The cricket year started with Nelson Mandela Bay schools producing great results at various festivals around the country.
In the process there were wonderful individual performances. It is clear lovers of school cricket can look forward to very competitive inter-school matches coming up in the Bay area.
Grey High played host to a successful festival over four days in Gqeberha recently. Twelve schools, including three from Gqeberha, produced cricket of a high standard throughout the event.
Pearson, Grey and Framesby were the Gqeberha representatives. Pearson had a wonderful run and was unbeaten in four outings.
Grey very nearly made it two unbeaten Gqeberha teams, by winning three out of four matches. Framesby found it tough going, but did win their first match.
Pearson started by beating King Edward in the first innings. Esa Gangat produced the goods with bat and ball, scoring 71* unbeaten runs and taking three wickets. Cayden Wilson took 4/42.
It was another victory in the first innings against the Namibia Invitation team, and Gangat again batted beautifully, scoring 81. Jude Septoo was the bowling star with 6/26.
Grey College (Bloemfontein) is no pushover, but was no match for Pearson, which won by 51 runs.
Gangat led the way with 49 runs in a total of 193. Wilson took 3/25 and Grey College was bowled out for 142.
In the last match Pearson beat Menlopark by four wickets to stay unbeaten. Wilson had an excellent all-round match. He took 3/29 and scored 49 runs.
Grey started with a drawn match against Menlopark, when Xander Elkington scored 67 runs.
Elkington did even better in the second match against King Edward, which Grey won in the first innings.
He played an unbeaten knock of 102 runs, one of the highlights of the week. Nathan Howell was deadly with the ball, taking 5/5.
Elkington (51*) and Howell (3/10) were again influential in Grey’s next match when they beat Glenwood by five wickets.
Jeppe ended Grey’s unbeaten run in the last match, scoring 219 runs and restricting the hosts to 187, to win by 32 runs.
Framesby won their first match against the Namibia Invitation side by 40 runs. Taine Douw (50 runs) and Logan Fleetwood (5/38) were the stars.
Glenwood beat Framesby easily by 128 runs, but the Gqeberha boys were in the fight in the next two matches, going down by 26 runs against Jeppe and by two wickets against St Andrew’s School (Bloemfontein).
Despatch played six matches at the Kovsie Smash in Bloemfontein. Despatch won two matches and one match was rained out.
Muir College (Kariega) struggled at times at the Makhanda Festival, but would have learned plenty in defeat against a strong side like St Andrew’s College.
There were interesting results at the festival of Union High in Graaff Reinet where Daniel Pienaar (Kariega) beat DF Malherbe (Gqeberha) by 10 wickets.
DF Malherbe came back strongly after this huge loss, with victories over Westering (Gqeberha) and Cradock.
