Schools Pro20

Standard Bank together with CSA have launched the Schools Pro20 Challenge initiative in January 2010, where we can see just what South African cricket talent is all about. The Schools Pro20 is designed to help develop and train our future cricket super stars.

Things just did not go our way in the final. We did not bowl well with the new ball and Jacques Kallis and Ashwell Prince played really well to take the game away from us.

    I thought we could probably chase down anything between 150 to 160 and I thought we were in the game when we held the Warriors to only 58 off the first 10 overs.

    But, we gave them 30 to 40 runs too many and it was always going to be difficult to chase down 186.

What a great feeling to be Standard Bank Pro20 champions.

    If you had asked us before the season we would have gladly taken one trophy but to do the double is something really special.

    We have been trying to put a perfect game together all season but we could not quite pull it off.

    In the final we did all three disciplines just about perfectly so we ticked all the boxes and the match we played was probably just about the perfect Pro20 game.

    Even though we had posted such a big total we were not convinced the game was in the bag at the halfway stage.

The Standard Bank Pro20 has seemed to have come and gone so quickly, it’s already time for the final tonight. The Warriors and Lions have out played the Cape Cobras and Titans respectively, both teams winning their semi-finals without having to play the third leg of semi’s.

The Warriors have played well this year, they have the MTN40 trophy in the cabinet and only lost one game in the Pro20 series to the Titans. The return of Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher and Wayne Parnell will add to the confidence of the Warriors team.

It is a wonderful feeling to be in the Standard Bank Pro20 final. We have had a pretty tough season off the field but all credit must go to my team for their efforts.

   Even though we are into the final we won’t be celebrating too much. I will say that we enjoyed the moment after beating the Titans but we need to stay humble because there is still one very important match still to play.

    I must give credit to Jonathan Vandiar and Neil McKenzie for the way they batted against the Titans.

It is not easy to be out of the Standard Bank Pro20 but the guys did not play to their full potential against the Lions and if you are slightly off your game in Pro20 the chances are you are going to get beaten.

    I suppose some people will question if I made the right decision to leave myself out for the Lions match but we actually had four tough decisions to make.

    Faf du Plessis, David Wiese, Roelof van der Merwe and myself were all left out but that is the nature of playing for the Titans.