All-round skills from Hendricks

STAR HITS CENTURY, GRABS TWO SCALPS He also shared in record stand with skipper Cook.

The Warriors were behind the required runrate throughout their innings as an impressively accurate Highveld Lions attack bowled them out for 285 to win their Momentum OneDay Cup match by 44 runs at the Wanderers yesterday.

After Reeza Hendricks had stroked a wonderful century – 101 off 89 balls – to get the Lions to a challenging 329/7 in their 50 overs, an impressive newball spell by left-arm fast bowler Carmi le Roux, which included the fortuitous wicket of Jon-Jon Smuts, who was given out lbw for 15 despite edging the ball, had the Warriors under immediate pressure.

Gihahn Cloete (50 off 77 balls) and Colin Ingram, with a run-aball 69, kept the Warriors in the game with a second-wicket stand of 122 off 133 balls, but they were always battling to accelerate the run rate against the probing Lions attack.

Hendricks, who has never bowled in 55 previous One-Day Cup games, then ripped the heart out of the Warriors’ challenge by removing both batsmen in the 28th over – Ingram lathered a return catch and Cloete was beaten in the flight and trapped plumb in front.

Colin Ackermann belted an aggressive 46 off 30 balls, but he was caught in the deep off Beuran Hendricks, and the Lions kept taking regular wickets.

Le Roux (9-2-29-2) and his fellow left-arm new-ball bowler Beuran Hendricks (10-0-55-3) were both impressive, but seamers Matt McGillivray and Nono Pongolo were both steady and spinner Bjorn Fortuin fought hard on a tough pitch for spinners as he took 1/65 in 10 overs.

Having been sent in to bat, Lions openers Stephen Cook (81 off 84) and Reeza Hendricks cruised to a record first-wicket stand at the Wanderers, and for the Lions against the Warriors, as they put on 178 off just 169 balls.

Thereafter, the rest of the Lions batsmen got in but then suffered lapses in concentration as they gifted their wickets to the Warriors, but the run-rate remained comfortably above a runa-ball as the defending champions made their highest score against the Eastern Cape franchise.

Seamer Aya Gqamane, who bowled Cook, and left-arm spinner Smuts (10-0-51-2), who removed both Reeza Hendricks and Temba Bavuma (30), were the only two bowlers to escape much punishment.