It all seemed so eerily familiar last night in Chennai. Some of the same faces, mostly the same situations. Only this time they were not wearing green, but the blue of the Cape Cobras instead. The Cobras delivered a choke of Proteas-like proportions as they crashed out of the Champions League Twenty20.
For the majority of the 40 overs there was only one team who looked likely to advance to the knockout stages. However, when the pressure levels rose, it was Trinidad and Tobago who withstood it best. And again the man with ice running through his veins was Kevin Cooper.
The charismatic all-rounder struck a few lusty blows in his team’s previous victory over Chennai Super Kings. Yesterday, he dented the reputations of far more accomplished bowlers like Dale Steyn and Charl Langeveldt, by scoring 25 off 11 balls to push his team over the line. Cooper scored 10 runs off Steyn’s fourth over, which cost 15 runs in total, and ensured T&T got the 24 runs they needed in the last two overs.
It is a nightmare that will haunt the Cobras, especially captain Justin Kemp. The skipper had done his individual best to try and steer his team into the semis for the second time.
Kemp controlled the middle of the innings with a double-wicket first over, and then completed a brilliant caught-and-bowled to finish with 3/22 in his four overs.
He had led from the front, showing his fellow bowlers which line and lengths were successful on the slow Chennai surface. Most importantly, he was also disciplined, unlike Langeveldt and Rory Kleinveldt, who delivered three no balls in his solitary over.
The Trinidad spin duo Samuel Badree and Sunil Narine had earlier made life difficult for the Cobras batsmen with a variety of slowish deliveries, which only Owais Shah (63 not out off 50 balls with six fours and a six) and Dane Vilas (54 off 44 balls with seven fours), had been able to counter during their 87-run third-wicket partnership. And when Trinidad were reeling at 85/5 after 15 overs, with 52 runs still to get, it seemed that the Shah-Vilas partnership would be enough for the Cobras, even though South Africa’s Pro20 champions only managed 35 runs themselves in their last five overs.
All it required was the knockout blow. Steyn seemed the right man to deliver it after a magnificent opening three-over spell of outswing bowling. But for the second match in the series, the World’s No 1 fast bowler went from hero-to-villain by being smashed in the penultimate over.
The Cobras will return home dejected from their Indian sojourn. And rightly so as they had a group of individual stars that would have set the semi-final stages as a primary objective.
There were a few tactical errors, especially in regards to sending in a strokeplayer like JP Duminy in during the closing overs when a basher like Kemp or Kleinveldt would have been more suitable. But as Trinidad proved last night, it is the team that pulls together when the heat is at its most intense that usually triumphs.
Coach Richard Pybus and his charges have much soul searching to do on the flight home ... - Cape Times