With the final of the Division 2 One-Day Cup coming up on Friday, the ACDC Express Tuskers cemented their spot as home finalists with a fifth win of the tournament and will host Eastern Cape Iinyathi in the title-decider.
The AET Pietermaritzburg Oval will play host to the final this week and it will be an opportunity for the Tuskers to claim a second trophy of the season after they won the T20 Challenge earlier.
The 50 over competition has been a happy hunting ground for the Tuskers who have gone through the competition unbeaten with five wins and two no results from their seven matches.
Their closest rivals, Iinyathi, managed four wins from their seven matches and were five points adrift of the Tuskers at the conclusion of the group phase.
Northern Cape Heat were in a strong position to push for a spot in the final, however an abandoned game and a loss from their final two matches saw them finish fourth.
Mpumalanga Rhinos put in a strong final surge to finish the group phase with two wins to finish third on the table.
It was the Six Gun Grill Garden Route Badgers who finished in fifth place with three wins while Eastern Storm could only manage two wins from their seven matches.
Coming into the tournament as the defending champions the SA Emerging side struggled throughout and had to wait until round five before they got their first win.
That would be their only win of the competition as they finished in seventh place on the table ahead of the Limpopo Impalas who were winless throughout the competition.
From an individual perspective, Iinyathi's Jerome Bossr finished with the most runs. The left-hander made 315 runs from five innings which included two hundreds and one half century at an average of 78.75.
The Tuskers then occupied the next two positions with Sean Gilson and Jack Lees making 280 and 272 runs respectively. Gilson made one century and two fifties while Lees managed a century and a fifty from his five knocks.
From a bowling point of view there were three bowlers with 13 wickets. Tuskers seamer Ziyaad Abrahams, Badgers off-spinner Pheko Moletsane and left-arm seamer from the Northern Cape Romano Terblanche all picked up the same number of wickets during the tournament.
Moletsane would finish with the best average of 11.38 and strike rate of 15.76.
The bowler with the best figures in the competition was Mpumalanga's Gareth Dukes who bagged 5/25 against Easterns in White River while Lees finished the tournament with the highest individual total; he made 137 against the SA Emerging team in their final match.
Sean Gilson was second on that list after his 132 not out against Eastern Cape Linyathi.
As the Tuskers chase a second trophy of the season and promotion back up to Division 1, the Eastern Cape Iinyathi team will be hoping to win their first piece of silverware of the current season.
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