T20 defeat leaves Warriors in a spin

Coach laments missed chances

WARRIORS coach Malibongwe Maketa was still scratching his head yesterday while trying to fathom just how his team managed to let the CSA T20 Challenge cricket trophy slip out of their grasp.

At Centurion on Friday night, the Titans denied the Warriors their first piece of silverware in six years, beating them by six runs. Defending 155, the Titans restricted the Warriors to 149/6 and the game, as expected, was decided on the narrowest of margins.

Maketa had taken to climbing into his running shoes and treading tar when contacted yesterday.

“I had to find some way to get my mind off Friday night so I went for a run. But it keeps playing back in my head,” Maketa said.

“Obviously we created opportunities that we never took. That’s one area where we could evaluate and say, ‘listen we need to make sure we get better’. The bowlers created those opportunities, some were tough, but in a final you have to take them.”

Maketa was in all likelihood referring to when captain Jon-Jon Smuts, who was superb throughout the campaign and probably the player of the tournament, failed to hang on to a difficult, spiraling chance offered by David Wiese off Kyle Abbott.

Wiese was on three at that stage and went on to finish on 24 not out as the Titans took 27 off the last two overs.

“If you take them chances you get to a place in a final where you chasing 139-140 and it’s a different game. Wiese got 19 off the last over and he could have been out.

“So small things cost you,” Maketa said.

“We need to make sure we come back next season a stronger fielding unit because in other areas we stepped up but our fielding at times didn’t complement the bowling attack as well as it should have. Unfortunately, it showed in the final which was quite disappointing.”

But Maketa did take a moment to congratulate his players on what was a good effort for the lion’s share of the tournament.

“It was a great campaign in terms of consistency in everything that we did it was really, really good.

“But as I said we put down too many catches than we would have liked if we are to be critical of ourselves. You not gonna catch everything, but you must be close.”

The Warriors will also quietly be lamenting the fact that Andrew Birch, the competition’s second highest wicket-taker, was left marooned by race quotas.

Birch had taken five for 16 against the Titans at Centurion only weeks before in the round-robin stage thereby winning the game for the Warriors. But no place could be found for him in the starting lineup when Kyle Abbott entered the equation.

Maketa said the team was keen to repeat their performance when the Sunfoil Series resumes against the Dolphins in early January.

“We look forward to the change of formats. It’s a format that we still feel we got a lot of work to do in. We need to now go back and be patient again. We’re in a spot now where we could really do something good as well in that format. But our focus is still baby-steps and focusing on how we have gone about the first five games.”

The Warriors, less than four points off the table-topping Titans, have won the same amount of games in the Sunfoil Series.