Grooteman ushers KES into Johnny Waite final
Steele Grooteman struck an outstanding unbeaten half-century to help steer King Edward VII School (KES) to a dominant nine-wicket win over Jeppe High School for Boys in their Johnny Waite Trophy semifinal match at Jeppe on Wednesday.
Sipho Potsane, the Jeppe captain, won the toss and elected to bat first, but that decision didn’t work out. His side struggled to build any momentum, and they scored slowly, on their way to being bowled out for only 112.
KES didn’t struggle. They made light work of the moderate total and dashed to 113/1 in 14.4 overs in reply.
Grooteman bashed five sixes and a single four on his way to an unbeaten 54 off 44 balls. He showed great control and punished bad balls when they presented themselves to guide KES to a comfortable win.
The opener spent last year scoring runs for the KES second XI and is now making the most of his opportunities in the first team. Last weekend, he scored a wonderful 47 off 60 balls in a win over Pretoria Boys High.
Grooteman started cautiously. It wasn’t until the 13th delivery of the match that he scored his first runs. Until then, he watched his opening partner, Luke Clark (23), provide KES with a decent start. After two overs, the visitors had raced to 19/0, with 17 of those runs coming off Clark’s bat and two more from extras.
Together, Grooteman and Clark shared an opening partnership of 38 runs, with Clark setting the pace.
After Clark’s dismissal, Grooteman took charge. He scored most of the runs in a match-winning unbroken 75-run second-wicket partnership with Troy Gordon, who was happy to be the foil to Grooteman’s stroke-making. His contribution was an unbeaten run-a-ball 24 runs.
Jeppe did not help their cause by conceding 12 extras, which was especially damaging while defending a low total. Franco Nortjie is usually a reliable bowler for Jeppe. He takes wickets and doesn’t concede many runs. However, against KES his radar was broken. He sent down the most expensive over of the match, conceding 16 runs, including five extras, in the seventh over.
Earlier in the day, Jeppe had kicked off proceedings with a 17-run opening partnership between Zizi Mkhize and Ethan Elliot, which chewed up 27 balls. That set the tone for the rest of their innings.
Five of Jeppe’s 11 batsmen reached double figures. Unfortunately for the hosts, only Ryan Young and Keegan Caxeiro went at a run rate above 100, with Young scoring 19 off 16 and Caxeiro 18 from 12.
Zieg Roos did an outstanding job with the new ball for KES, with his first two overs going for only two runs, which kept Jeppe’s batsmen at bay. After six overs, the home side was on 26/1. Roos finished with the highest number of dot balls, 14, in the encounter, and his four overs brought him a tidy 1/11.
However, the most successful of the KES bowlers was the Player of the Match, Steele Grooteman, who nabbed two wickets for 22 from his four overs of left-arm spin.
Connor Kuijers also bagged a brace of wickets, going for 20 runs from his three overs.
Scorecard
Jeppe 112/10 (Ryan Young 19, Keegan Caxeiro 18, Connor Kuijers 2/20, Steele Grooteman 2/22). KES 113/1 (Steele Grooteman 54*, Troy Gordon 24*, Reza Ayob 1/26, Sipho Potsane 0/19). KES won by nine wickets.
