Outstanding bowling by Rowan Bezuidenhout and Nico Boje paved the way for Grey Bloem to secure a comfortable nine-wicket victory over the Standard Bank Rocklands Regional Performance Centre (RPC) in their Momentum Friendship Games encounter in Bloemfontein on Wednesday.

The pair shared six wickets between them to restrict their opponents to just 85 for seven in the T20 encounter, before Dewald Potgieter struck an unbeaten half-century that guided the home side to an easy win at Grey College.

The match, which represents an important undertaking by partners Cricket South Africa and sponsors Momentum, kicked off at 13h00 with Rocklands winning the toss and opting to bat first.

But they found scoring difficult to come by in the face of some miserly bowling by the hosts. Bezuidenhout struck three telling blows up front to leave the score on 13 for three as he ended with figures of three for eight in three overs.

Bongani Nzapheza and Kamo Tsholo did some rebuilding work with a fourth-wicket partnership that yielded 49, but they also ate up time in the midst of their consolidation.

Both then crucially fell in quick succession as Rocklands failed to find any impetus at the back end of their innings.

They were left limping by the changeover thanks to Boje’s 3-14 in four overs, with Potgieter adding to the strangle with his three overs that went for just four runs.

For Rocklands to have any chance, they needed early wickets and they got one when Khanyisile Nondwanyu bowled Pierre de Villers for five in the opening over.

It was one-way traffic from there, though, with Potgieter smashing an unbeaten 56 (27 balls, eight fours, two sixes) in a partnership of 80 with Zander Rasmussen (17) to give Grey Bloem a comfortable win.

The first two matches of the Momentum Friendship Games took place last month with the Paarl RPC going down to Paul Roos in Stellenbosch and the Alice RPC claiming a thrilling tie with Selborne College in East London.

Photo: Cricket South Africa