Roodepoort teams fall agonisingly short at LMS SA Champs
Four-day festival of cricket a test of mental and physical stamina
Under beautiful blue skies, titans swung and clubbed themselves to glory.
With a big red circle around the Heritage Day weekend, the anticipation for the Last Man Stands (LMS) South African Championships was ready to pop. The heat on and off the pitch began on Thursday, September 23, with almost 50 teams from as far as Durban and Cape Town flooding three venues across Johannesburg’s northern suburbs for a four-day festival of eight-man to-the-death cricket.
Roodepoort’s hopes lay with main section entrants 6orNix and A&G Dikdorings; Bakers Mini Warriors in the Cow Corner Cup; and Masters section participants MPH!!! and Willehonne. Unfortunately for both Masters teams, their tournaments would be cut short by the rampant Tasmanian Predators who dispatched them to the stands by three and six wickets each.
Dropped catches and sloppy fielding left 6orNix equally disappointed as their tournament ended on Saturday with a nine-run bowl section quarter-final defeat. Both teams in their group went on to win a main draw final, but even if the size of the mountain they needed to climb was evident before a ball was even bowled, the orange machine may have felt they did not maximise their pre-tournament potential.
Unfortunate to have their fixtures spread out across the Emmarentia, Zoo Lake and Greenside venues, Bakers Mini Warriors could not have come any closer to the Cow Corner Cup title. Chasing 158 to win, Warriors would fight to the last ball of their innings, falling painfully short on 156/6. “We were happy with how things went given that we lost in the quarter-final last year. Credit to the gents who organised the event as the teams were a lot stronger this year,” said captain Ryan Liebenberg, who was also one of four team mates to make the Cow Corner Dream Team.
Arguably disadvantaged by being given a double header in the first round, A&G Dikdorings suffered a rocky start in their opening fixture loss to Under Armours. However, that would trigger a solid regroup with a comfortable second fixture win against Lite Busters! while easing past quarter- and semi-final opponents 69ers and Grt8, respectively, to book a spot in the plate final against 6orNix’s vanquishers, Tshwane Dragons.
Sadly, the final would be a step too far as they fell 70 runs short of their Pretoria opponents’ aggressive 201 total. “Over the tournament our bowlers performed very well. Lee finished second with the ball in the standings and is in the Dream Team of the SA Champs. ZP ended fifth in the batting standings while Rennie and Marchant also had great tournaments with ball in hand. We will be back next year and hopefully start a little better,” said A&G Dikdorings Manager, David Olivier.
Overall winners of the LMS South African Championships were Rebels who beat KIA Pumas by 23 runs even though the 150/7 they posted was the lowest score of their unbeaten weekend. Batting first each time, they scored 946 runs in five innings, refusing to be bowled out even once while maintaining a run rate of almost ten an over. By contrast, they would concede only 693 runs at 7.2 an over, setting them apart as the 2021 kings of the eight-man slog-a-thon.
