Piedt can’t ask for a better performance from his team

Day 3 of 4 Highveld Lions 104 and 354 Cape Cobras 529

Cobras won by an innings and 71 runs

IT took them until the final hour of play on the penultimate day of this Four-Day Series match, but the Cape Cobras got the reward their impressive performance deserved yesterday.

Led by a sterling effort from their captain Dane Piedt, playing his 100th first-class match, the Cape franchise claimed a dominant win that gives them early control of the competition.

Nursing a big bruise on his bowling hand, Piedt, finished the Highveld Lions’ second innings with figures of 7/118, 42 of his 43 overs delivered yesterday, for the most part from the Corlett Drive End, while he rotated his set of young seamers from the Golf Course End.

“I cannot ask for a better performance from my team ... bowling a team out for 104 and then completely dominating them with the bat,” said Piedt.

Indeed this was an outstanding display from the Cobras, who were missing two veteran seamers in Rory Kleinveldt and Dane Paterson. Piedt admitted he was concerned how their absence might affect a young bowling unit, but he need not have worried. They were given a big helping hand by the Lions on the first morning, with the home team’s stand-in captain Omphile Ramela bemoaning a number of “soft dismissals” in the first innings.

With a monumental lead courtesy of a mature but flowing effort with the bat, they were given more than enough wiggle room to attack the Lions in the second innings.

“The sweetest part of everything is that a team with an average age of 25 stood up in critical moments in the game,” Piedt said.

The highlight of the Cobras’ innings was the 178-run third-wicket partnership between Janneman Malan, who scored 137 and David Bedingham, who made 102. “We want to give these young guys the best opportunity possible to express themselves. Our batting line-up, it excites me, you look at how they played here, they didn’t bat at 2.5 or 2.7 an over, they really took it the Lions who have some experienced bowlers in their attack,” said Piedt.

As for his own performance on the final day, which came on top of a well made 57 with the bat, Piedt said he drew inspiration from further afield. “I sat in my room last night, watching the Test in Dubai (between Australia and Pakistan), and thought to myself, that’s what I have to do, rotate at one end, and that ensured the young guys weren’t bowled into the ground, which is the ideal way to do it. It’s my second ‘five-fer’ at the Wanderers, it was a weird kind of pitch, quite dry and it actually favoured me.”