The rain stayed away from Kingsmead but it did not help the KwaZulu-Natal Dolphins’ cause as they crashed to a 64-run defeat at the hands of Easterns on Friday.
The result means that the Dolphins slumped out of contention in the Standard Bank Cup cricket tournament.
With five of their fixtures rain affected — four were abandoned — earlier in the season the Dolphins needed to win all their remaining games in a late bid for a semifinal berth.
But in a low-scoring game Dale Benkesntein’s men only managed to score 120 off 36 overs chasing a modest Easterns total of 184 for eight.
Thus in a match in which the umpires’ fingers were raised seven times in leg before decisions it was always Easterns who had the better of the exchanges even after they had battled initially to get a respectable total.
The Dolphins’ hopes were finally dashed when they lost three wickets in four balls without scoring a run as they slumped to 86 for seven with only Lance Klusener really left to raise the hopes of the sparse crowd. But he was soon bowled for 11.
Zander de Bruyn of Easterns was the man of the match with 47 and two wickets for 28 as well as a good catch to dismiss Jon Kent.
Daryll Cullinan had opted to bat after winning the toss more with an eye to the weather than the pitch conditions, which appeared to be ideal. For a while it looked as though his decision had backfired on him as Easterns slumped to 50 for five after 19,4 overs.
Opening bowlers Nixon McLean, who had a superb first spell, and Lance Klusener restricted the early batting to a snail’s pace and set the platform for medium pacer Andrew Tweedie to nip in and claim four for 37 — three of his victims out leg before and the other caught by wicketkeeper Duncan Brown.
But in his ninth over McLean was suspended from bowling his full quota by umpire John Cloete after had had sent down two successive beamers and Jon Kent had to bowl the final two balls of the match.
That Easterns managed to get a competitive 184 for eight off their 45 overs was quite remarkable.
De Bruyn with his 47 off 73 balls helped an aggressive Geoffrey Toyana with 26 off 29 balls to add 36 in 34 minutes for the sixth wicket before Toyana was run out in spectacular fashion by Doug Watson from mid-on.
De Bruyn then steered wicketkeeper Dylan Jennings (24) to a seventh-wicket stand of 52 that turned the tide against the Dolphins bowlers.
Not to be outdone, lower-order men Aldo van den Berg (18) and Brendan Reddy (19) remained undefeated at the end of the Easterns innings in adding 41 for the ninth wicket while Ross Veenstra claimed three for 40 as a main wicket-taker. — Sapa