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Dolphins seek One Day Cup solace against Cobras

Cape Town - Dolphins coach Grant Morgan admits the Dolphins are still hurting from their 20-over final loss over the weekend, but is hopeful they can bounce back when they begin their One-Day Cup campaign against the Cape Cobras in Durban on Thursday.

The KwaZulu-Natal franchise suffered a heavy seven-wicket loss to the Titans in the RAM SLAM T20 Challenge decider on Saturday, barely putting up a fight as they were crushed in Centurion.

But they are desperate to bounce back at Kingsmead in what is the first of two matches for them before the festive break.

"We have to bounce back from a massive disappointment," Morgan reflected. "It wasn't our plan to let our fans, our loved ones and the ones who support us down the way we did on Saturday.

"We've had a heart-to-heart talk among the guys. We know there's no excuse.

"We just didn't go in gung-ho, we had a plan, but it just didn't come off. It spiralled and it got ugly quickly. I can't say we panicked, but I just feel my players got their execution wrong. So, we'll learn from it now and hopefully move on."

Both the Dolphins' home matches - one in the regular season and their semi-final - were rained out in previous competition, with more wet weather forecasted for Durban again this week.

The two sides are expecting to make plenty of changes after losing players to the Proteas.

Hashim Amla, Temba Bavuma and Vernon Philander will miss out for the visitors, while the hosts will be minus Keshav Maharaj and Andile Phehlukwayo.

"I've never really thought much about losing some of the guys to the Proteas," Morgan added.

"That's how focussed I was on the final. Them leaving us will certainly give us some other challenges.

"But we do have guys in form and so there are various options. We’ll obviously miss them, but there are other options."

Cape Cobras coach Ashwell Prince saw his side start the T20 competition with three successive losses, before they stormed back to reach the semi-finals in emphatic fashion.

READ: Cobras eye One Day Cup title

But rain in Durban meant their tournament ended in heartbreak.

Prince believes a good start to the 50-over season is important, but also believes there were good lessons learnt from their 20-over campaign.

"We had a disastrous start to the T20 competition, so we want to obviously start this competition in the best way possible," he stated. "But we also know that it's not the end of the world if you don't, if you consider how we turned things around in the T20 competition.

"At the end there was only one team that won more games than us, so we can take heart from that. The guys showed a lot of character and if they do that again, we'll have every chance of success in this competition as well."

Play on Thursday gets under way at 13:30.

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