Fighting Duminy earns Cobras a draw

JP Duminy defied the Diamond Eagles' attack for almost 10 hours to earn the Cape Cobras a fighting draw in their SuperSport Series match that finished at Coetzenburg on Sunday.

Although the home side came out of the match without a single bonus point, there was at least some honour in the way they resisted stubbornly after being forced to follow on with nearly half of the match still to be played.

The question the Cobras need to ask themselves is why they have performed so badly with the bat in successive first innings and yet managed to score more than 700 runs in their combined second innings.

For the Eagles, failure to win was something of a disaster. The Titans had already virtually wrapped up the title by beating the Warriors by eight wickets on Saturday, but it is now unlikely that the Eagles can beat the Lions to second place either - and there is a difference in prize money of some R125 000 between the two positions. This is big money in terms of domestic cricket.

The Titans are 29 points ahead of the Lions going into the final two rounds and will have to get virtually nothing out of them for the title not to be theirs.

They certainly fully deserve it as they have won seven out of eight matches outright - the Lions' tally is four and the Eagles' three - and they have also supplied five regular members of the South Africa Test squad. Neither the Lions nor the Eagles have contributed as much to the national cause week in and week out.

There will be times when Duminy will play much more enterprising and entertaining innings, but this was the weekend for him to show that he can tough it out as well as he can give full flow to his talents.

His 169 (596 minutes, 455 balls, 19x4) was his seventh first-class century and by far his highest - beating his previous best of 128. It included partnerships of 60 for the fifth wicket with Thami Tsolekile and an invaluable 118 for the eighth with Rory Kleinveldt.