Grey College hosts Selborne, St. Andrew’s School visits St. Alban’s
Grey College vs Selborne College
While it may be early in the cricket season for most, Grey College has already played eight games at the Tonbridge Festival, in the United Kingdom. At home against Selborne College this weekend, they’ll feel confident.
The schools meet in a two-day, double innings match starting on Friday. Click the link to watch the action live on SuperSport Schools.
When they last met, in January, during the Grey College Cricket Festival, the Bloemfontein school won by nine wickets in a two-day, double innings match.
The hosts began 2025 strongly but lost a little momentum later in the season. Their bowlers will focus on the basics to drive their challenge.
In their batting department, they have some potential match-winners, with SA Schools’ opener Christian Kind and Henru de Wet two of their primary dangermen.
Selborne started the 2025 season slowly, but they found some form later on, reaching the semifinals of the Eastern Province and Border region’s Schools SA20 competition, where they fell to the eventual champion, Pearson High.
Their challenge will be to avoid another slow start, especially facing a Grey College team that has many matches under the belt already, although most of those were played in July and their results were mixed. The point is, though, that Grey has been in action for some time now.
At the festival in the UK, they beat Tonbridge School by 177 runs, lost to Garsfontein by three wickets, lost to the Free Foresters Cricket Club Academy by two wickets, thumped Eton College by 106 runs, beat Stowe School by six wickets, fell to Shrewsbury School by four wickets, overran Malvern College by 171 runs and seven wickets, but lost to Whitgift by 35 runs and Wellington College by 69 runs.
They’ll be looking for improvement from their batsmen, who made many good starts in the UK but didn’t push on through to triple figures.
Still, looking ahead to the fixture starting on Friday, considering that Grey College won so comfortably in January while also playing at home, it would be an upset if Selborne pulls off a victory in the City of Roses. But that’s one of the joys of cricket. Upsets are a regular feature of the game.
St Alban’s College vs St Andrew’s School
Meanwhile, in Pretoria, St. Alban’s College has been preparing for the visit of St Andrew’s School. The visitors, from Bloemfontein, are an experienced team playing good cricket. They performed well at the recent Fasken Time Cricket Festival, playing to draws against Jeppe and St Stithians, but owning good first innings’ leads in both matches.
Earlier this year, Saints lifted the regional Schools SA20 title, comfortably beating Grey College in the final. They’re also a strong unit in the 50-over format, which they also demonstrated in another convincing win, by 76 runs, over Grey College.
Naudé Botha and FG Botha are the greatest threats with the bat for St Andrew’s, but they are far more than a two-man show, which Andrew Sobiech showed when he scored a century against Jeppe at the Fasken Time Cricket Festival. Jonathan Hickley, meanwhile, weighed in with 91 against St Stithians.
The St Andrew’s bowling lineup is versatile, with FG Botha’s leg-spin capable of turning a match.
If St. Alban’s can deliver some of the same standards of bowling that they produced in the summer, it could make matters interesting.
A victory at home, on the TC Mitchell Oval, over a school that has consistently produced some of the better cricket teams in the country for the past couple of decades would be a big morale boost for St Alban’s. But they’re going to have their work cut out for them.
