Beuran Hendricks slays Dragons to power Western Province into T20 semi-finals

Cape Town — Western Province have issued a serious statement of intent at the CSA T20 Challenge in Gqeberha.

The only unbeaten team in the competition confirmed their table-topping status with an emphatic 84-run bonus point win over the North West Dragons. It also ensured the Newlands-based team's progression to the semi-finals - the first team to achieve this distinction.

Although the WP batters had managed to post a competitive total of 164/8, courtesy of a half-century from Jonathan Bird (53 off 44 balls) and some lower-order hitting by captain Wayne Parnell (33 not out off 17 balls), it was the bowling unit that simply blew away the Dragons.

Proteas left-arm seamer Beuran Hendricks set the tone with an inspired new-ball spell of 3-0-13-4. It tore the heart out of the Dragons' run chase and they were simply never able to recover from 17/4 after just 3.1 overs.

Hendricks was certainly helped with some brilliant catching, in particular by skipper Parnell, who threw himself acrobatically to his right to claim a two-handed catch goalkeeper style at mid-off.

And in true fashion of a team growing into a confident unit, Province never took their foot off the throat of the Dragons with leg-spinner Junaid Dawood maintening the pressure with an equally brilliant spell of 4-0-22-3 to control the middle overs.

Dawood claimed the important wicket of Proteas all-rounder Dwaine Pretorius before bagging Lesego Senokwane and Nono Pongolo in successive deliveries to reduce North West to 41/8.

The Potchefstroom outfit would certainly have expected more from a contest in which they had actually reduced WP to 134/8, courtesy of Muthusamy's equally impressive figures of 4/20, with just two overs remaining.

However, it was at this stage