St Andrew's finally get over the line at Schools T20 National Finals

St Andrew's College (College) finally broke their duck with a superb seven wicket victory over their namesakes St Andrew's School (Bloem) from Bloemfontein in their fourth match of the Coca-Cola Schools T20 National Finals at Tuks University on Saturday afternoon.

In a high scoring match Warriors reps St Andrew's timed their chase to perfection to cruise over the line with three balls remaining against the Knights defending champions.

This while Eastern Cape's other rep, Coastal Focus School Hudson Park crashed to their fourth loss of the competition with a woeful 47-run defeat against the Inland Focus School Queens High.

For College they will be elated to finally get off the mark, especially since they were up against it after Bloem batted first and set them 185 to win.

The Bloem innings was built around two half centuries, Henre Koekemoer who hammered a 29-ball 63 at the top of the order and then 51 off 37 balls from Pheko Moletsane guided the middle and lower order as they reached 184/8 at the end of their 20 overs.

Guy Rushmere with 3/32 was the pick of the bowlers for College, while Malcolm Macgregor also impressed with 2/21.

Two early wickets then had College in a spot of bother in the chase on 39/2 at a stage, but top counter attacking cricket from Callum Francis and Matthew Schaefer took them to 114 before Francis fell for well played 39-ball 58.

Francis then found another willing partner in Rushmere and they powered College home with Francis finishing unbeaten on 72 off 43 deliveries, which earned him the man of the match award and Rushmere on 32 off 18 balls to seal a great all round effort.

College will now face Cobras reps Paarl Gimnasium in their final match of the nationals on Sunday morning.

In the Hudson match, it was a disastrous batting collapse that led to their heavy defeat against Queens.

Queens batted first they managed to score a competitive 141/8 in their 20 overs, with Hudson's youngster Akhona Ratyana again impressing  with 4/26 off four overs, while his captain Nonelela Yikha also contributed with 2/27.

Chasing 142 to win Hudson were then cruising on 52/1 in the seventh over with Nqaba Peter (29) and Kwakhanya Gcekwa (20) looking in good form.

However a disastrous collapse then saw them loose four wickets for just one run over the next nine balls as they crashed to 53/5 by the start of the ninth over.

They were then never able to recover from that and ended up limping to 94 all out in 19.2 overs.

Hudson have one last chance to end their national campaign on a high, but will face a tough task in taking on Titans representatives Waterkloof in their final match of the nationals on Sunday morning.