Confident Western Province Take on Warriors in Their 4-Day Series

CAPE TOWN: A bullish World Sports Betting Western Province side are looking forward to getting the 2025/26 season underway with a CSA 4-Day Domestic Series clash with neighbours the Dafabet Warriors at Dafabet St George’s Park on Thursday.

A perennial contender for multiple titles, Western Province finished in fifth on the 4-Day Series log in the 2024/25 season and are confident that they can improve on that result this time around.

Speaking ahead of their season opener, captain Beuran Hendricks feels they are in the best possible position to contend for the title.

“We are strong candidates this season and we are pushing ourselves to put a big effort into this competition,” Hendricks said.

“The way that the guys have put in the work from the time when we started pre-season, to being in the indoor nets, to now being outdoors, I’m really excited by the way everyone looks and the skills we’ve put in place is really exciting.”

Heading to Gqeberha this week, it’s going to be an interesting challenge for both sides coming up against each other for the first time this season. Hendricks believes though, that the Warriors won’t dish up any surprises.

“We know what to expect [from the Warriors]. We know Robin Peterson and the type of coach that he is. We know the brand of cricket that the Warriors want to play, and we aren’t going there not knowing how to go about things.

“From a St George’s Park perspective, we know the conditions quite well. Rory (Kleinveldt), our coach, has played there for countless years and we’ve got a few senior men in our team that have played there.

“Hopefully the rain stays away because we know at St George’s the weather does come into play if that wind starts blowing.”

Heading into the fixture this week, Hendricks wants his team to be right on the mark from the beginning.

“We’ve done our analysis work on the Warriors, and we’ve made sure we are well equipped with the conditions. We want to give ourselves the best chance to throw the first punch against the Warriors,” Hendricks commented.

Western Province lost one match in the previous season with two wins, three draws and one abandoned fixture. They won their first match of the competition against the Hollywoodbets Dolphins and Hendricks is looking for another strong start.

“Every season you want to start well and a good result in the first match of the season does give you momentum going into the rest of the season whether it be red-ball or white-ball cricket.

“We’ve got four rounds of red ball cricket before we get into the white ball cricket and we want to take every single game from the start of the season as a momentum builder for the rest of our season.”

Looking at the personnel that Hendricks and Kleinveldt will have at their disposal this season, they understand that there are a bunch of players that will be away on national duty and so they have a more settled core group of players to select from.

“With guys like Kyle (Verreynne), Tony (de Zorzi) and David (Bedingham) being settled national players now it gives us the opportunity to grow a fresh crop of players and create some depth in the squad.

“We now know when to expect them [national players] to be available for us and Rory (Kleinveldt) has done a great job in making sure that everyone knows where they stand within the squad,” the captain concluded.

Source: cricket.co.za

Imran Tahir: Imran Tahir is a professional cricketer who represents the South African national team. In 2016, he became the fastest South African bowler to reach 100 wickets in the ODI format.
In 2018, he became only the fourth South African bowler to take a hat-trick in ODIs. Tahir is currently South Africa’s highest wicket-taker in ODIs and T20Is among spin bowlers.