The First Four, First Six and First 50
SA20 Confetti from the first match, well, the second match...
Season 1 was a mangled car wreck for MI Cape Town. They managed three wins in 10 games, the least number of wins, and finished at the bottom of the table. They needed something different for season 2. So they kicked it off with a different opening pair. They promoted Rassie van der Dussen from first drop to the number one spot and asked Ryan Rickelton to open with him.
I like the van der Dussen-Rickelton pairing, it’s like watching the master and his student bat together. When Rickelton joined the Lions he was unsure about his technique. “I was trying to find myself as a cricketer at the time, so I was changing my technique every winter. I watched how Rassie went about things so I adopted quite a similar approach of standing quite tall and then crouching and getting to that good position at the point of release. Yeah, so kind of went his way with a couple of my own tweaks into it which favour me,” he told me in a chat.
Technique is not the only thing Rickelton borrowed from van der Dussen. When van der Dussen arrived at the Lions, he was an opening bat. Unfortunately for him, he was fourth in line, the Lions had too many openers on their books. So, van der Dussen had to rejig his game to suit the middle order. Rickelton went through the same transformation at the Lions.
That is the Ryan Rickelton who opened the batting for MI Cape Town with Dewald Brevis in season 1. That version of Ryan Rickelton scored 146 runs in seven matches for an average of 20.85 at a strike rate of 113.17. In 10 matches, Rickelton managed 16 fours and three sixes.
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That is not the same Rickelton MI Cape Town has in season 2. This Rickelton doesn’t need cortisone injections to dull the pain in his ATFL. His ankle is working just fine. He has no mental baggage. The 2024 version of Ryan Rickelton scored the first four and six of the season off back-to-back deliveries as he plundered 23 runs off Richard Gleeson’s over - the most expensive over so far this season. He was timing the ball nicely.
Rickelton faced 24 deliveries to chalk his maiden SA20 50, and he did it in style, by walloping a Keshav Maharaj delivery for six over cow corner. It was also the first half-century of the 2024 edition of SA20. Rickelton finished the match with 87 runs off 51 deliveries for a strike rate of 170.58. His knock featured six fours and six sixes.
MI Cape Town wanted different and Rickelton gave them different. A good different. But, the visitors needed more than Rickelton’s brilliance to secure a win in their first outing because the Durban Super Giants had the mercurial Heinrich Klaasen (85 off 35 balls) and a hard-hitting Matthew Breetzke (39 from 24), and rain plus the DLS method.
The first four, first six and first 50 of the season have all been spoken for by Ryan Rickelton. Now we wait for the first ton, first three-for and first five-for.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS