The opening day of the CSA four-day franchise match between the Warriors and visitors Hollywood Bets Dolphins, could perhaps be summed up accurately, thus: a quick wicket, followed by a mammoth 216-run partnership, followed by three more quick wickets, and another just before the close.
At stumps the Warriors must have been highly satisfied with their first innings score on 325 for five wickets after 96 overs.
The Warriors won the toss and elected to bat, and it was Gihahn Cloete who had to take the long walk back to the pavilion, bowled by Ethan Bosch for a duck without offering a stroke and without a run on the board off the third ball of the day.
Enter Yaseen Vallie after two minutes to join the other opening batsman, Eddie Moore.
Fast forward four-and-a half-hours. The score: 216 for one wicket after 63 overs, just after the tea interval. Both batsmen had gone to their centuries.
During this period the Dolphins bowlers toiled under the boiling sun, and with the wind blowing in strong gusts across the field, conditions were most unpleasant for both sides.
Moore was particularly harsh on the two spinners, Prenelan Subrayen and Senuran Muthusamy, hitting four sixes over the long-on and long-off boundaries and then Vallie got into the act with a six of his own off Muthusamy.
Just before tea Vallie was first to his century, his 13th altogether. An almost suicidal single led to that rare score – a five with four overthrows – and Moore, followed just five minutes later with a reverse sweep to third man, his ninth ton in first-class cricket. At the tea interval things looked distinctly rosy for the Warriors at 211/1 (Moore 101, Vallie 106).
But at 216 Moore scooped the ball straight down cover’s throat and he was out for 102 (195 balls, 10x4, 4x6). At 217 Vallie cut the ball and he was brilliantly caught in the slips for 110 (167 balls, 12 x4, 1x6).
Both were victims of medium-pace bowler Keith Dudgeon. Moore and Vallie’s 216 was a new Warriors’ second-wicket partnership record against the Dolphins but some way short of the overall franchise record of 249 held by Michael Price and Colin Ackermann against the Titans in Port Elizabeth in 2013/14.
New boy Matthew Breetzke and Jon-Jon Smuts then added 18 runs before Smuts was out for 10 at 235/4.
Breetzke and Lesiba Ngoepe kept the scoreboard moving nicely and brought up the 300 in the 90th over. Ngoepe was run out for 39 going for an impossible single at 312/5.
Dudgeon was the most successful Dolphins bowler, with 2/62 off 21 overs.
The scene is perfectly set now for young guns Breetzke, on 45 and his new partner, Sinethemba Qeshile, 10 not out, to continue aggressively on Tuesday...