The University of Johannesburg team will be looking to build on an impressive performance in the Varsity Cricket tournament where they ended runners-up at the weekend.<\/p>\n
Despite losing to UP-Tuks in an abbreviated final in Potchefstroom on Saturday, coach Dumisa Makalima said he was proud of what the squad had achieved.<\/p>\n
The final developed into a frustrating affair for UJ after a power failure resulted in a two-hour delay during their innings.<\/p>\n
In the end, the innings was reduced to eight overs, in which the Johannesburg side made 60\/7, a reasonable recovery after they had been reduced to 19\/5.<\/p>\n
UP-Tuks were able to reach their target for the loss of two wickets.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Makalima was encouraged by his squad’s performance in qualifying for the final. Their week was made a bit more complicated after captain Muhammed Mayet was injured in an accident and unable to play again in the tournament.<\/p>\n
“There are absolutely some positives which we can take from the tournament,” the coach said.<\/p>\n
“We had a mixture of senior players and youngsters, with quite a few of them making their debuts in this tournament.<\/p>\n
“But the team has built up well over the last six months and they have become a united outfit. The boys play for each other and that’s very exciting going forward.”<\/p>\n
He added that it was also important to recruit smartly to complement the talent already in the squad.<\/p>\n
“We want to make sure we have good balance in the squad and I am confident this team will go from strength to strength.”<\/p>\n
Makalima said their extensive preparations for the Varsity Cricket tournament had put them in a good frame of mind for the week.<\/p>\n
“I was confident we could reach the final because a lot of thought went into our build-up to the week and we looked at all the different combinations.<\/p>\n
“One of our main successes was the batting of our openers Joshua Richards and Delano Potgieter, who often gave us good starts.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately they didn’t click in the final, but that’s the way it can turn out with Twenty20 cricket.”<\/p>\n
After a good start to their programme, Makalima said they lost a bit of momentum during the week.<\/p>\n
“We sat down and decided to simplify the game and play good basic cricket.<\/p>\n
“We focused on rotating the strike and trying to reach a run-rate of eight an over when it came to the power plays.<\/p>\n
“Chad Classen had a good week with the ball and we had a nice mix in our bowling combinations, made up of fast bowlers and spinners.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The University of Johannesburg team will be looking to build on an impressive performance in the Varsity Cricket tournament where they ended runners-up at the weekend. Despite losing to UP-Tuks in an abbreviated final in Potchefstroom on Saturday, coach Dumisa Makalima said he was proud of what the squad had achieved. The final developed into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2197,1733,2192],"class_list":["post-32288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-uj-cricket","tag-university-of-johannesburg","tag-varsity-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}