Having bid a fond farewell to all our friends at Woodridge ( in the rain again!) we boarded our charter coach from Cape Town which will be with us now until our departure home. Our driver Henlou seems quite a cheerful chappy and everything is " 100 per cent" !!
Driving west now on the N2 all the way to Cape Town we first passed Jeffreys Bay, the surf capital of South Africa and there the clouds finally broke ( about 20 miles west of Woodridge) and we had sunshine the rest of the day meaning that we had good views of the beautiful garden route. We stopped for a break at the Storms river gorge where many photos were taken from the bridge and then drove slowly over the highest bungee jump in the world, not for the faint hearted!
Having checked into the hotel at Knysna Quays we were met by old friend Keith Cretchley who . runs the Knysna Sports School who led the coach to the ground - a new one for us . It is in a beautiful spot about 10 miles from Knysna - it is reminiscent of an English village ground! Keith has created this new ground from nothing.
His XI was a mixture of players who were either current or former members of the Sports school, three of whom were in the provincial side for their age group, but the team overall seemed to be a much more appropriate match for us. Bancroft's batted first against an attack which was very similar to that we would encounter on the school circuit on a greenish wicket where the ball did a little early on. Progress was slow and at 20 overs ( it was a 35 over match ) Bancroft's had reached 66 for 2 with Nigel Jacob not out 24. The loss of Nigel immediately after the drinks break at 20 overs heralded a bit of a collapse and eventually the team struggled to 111 all out, way below par against such an attack. Bancroft's young bowling attack failed to find its line and length, far too many balls were down the legside or too short and the opposition knocked off the runs in 25 overs losing only 3 wickets - two of those in the first over to Lakshman Sathananthan. Our modest total was not good enough and our bowling not consistent enough. The side is lacking in confidence at the moment, the result of the experience they had in Namibia. There are plenty of good cricketers but they are not yet standing up to be counted. We should have done much better against the opposition which really was not, overall, the standard of 1st XIs on the school circuit.
The evening was spent at the Dry Dock restaurant in the adjacent Knysna Quays following which most of the team watch the Man U v Arsenal match in the hotel!
Tuesday morning dawned fine and the team has just returned from the boat trip on the Knysna lagoon out to the famous Knysna Heads, the site of many wrecks over the centuries! The rest of the day is free before moving on our next leg towards Cape Town tomorrow. Our next game is on Thursday at Hermanus. Let us hope that the break will encourage better cricket then.
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