31 Mar 2014

Gaborone One claimed an emphatic 67 runs victory over Lobatse/Kanye in the BCA Twenty20 Cricket Tournament on Sunday, March 30, and went level on four points with southern region log leaders Gaborone Four.

In a match played at the Botswana Cricket Association (BCA) Oval 1, Gaborone One who are effectively a national Under-19 boys’ team, produced superb batting performance in the first innings to set up a simple victory.

Rashaad Mosweu and Inzimam Master began the batting order, and their partnership reeled off a total of 84 runs as Gabs One completed 169 runs for six wickets in 20 overs. The partnership was broken when Mosweu was bowled out by Abdullah Malik in the 10th over.

Waseem Tashby came on but was quickly run out and Master established a new partnership with Karabo Motlhanka.   The pair pushed Gabs One’s tally to 147 runs at the end of the 17th over before Master was caught by Deepak Madangarli, who claimed three wickets in the match. Master was his team’s best batsman with a total of 62 runs.

Gabs One’s spinners produced a masterful bowling performance which restricted their opponents’ batsmen to just 102 runs all out after 18 overs.

The Lobatse/Kanye chase got off to a flailing start when Thatayaone Tshose bowled out Deepak in the third over with the batsman having completed just two runs from eight balls, and their best batsman was Azhar Sohel, who managed a miserable 23 runs from 30 balls.

Gabs One’s spinner Nabil Master and Mmoloki Mmoketso claimed three wickets each as their team ran out comfortable winners. It was the second win out of three matches for Gabs One, while Lobatse/Kanye were suffering their first defeat in their second match of the tournament.

Gabs One stand in captain, Motlhanka said their strong start enabled them to control the match the way they did.

“We did a good job in our batting with our first two batsmen taking us to 80 runs. We started well by applying power play in our first six overs and from there we just consolidated. After the high target we set them we were very confident because we knew that they required more than a run per ball to reach that target,” said Motlhanka.

He said the Under-19 boys need to continue doing the simple things correctly so that they can continue improving their game. Ends