Durban – Kevin Pietersern announced himself yesterday afternoon by smashing his bat in two in the Kingsmead nets before thunder, lightning and rain drove the Dolphins indoors.
The England star, who contributed so much to the Dolphins reaching tonight’s RamSlam T20 Challenge play-off against the Cobras, arrived in Durban yesterday morning hoping that he will have a productive long weekend before he returns home to England on Monday.
The winner of today’s play-off will earn a trip to Centurion to take on the Titans in Saturday’s final and ‘KP’ said it would be ‘great’ to win the RamSlam for his old franchise before he heads off to Australia to represent the Melbourne Stars in the Big Bash.
The destructive batsman hasn’t practised for a while, but he was happy to say, as always, that ‘best is fresh’, a remark he made last month when he struck two hundreds and two half-centuries in five matches.
The powerful right-hander looked in excellent touch in the nets, breaking one of his bats as he laid about the bowlers.
In the midst of a serious drought, Durban has received plenty of rain over the weekend and early this week and the pitch is inevitably a touch soft. Nobody likes the toss to offer an advantage to a team, but it looks as though batting second may be the way to go tonight.
Pietersen is set to bat three today, with all-rounder Kyle Nipper the favourite to make way for him. Nipper, who has performed particularly well for KZN Inland this season, didn’t bat or bowl in the Dolphins’ eight-wicket win over the Cobras on Friday.
Although the Proteas are home from India, the play-off has come too soon for paceman Kyle Abbott. He has, however, made himself available for the final, assuming the Dolphins get that far.
“I think the Cobras may have been a little underprepared for our last game, but it certainly won’t happen again,” said coach Lance Klusener yesterday. “They hate losing and they certainly won’t want to repeat that loss. We just have to make sure we hit the ground running and win the early exchanges which are so important in T20 cricket.”
Friday’s win ended a run of five matches without a victory and Klusener hopes his team have turned the corner. “Holding fingers and thumbs, I’d like to think so,”he said. “The way we went about winning was good. The way we bowled was again excellent so I’m pretty happy.
“With Pietersen back we have some quality individuals. We just need to understand that just because he’s back doesn’t guarantee anything.”
Nevertheless, Pietersen bolsters the top-order batting that includes a confident Jonathan Vandiar who struck an unbeaten 34 in 12 balls to clinch last week’s game.
A testing campaign saw the Cobras win five and lose five, and what will be most disconcerting is that they lost both of their games last week.
“The way we’ve played we do come into this game as underdogs,” reflected coach Paul Adams. “We’ve scraped through this tournament so far, but that is in the past. It’s all one-off games where the best team on the day makes it through.
“We’re two games away, and we’ve got to make it click under pressure. We’ve identified a few things that have added to our inconsistency and well keep working on those (issues).” - The Star