Birch out for more wickets from Cobras

ANDREW Birch will be hunting more wickets when the Warriors take on the Cape Cobras in their Cricket SA T20 Challenge match at Newlands, Cape Town, tomorrow evening.

Warriors strike bowler Birch was in imperious form as he claimed 3/16 in four overs in their opening bonus-point, seven-wicket T20 win over the Dolphins in Durban, which netted him the bowler of the match award.

“Three for 16 – you have got to be happy with that,” Birch said.

“I really enjoy bowling at Kingsmead and things just went my way, so I can hopefully take that confidence into Friday’s game at Newlands – also a ground I really enjoy bowling at.

“The team is on a high and I am also on a high, so I am really looking forward to the Cobras match.”

His three wickets also saw him pass the 50 wicket mark in his T20 cricket career, taking him to 52 wickets in 48 matches at a solid average of 22.34. “I didn’t know I had reached that milestone. “I don’t look at those things now, but at the end of the day when you look back at your career it is nice to see those little milestones,” Birch said.

He will now once again look to lead from the front as the Warriors look to topple the fragile Cobras in their own back yard.

The Cobras have had a terrible start to their 2016-17 campaign. Tthey struggled in the Sunfoil Series and were then beaten by 38 runs in their T20 opener against the Knights in Johannesburg, before playing their second match against the Titans on Wednesday.

The Warriors, by contrast, have had a decent start to the Sunfoil Series and thumped the Dolphins on Sunday.

“It was an awesome start to the competition. You can’t get much better than that. It was a clinical performance against the Dolphins,” Birch said.

“We have had a really good lead-up from our fourday cricket and the momentum gained we have taken into the T20, along with a few extra guys coming in and re-energising the unit. It has put us in a great place at the moment.”

It was always going to be a difficult start to the T20 competition for the Warriors as they were drawn to play all their first three matches away, against the Dolphins, Cobras and Knights.

However, the bonus-point win over the Dolphins was the perfect start and another away win in Cape Town will set them up superbly for their match against the Knights in Bloemfontein on Sunday.

“We play so often around the country, so we are really used to travelling. It is not really a problem playing away from home,” Birch said.

Tomorrow’s match against the Cobras will get under way at 6pm.