Defending Champions St Andrews School qualify for the Coca-Cola® Schools T20 Challenge National Final

St Andrews School, situated in Bloemfontein, stand the chance of defending their title at the Coca-Cola® Schools T20 Challenge. This is after they won their franchise final after beating Northern Cape High School at St Andrews.

St Andrews won the toss and decided to bat first. They got off to a very quick start with Henre Koekemoer hitting Austin Brooker for two fours and a six in the first three balls that he faced. Austin Brooker got his own back when he bowled Henre the next ball, but the writing was on the wall, St Andrews wanted to defend their Knights title and stand a chance to guard their national title which they won in 2017/2018 season.

St Andrews continued to score freely and even though they lost 5 wickets it didn’t deter them. Rikus Allen 27, Corne Viljoen 61 and Reeza Alexander 31*, one of the Coca-Cola® All-Star players from last year, all contributed to help St Andrews to a mammoth total of 193/5.

Northern Cape’s chase was insufficient to give them a favourable result. They lost wickets at regular intervals and besides for Naziel Adams who scored 20. Last year’s Coca-Cola® All-Star player Reeza Alexander used some of his skills that he learnt from his experience to take 4/13 against his old school. He was well assisted by Ruan Cronje 3/15 and Pheko Moletsane 2/13.

Austin Brooker and Naziel Adams were selected from Northern Cape to form part of the Coca-Cola® All-Star team. They were selected because of their unwavering determination  even when their team was being beaten. These players will get an opportunity to meet the other qualifying teams, have coaching sessions with Paul Harris and play against a Cricket South Africa selection side as a curtain raiser to the final of the Coca-Cola® T20 Schools Challenge.

St Andrews School will represent the Cobras and will join the other five franchises winners and the two schools that qualified through the CSA Focus School programme at the competition’s National Finals at the University of Pretoria from the 15^th to 17^th March.

Results

St Andrews 193/5 (Corne Viljoen 61, Rikus Allen 27,Reeza Alexander 31*, Austin Brooker 3/35) vs Northern Cape 61 all out (Naziel Adams 20, Reeza Alexander 4/13, Ruan Cronje 3/15, Pheko Moletsane 2/13)

St Andrews won by 133 runs