Sunrisers hunting positive results on road
The Sunrisers Eastern Cape will be aiming for maximum efficiency in their first away cricket games of season two of the Betway SA20 when they take on MI Cape Town and Durban’s Super Giants this week.
First up for the defending champions are the men from the Mother City, who got their campaign moving in the right direction with a convincing 98run win over the Joburg Super Kings on Saturday.
The team in orange, who were forced to share the spoils with JSK in their opener due to rain, suffered a 35-run defeat to DSG at the weekend and will be looking to get that first win under their belts.
Sunrisers skipper Aiden Markram said while there were positive signs from the match, they would need to be better in all facets of the game.
“We have a fantastic group of guys and management staff who will keep the guys upbeat,” Markram said.
“In terms of preparations, we always look at execution, so first we need to look at if our plans were good, and from there we judge our execution.
“So, we will do some reflection on that.
“If we thought the plan was OK, then we just need to brush up on our execution.
“Games come at you quite quickly, so there are not many days we get actually to train.
“But we will prepare as well as possible and see if that makes a difference.”
Markram felt they were efficient in certain areas of the DSG game, in the batting department and their energy.
“In the field, I thought the guys were pretty good, energetic and quite neat.
“That is always a plus because it shows they are connected; it shows they want to be out there on the park and playing for the team.
“The likes of Liam Dawson and Dan Worrall were fantastic for us [with the ball] and with the bat, Tom Abell and [Tristan] Stubbo did well.
“It’s great when guys can get going early in the competition like this because you can run with that. Those guys really put their hands up and executed more often than not.”
On Saturday DSG put the
Sunrisers attack to the sword in the power play, scoring 10 runs to the over. Despite a few quiet spells in the middle, their run rate never slowed down during their innings.
Assistant coach Baakier Abrahams said matches would always ebb and flow.
“One day a team will have a good power play and middle period, then perhaps an average death period, or they will have a poor power play and then kick on during the middle and death overs,” he said.
“It fluctuates; there is no pattern or guarantee that a specific phase of the game will go a certain way. You saw that even though they got away, we were able to string together a few good overs, and it showed how the game contracted again; it became 50-50.
“And in those little moments, if we had a little luck go our way by taking a wicket in that period when the run rate slowed down, all of a sudden you are taking some runs off the back end [of an innings].
“The planning, how Aiden managed things and how the bowlers reacted after being under pressure are all good characteristics and positive signs we can look at and build from.”