Northerns Titans head coach Mandla Mashimbyi put their huge eight-wicket loss against the Central Gauteng Lions in the T20 Challenge final down to poor batting. KHUNULOGO MPOLOKENG reports.
The Titans went down once again at the Wanderers – a venue they were visiting for the third time in this season’s competition. The Titans also lost to the Lions by seven wickets in the first playoff qualifier, almost a month after beating them by 117 runs in the opening round of the league phase.
The Titans won the toss and opted to bat in Sunday’s final, but were easily dismissed for a below-par 119, before the Lions secured the win with just under five overs to spare.
“We obviously repeated Tuesday night’s performance, which was not good,” said Mashimbyi. “I think if we applied ourselves a little bit more, we would have probably gotten a respectable score which we could defend, but obviously that wasn’t the case.
“It’s always tough when you are five down in the first six or so overs. You’re chasing a ghost, basically; there’s no winning from that position. But otherwise, we’ll take all the learnings that we can take out of this game and then come back stronger next year.”
The Titans’ top four batsmen contributed just 31 runs in the final, with the Lions’ Lutho Sipamla taking the wickets of two of them – Sibonelo Makhanya (four) and Rivaldo Moonsamy (13) – before finishing with career-best T20 figures of 4-12.
Despite the Titans’ own good start with the ball, taking two wickets in the first five overs, Mashimbyi believes the regular fall of wickets in their innings was ultimately their undoing.
“It just shows you we were about 40 runs short. It would have a been a really good game if we had gotten the runs, but it was not the case. I guess if you keep losing wickets, it’s going to be tough for you to have partnerships.
“And our top four has been a little on the lacking part in the past three games, and [on Sunday] luck was not on our side. They kept on taking wickets; whenever we were getting a little bit of momentum, they took wickets, so it was always going to be tough in that way.
“It’s a hard one to swallow, but we’ll have to take it in our stride because these things happen in cricket.”
Having been eliminated in the semi-finals of last season’s competition and failing to make the final in any of the three domestic competitions in the last campaign, the Titans have already performed better this season by making the T20 Challenge final.
Mashimbyi admitted, though, that it was disappointing to have failed to learn from their resounding win over the Lions in their season-opener when it mattered most.
“It’s easy [to see what the difference was between the two matches] – we scored more runs than them the first time, and we couldn’t score enough runs after that. But it is what it is; we’ll just have to brush ourselves and come back stronger next season.”
Photo: Sydney Seshibedi/Gallo Images
