Cape Town – Richard Mutumbami hit two huge sixes in the last over to carry the Zimbabwe President’s XI to a well-deserved eight-wicket victory over Western Province in their final Pool A match at the Africa T20 Cup competition at Sahara Park Willowmoore on Sunday.
The result enabled the visitors to draw level with Easterns and Northerns on six points although the eventual winner of the pool will come from the final match of the day between Easterns and Northerns. Western Province finished bottom of the pool with two defeats plus a wash-out against Northerns.
Zimbabwe’s win was built around a succession of good partnerships by Kevin Kasuza and Peter Moor (70 for the first wicket), then Moor and Malcolm Waller (37 for the second) and finally Waller and Mutumbami (an unbroken 40 for the third in only 3 overs) of which Mutumbami contributed 20 off only 7 balls.
They also benefited hugely from what was surely Western Province’s worst catching performance in years with one catch after another being spilled.
Pieter Malan made an excellent 79 not out off 67 balls (6 fours and 3 sixes) but generally Western Province were not able to accelerate sufficiently in the closing overs and Malan acknowledged that they were probably about 10 runs short of where they needed to be.
One of the brighter spots for Western Province was the performance of their 19-year-old off-spinner, Emmanuel Sebareme, who had previously only two first-class and one List A match. He only bowled one bad ball out of 24 and had two very simple catches dropped in finishing with a return of 1/25. He displayed excellent control and put good revs on the ball as he maintained a consistent line outside the off-stump.
He is certainly one to mark down for the future.
