Cricket league log gets a make-over

POLOKWANE – There were quite a few surprises during the matches played in the Limpopo Impala Cricket premier league on Sunday.

Eagles Cricket Club celebrated their seventh consecutive win of the season, this time against Hornbills.

The match was played in Tzaneen. Hornbills won the toss and elected to bat first, posting a score of 203 runs for eight wickets in the 50 overs. Eagles chased this total down with three overs still remaining in the match.

In the match between Aces and Stars1, which was played at the Nirvana cricket grounds, Stars1 won the toss and elected to bat first. Aces bowler, Barend Jacobsz, had a field day, taking down one batsman after the other. His spell of three overs saw six wickets taken for no runs.

Two wickets were also taken by Henk Holtzhausenin in three overs during which only one run was made.

The last two Stars1 batsmen were late for the match. When they arrived, they were not wearing their cricket kit yet, and were time-barred from playing. Aces dismissed Stars1 with an unbelievable score of two runs for 10 wickets. The other run came from a leg bye.

In the Aces innings the team’s opening batsman hit a boundary for four runs from the second ball, effectively ending the match.

According to cricket statistics by Cricket Archive, which date as far back as 1800, Stars1 has broken the record, set in 1810, for the least runs in an innings. The previous recordholders were a British team called the B’s who played a match against England at Lord’s Old Ground, in Marylebone, London. The B’s were quickly anhilated, managing to score just six runs.

In the end Eagles scored a wonderful three wickets win.

Eagles, on 39 points, has now overtaken Hornbills on the points ladder and is now in first position of the premier league. In second place is Aces, 31 points, with Hornbills 31 points dropping from first place to third place, followed by Seshego, with 19 points, in fourth place.