Rain ruined the Marco Marais show as the Warriors and Lions had to settle for a share of the points after their CSA T20 Challenge match at Buffalo Park in East London was washed out on Sunday afternoon.
Thick cloud cover hovered over the players from the start of the match, however the only rain that fell over the first 18.4 overs was the raining of sixes delivered by Border star Marais, who had plundered his way to 82 off 33 balls with eight maximums and five boundaries.
With the Warriors on 155/5 with eight balls left at that stage and Marais in the mood, they were looking at a very good score of in excess of 170, however that is when the rain decided to come down and put a stop to play.
After losing the toss and being sent in to bat, the Warriors got off to a disastrous start as Gihahn Cloete lobbed up a catch off the bowling of Bjorn Fortuin to fall for a golden duck.
Matthew Breetzke (9), Jon Jon Smuts (15) and Lesiba Ngoepe then all failed to trouble the Lions’ bowlers as the Warriors fell to 58/4.
Only Border bred star Sinethemba Qeshile looked in good nick having scored 30 of the Warriors’ 58 runs at that stage.
However Marais then came in and took centre stage, only scoring three runs off his first seven balls before unleashing. He shared in a 52-run stand with Qeshile (38), contributing 43 runs, and an unbeaten 45-run stand with Onke Nyaku (5no), contributing 38 runs, and was on target to score the quickest T20 challenge century, Loots Bosman and Henry Davids holding the record off 41 balls, when rain had the final say.
“We have been away from home for quite a while and I am sort of based in PE now, so yesterday (Saturday) I was able to come home and go to the farm, and I had a chat with my dad and he said I must just give myself a chance, face six-10 balls, get the pace of the wicket and then just go for it and that’s exactly what I did today and luckily it came off,” Marais said.
“I just took good scoring options, thought about what I was doing and played the percentages and with the wind blowing like it was here at Buffalo Park, I just backed myself to hit it for six. Look, I just take it ball by ball, if it would’ve happened or could’ve happened [the century] that would have been lovely, but number one was to get the team into a good position and I was trying to do that.”..