BEYOND THE BOUNDARY,

e fourth and final day of the game. South Africa “A” eventually eased to an eight-wicket win over the Zimbabwe Select side, taking little over an hour on day four to score the 88 runs they needed to take a 1-0 lead in the two-match series.
Zimbabwe’s only hope was to make early inroads into the South African batsmen, and sadly for Zimbabwe they didn’t come as Morne van Wyk and Paul Harris extended their second-innings stand to 82 before Harris holed out in the deep off Stuart Matsikenyeri. But van Wyk and Hashim Amla knocked off the remaining 14 needed with little effort.
Zimbabwe will take a lot of positives from this performance in which they held their own for much of the game, but they are still struggling in the longer form of the game – probably because the level of domestic first class cricket in the country is so weak. One must also take into account that despite being called a “Select” side, this is an almost full strength Zimbabwe XI and almost all of the side will face a full-strength South Africa in three ODIs towards the end of August.
For the second game at Bulawayo, Brendan Taylor and Terry Duffin are expected to return in the place of the struggling, Tino Mawoyo.
Result: South Africa A 280 and 132 for 2 (van Wyk 63*) beat Zimbabwe Select 242 and 169 by eight wickets.