Petersen's season off to a perfect start

ALVIRO PETERSEN got his season off to the perfect start with his highest first-class score in South Africa on the opening day of the SuperSport Series competition at the Bidvest Wanderers Stadium on Thursday.

When bad light brought a slightly premature finish to the first day of the four-day match between the bizhub Highveld Lions and the Sunfoil Dolphins the home side had put an imposing 277/4 on the board in 91.1 overs after Petersen had won the toss.

Petersen had made more than half of the Lions total (156 not out off 266 balls with 15 fours) and was well placed to go past his first-class best of 210 which he made while captaining Glamorgan in the England county championship earlier this year. In the process Petersen passed the landmark of 8 000 first-class runs.

Petersen’s main support came from Neil McKenzie (48 off 123 balls with 7 fours) and the pair put on 136 for the third wicket in 40 overs.

Robbie Frylinck, playing against his old franchise, had the best bowling return for the Dolphins. His figures of 3/35 in 20 overs were outstanding in the circumstances. The only other wicket taker was Imran Tahir.

There was a totally different story in the other SuperSport Series match down the road at SuperSport Park between the Nashua Titans and the Chevrolet Knights with 14 wickets falling on the first day in 85 overs.

The Titans won the toss and decided to bat first and their innings was dominated by two outstanding efforts. Jacques Rudolph made 80 (81 balls, 17 fours) of the first 122 runs put on the board but, by then, the home side had lost their top five batsmen including Rudolph and it needed the best partnership of the match to date of 62 in 12 overs between Heino Kuhn and Shaun von Berg to get the Titans past the 200 mark.

Johannes van der Wath cut a swath through the Titans top order and then wrapped up the tail to finish with 6/53 to move within two dismissals of 350 career wickets. His figures were only just shy of his career best 7/60 for Northamptonshire in the England County Championship in 2009.

The Titans’ total of 227 started to look competitive when they had the Knights four down for 43 in the 21st over in the visitors’ turn at bat with Reeza Hendricks, Dean Elgar and Boeta Dippenaar among those back in the pavilion.

Ryan Bailey and Morne van Wyk stabilised the innings with an unbroken stand of 56 in the 18 overs remaining to the close to leave the Knights 128 runs in arrears at the end of an action-packed day.

Marchant de Lange (2/13 in 12) and CJ de Villiers took two wickets each. In the case of the latter it was a welcome return to form after a struggling period over the last 12 months.