Conrad may tinker with Cobras middle order

Cape Cobras coach Shukri Conrad may tinker with his batting order for the final Standard Bank Pro20 Series league match against the Dolphins at Kingsmead on Friday evening.

This may sound more than a bit unorthodox bearing in mind that it has been the top four of Adam Bacher, JP Duminy, Henry Davids and Benji Hector who have provided the fireworks in the last two matches in which the Cobras posted winning totals of 190 against the Eagles and more than 200 against the Titans.

The tinkering will not involve the top three but Conrad does have to look ahead to the bigger picture of the semifinal now that the Cobras progress to the knock-out phase has been confirmed.

"The boys put on a wonderful batting display at Newlands on Wednesday night," Conrad enthused. "But it does create a slight problem. Wesley Euley and Warren Swan have not batted in the middle for more than a week now and I may re-arrange the order slightly so that they can get some game time."

Conrad said that the team's performance and the condition of both the pitch and the outfield had refuted the recent claims that Newlands was the wrong ground for the Pro20 World Championship in September.

"We had nearly 400 runs scored on Wednesday night and it wasn't a case of the ball just dribbling across the boundary line either. The outfield was slick and fast and the pitch promoted good strokeplay."

Conrad acknowledged that there was room for improvement in the fielding department. There were too many throws that were way off target that could have made the difference in a tighter match.

The Cobras will have a good idea by the end of the weekend what their chances are of being at home for the semifinals in which case they will have to travel to Paarl as part of the agreement that the franchise has made with Cricket South Africa to make sure that Newlands is in tip-top condition for the Pro20 World Championships.

Although this is a bit rough on the Newlands faithful - there have been more than 8 000 attending both the home league matches - Conrad is quite comfortable with the idea. "We played two warm-up matches at Paarl and both the pitch and the outfield were vastly improved on what we had got used to in the past."

Weekend programme (home teams first)

Friday (6pm): Dolphins vs Cobras, Lions vs Titans (SS2/CSN).

Sunday (2.30pm): Eagles vs Dolphins (SS2)