All roads lead to Paarl on Sunday where Goldrush Boland will be bidding to win their first 50-over title in 25 years when they host the Hollywoodbets Dolphins in the One-Day Cup final.
The hosts automatically qualified for the deciding game by topping the league phase of the competition with five wins out of seven, four of which came at their Boland Park home. Their visitors from Durban are the form team in the competition after recovering from a poor start to win five in a row, including a stunning upset win against the dangerous Momentum Multiply Titans this past week.
It sets up a tantalising finale in the Cape Winelands where a capacity home crowd will be cheering on their team, who last won the same tournament way back in the 1999/2000 season when current coach Justin Ontong was a player.
“It’s obviously a very exciting time for cricket in Boland,” captain Clyde Reeves-Fortuin told the media ahead of the game. “Everyone is looking forward to the final and helping the region win the trophy again.”
The team has been very consistent this term and the skipper admits it is a key reason for their success.
“The confidence and understanding within the group is unbelievable,” he explained. “There’s loads of respect for everyone. How we’ve gone about team selections, how we’ve gone about playing at different venues, there’s just been consistency throughout. We’ve stuck to a formula and to our processes.
“We said at the beginning of the season we’ve got a big squad and there will be changes here and there but it will be horses for courses. I think we’ve been consistent in how we’ve gone about everything. We’ve taken each game as it has come and never looked too far ahead.
“Even when we’ve lost, like in Bloem (against the Knights in Bloemfontein), there were hard conversations where we knew we were not good enough. We identified the areas where we weren’t good enough and continued to try and learn game by game. And then not repeat those mistakes. The key though has been consistency.”
Reeves-Fortuin says that maintaining their current trend will be key on Sunday, adding: “It's another game at home where we’ve won four, three with a bonus point and clearly our formula is working.
“So there’s no need to make big changes. I think we just need to stick to our process and if we do that we can walk away with our heads held up high, knowing we did what we needed to.”
Their opponents have endured a rollercoaster few days. Last week Sunday they were eliminated from the competition after finishing fourth. However, they were subsequently reinstated after the Dafabet Warriors breached selection rules.
They then went on to thump the Titans on Wednesday to secure their place in the tournament decider.
“Our focus is just on playing and improving with each game. The administrative and political parts of the game we leave to the office staff,” Prenelan Subrayen said of the drama.
The Durban side has now won five in a row after back-to-back losses to start the campaign.
“We have a lot of momentum that has been taken from game to game and I think the processes have remained the same, as we did with the first game where we started this winning streak. So there is a lot of excitement to go and play the final,” the Dolphins captain added.
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