Warming up, winding down

Warming up, winding down

Cameron White hit some big sixes against his home side Victoria Bushrangers© Indian Premier League

So we were based at the High Performance Centre at the University of Pretoria for a few days, before moving to Johannesburg. The facilities available were state of the art, and this is where the South Africa national cricket team meets up for training camps before embarking on international tours. The centre boasts many rugby pitches, soccer fields, and other facilities that encompass just about every sport imaginable. In fact, during the recently concluded FIFA World Cup, it played home to the Argentina national team. A few of the locals who worked there were telling us about how they had to arrange a special golf cart to transport Diego Maradona, simply because he refused to walk even five feet!! They even had to install a 'special' toilet in his bathroom as he was too 'small' for the existing one! I am glad to say that our lads didn't have any such problems, and we found the facilities available to us most adequate.

The South African women's national netball team was also staying there, and they were a lot of fun! I must say however, that it was a pretty intimidating feeling to be surrounded by a group of girls with an average height of 7ft! The banter was good however, and there was a really light mood around the place.

Meanwhile, we've also played a little bit of cricket among all of this. We started with a warm-up game against the Central Districts from New Zealand, which we won quite comfortably. Robin 'Six'appa and Whitey put some balls into orbit, and Dillon ripped through the Districts batting line-up finishing with figures of 4/9.

Then we played against the Victoria Bushrangers at The Wanderers. This was a harder game and Vic batted really well to post a score of 179/6. We knew we had to bat even better to achieve the target, and that is exactly what we did. Manish played well to score a quick 50 from 39 deliveries, and Akhil also chipped in at the end with some big shots. The star, however, was Rosco who blitzed 66 from 29 balls which included some massive sixes into the stands. If he continues to do this throughout the tournament, I think the CLT20 organisers may need to provide helmets to the spectators! Anyways, it's always a great feeling to win, even if it’s just a practice match. It's important, however, not to get too carried away by this, and focus on the games which will actually mean something.