Cape could recover properly from Van der Merwe’s splendid innings, Mbhalati struck with the ball. He eventually took six wickets and contributed generously to limit the Warriors to just 148 runs in their first innings.

After this the Warriors had to follow up and in their second innings Mbhalati took another three wickets. With the help of Shaun von Berg (3 wickets), Wiese (2) and Van der Merwe (1), they bowled the Warriors out again on the third day for 300 runs.

A single four from Kuhn in the Titans’ second innings was subsequently enough for the Titans to get their victory in just three days.

With this win the Titans are now second on the log. Their next game starts on Thursday in Cape Town against the Cape Cobras. They will also definitely be confident to try and win all their remaining games, while they will also hope that the Highveld Lions will lose one or two of their remaining games so that they can pass the men from Johannesburg on the log.