Back from left to back: Fabian Lazarus (Head Coach), Jordan Lillywhite (scorer), Andrew Moon, Jack Reinbach, Tyron Koen, Luke Bowman, Tristan Vermaak, Luke Coleman, Craig Schlemmer, Travis Poland, Blake Alston-Stewart, Mr Thokozani Zulu (Assistant Coach).
Front from left: Jacques Bleeker, Jesse Smit, Bruce Kerr (Captain), Simon von Staden (vice-captain), Alex Whitelaw
Having won the KZN Coastal Final for the 4th consecutive year, Westville faced off against Hilton College, the KZN Midlands Champions for the second year in a row. The match was therefore, a repeat of last year’s final, except this year’s match was to take place at the Oval in PMB rather than at Kingsmead in Durban.
The Westville team travelled up PMB on cloudy day, full of nerves as no school has ever won the KZN trophy 3 times in a row!
Westville’s captain, Bruce Kerr won the toss for the 4th time in a row, which was seen by the Westville lads as a good omen. Kerr had no hesitation in electing to bat first. The idea was for WBHS to put enough runs on the score board so that when it was Hilton’s turn to bat, they would be under pressure from the outset. Through accurate bowling and tight fielding, Westville wanted to make it difficult for Hilton to score runs, therefore forcing them into making mistakes and losing wickets in the process.
The wicket was damp and the conditions overhead were humid and it was obvious that the tricky wicket would make runs hard to come by. Hilton’s bowlers bowled a tight line and soon had the Westville top order batsmen in all sorts of trouble with the Highways team reeling at 62/5.
It took a spectacular stand from Andrew Moon and Jacques Bleeker, who between them smashed 65 runs off 47 balls for Westville to reach a defendable total of 130. Andrew Moon scored 29(27) and Jacques Bleeker 36(20).
Westville then had to keep their bowling and fielding extra tight as Hilton’s strength was in their batting. Seven bowlers were used on the day by captain Bruce Kerr. Five of them were seamers and only two were off spinners. The two off spinners, Bruce Kerr and Ryan Colman, did the job for Westville putting Hilton to the sword and taking 6 wickets between them and ensuring that Hilton ran out of batsmen before their allotted 20 overs.
Coach Fabian Lazarus took a calculated gamble by bringing in off spinner Ryan Colman for his debut in the T20 final. The gamble paid off handsomely with Colman taking 4 wickets for 17 runs in 4 overs ! It was no surprise that he won the man of the match award.
Westville now represent KZN for the third consecutive year in the National Finals.