Gavin Kaplan drove the final ball of the match for four to give Dafabet Boland a dramatic five-wicket victory against the Flexbrands Knights in the CSA T20 Challenge match at Boland Park in Paarl on Tuesday night.
Boland required 13 runs from the final over to overhaul the Knights' total of 160 for five and, despite being pulled for four by Jhedlie van Briesies off the first ball, fast bowler Tiaan van Vuuren looked to have made the game safe for the Knights when he restricted the target to seven from the final two balls.
But Ferisco Adams and Kaplan (58* from 41 balls) scrambled three off the penultimate delivery, leaving Kaplan to hit the winning boundary after opener Neil Brand had laid the foundation for the run-chase with a well-paced 46 from 33 balls.
Half centuries from opener Cole Abrahams (66) and George van Heerden (53) pushed the Knights total past 150, which is always competitive at South Africa’s lowest-scoring ground, but some tidy overs of spin from Brand (2-0-13-0) and medium pacer Lehan Botha (3-0-19-1) at a crucial time kept the scoring in check.
Elsewhere on the third day of the 16-team tournament, the Dafabet Warriors (175-4) beat Limpopo’s Wenbro Impalas (140-8) by 35 runs at St.George’s Park, with Warriors opener Jordan Hermann making 70 from 45 balls with four sixes and four fours.
The match between the CSA Emerging XI and the KZN Tuskers in Pretoria was abandoned without a ball bowled due to rain.
Day four of the tournament sees the Hollywoodbets Dolphins hosting Northern Cape in Durban and WSB Eastern Storm welcoming the Mpumalanga Rhinos to Benoni.