Khaya Majola Week Day 2

The second day of this Coca-Cola Khaya Majola Week will stick in my memory as the day when the form book was chucked out of the window and the tournament’s overwhelming favourites, Gauteng and Western Province were both beaten.

In Gauteng’s case, it was their first defeat at this week since the last game of the 2012 week in Potchefstroom when they went down to Western Province.

They were well beaten by Eastern Province on Saturday and the defeat proved a point that I’ve been making – an unbeaten team faces big psychological challenges in maintaining their winning run.

EP are always one of the top teams, but Gauteng, with their SA under-19 players, and the current man of the moment, Wiaan Mulder, in their ranks, were firmly expected to win.

But they still had to go out and win it. Their bowling and fielding was not great – they let EP get to 226 – and then their top order collapsed and only Mitchell Van Buuren, with 70, made an impact with the bat.

So they lost for the first time in three years, although their chances of playing in the week’s prestigious main game haven’t altogether disappeared yet.

Western Province were Gauteng’s opponents in all those finals and they also came into the week with a crackerjack side and were expected to sail through. Their loss to Easterns on the second day proved another sporting point: no matter how good you are, your opponents still have every right to produce an excellent performance.

In this case, Easterns batsman Louis Oosthuizen hit a brilliant century, to help his side chase down a good WP total and there went WP’s chances of finishing unbeaten.

By lunchtime on day three, the fortunes of the two sides had taken very different routes. WP lost again – to their neighbours Boland, in a T20 game, while Gauteng bounced back by thrashing SWD by 117, with Wiaan Mulder smashing 104 off just 59 balls.

There should always be lessons to learn in sport and, for my two cents worth, the points to emerge out of this are: unbeaten runs always end; you don’t win games by simply turning up – your opponents are also there to play; and should you lose, there’s always the next game to redeem yourself in.

Gauteng did that, Western Province? Not so much.