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Cape Town - Warriors coach Rivash Gobind is delighted with their 4-Day Domestic Series progress and hopes they can continue the improvement they have shown in recent weeks when they welcome the Dolphins to Buffalo Park in East London from Monday.
The Eastern Cape franchise caused a competition shake-up by stunning the log-leading Cape Cobras at Newlands this past week, throwing the title-race open for the first time in 2018/19.
The Cape Town side have dominated the first-class tournament so far this term and just two weeks ago looked like they were walking away with the title.
But their 30-point plus lead has been slashed to one-and-a-half over the bizhub Highveld Lions and just over 25 more than the third-placed Warriors and Gobind is pleased with how they are playing.
“We always speak about judging ourselves based on going onto the field and executing our plans,” he said.
“It's been really good these past two weeks, so everyone is really happy with our progress.”
The hosts still have a chance of themselves winning the title, but Gobind has rubbished such talk by insisting they were not even thinking beyond the Dolphins.
He continued: “It makes the last two rounds exciting, doesn't it? That’s great for the competition, but we're just taking it one game at a time.
“It's an old cliche but it's something we're going to have to try to do. Once we start to worry about other results and other people, then we're going to take out eyes off the ball and I don't want our guys to do that.”
Looking ahead to the clash with the bottom-of-the-table Durban side, Gobind added: “In franchise cricket there's no easy games, we don't take anyone lightly, we respect everyone.
“It's all about executing your skill over the four days and that's what we're going to try to do.”
Meanwhile, Dolphins coach Grant Morgan was mainly happy with their performance this past week when they drew with the Knights in a match heavily affected by the weather in Pietermaritzburg.
“We played good cricket for most parts, but disappointed towards the end when we got a bit ahead of ourselves. But I think overall the performance was really encouraging.”
Looking ahead to the clash in East London, Morgan hoped his players would continue applying themselves right through until the end of the season.
“We must just have a mindset with this young group of not opening a shop with a closing down sale,” he concluded.
“We mustn’t decide on conditions and decide on things in the future. If we can stay in the now, stick to our plans, stick to our processes and have that right mindset, we have the capability to go a long way.
“We sometimes do what we have to for two-and-a-half days, and then slip up. We mustn’t do that, we must avoid a situation where you do the first 80kms of a 90km race well and then stuff your journey up in the last 10kms.
“This is something we need to improve on. Hopefully in the last two games we’ll show that improvement.”
