Assessing conditions quickly and adapting will be vital if the Dafabet Warriors want to earn a win against Goldrush Boland in their CSA T20 Challenge clash in Paarl on Wednesday, stand-in captain Siya Simetu said.
The Eastern Province outfit, who are in fourth position on the log and four points ahead of the Itec Knights, can almost guarantee a spot in the playoff phase with a win at Boland Park.
However, it will not be an easy task against a determined home side.
The team, formerly known as Paarl (or Gbets) Rocks have won three of the last five meetings between the sides.
But given their fortunes in 2023’s competition, the result should go only one way, as the Warriors have shown some real depth to their line-up this campaign.
The Warriors took a giant step towards a top-four finish, and they did so without the services of regular skipper Matthew Breetzke, Tristan Stubbs and Senuran Muthusamy, who are on national duty in a two-match Test Series against Bangladesh, starting on Monday.
“We might take a few spinners there because traditionally it can be slow up in Boland.
“But the main goal is still to play that aggressive brand of cricket that I spoke about.
“If it works, it works, but if it doesn’t, we just try again in the next one,” Simetu said.
Last Sunday, the visitors scored 221 for five at St George’s Park and earned a 21-run victory against Auto Investments North West Dragons, who had been unbeaten and leading the points charts up to that point.
“Over 400 runs scored on a very good wicket, which is an unbelievable job by the ground staff to produce something like this.
“At the halfway mark, we felt in our minds that we could still have been 10-15 runs short because the batsmen did say it looked like a belter, so going into the bowling innings we tried to stay positive.
“Our bowlers stuck to their plans well, stuck to their guns, we executed on most occasions what we wanted to and fair game to them [Dragons].
“Janneman batted unbelievably well but I am just pleased the boys could get it over the line,” he remarked.
Simetu said the versatility of their batting line-up allowed them to make small tweaks given the match situation, and it was something he believes gives them greater freedom to experiment.
“In terms of our squad, we are quite flexible with our batting line-up, it is not set in stone where everyone is going to bat. We take it one situation at a time,” he said.
“So after the start of the openers, the coach and I said it would be good to promote Beyers [Swanepoel] again after his knock in Cape Town.
“We said it would be a great platform for him, but unfortunately he got hit on the helmet and had to go off.”
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