It will be a repeat of last season’s final when the Warriors face the Dolphins in their Momentum One-Day Cup semifinal in Durban on Thursday (1.30pm).
The weather played havoc with last year’s showpiece and in the end the teams shared the trophy.
Durban has become a happy hunting ground for the Warriors in recent seasons and the team will be hoping Kingsmead looks favourably on them again this time around.
Not that the Warriors need any favours.
They have been one of the most consistent white-ball sides for pretty much a decade now and there is plenty of talent within the Class of 2019 to enthuse over. The trio of talented 20-year-olds in Lutho Sipamla, Matthew Breetzke and Sinethemba Qeshile have provided glimpses of what the future holds for the Warriors and it looks promising.
But back in the present, Warriors captain Jon-Jon Smuts will be hoping the three of them stand up and be counted along with the rest of his team against the Dolphins.
“We’ve had some good results in Durban of late,” Smuts said this week. “We play well in those conditions. It’s probably becoming more like a PE pitch, it’s slower which kind of suits us. We will have to assess conditions when we get there on Thursday.
“We playing against another good side. We know that they are a strong side and they will also be up for the challenge.”
The Warriors snapped a four-match losing streak in fine style by thumping the Cobras at St George’s Park on Saturday. That was just the tonic they needed.
“When you have a convincing win like that by nine wickets it’s obviously a boost for the squad. We had a small blip in the middle but we knew that we were not at our best.
“That’s the exciting thing for us. When we are playing at our best we’ve won most of our games.
“Bar three overs against the Titans in Benoni, we played really well in that game.
“Other than that we’ve had a pretty successful campaign.
“It has been a proper squad contribution – everyone has put their hands up at different stages during the campaign.”
There has been a noticeable trend of teams wanting to bat second in this competition and it would not be surprising if Smuts opts to bowl first if he wins the toss.
“I think most grounds now in SA are becoming bat-second pitches purely based on that we are getting to the back end of the competition. “Generally, the ball always skids on under lights, there’s a bit more dew this time of year.
"But I think too many teams, when they bat first they trying to figure out what a good score is, instead of trying to get a match-winning score.
“When we played against the Dolphins in PE we were probably a bit too cautious up front instead of going out and expressing ourselves in getting a really big score.”
Warriors squad: Gihahn Cloete, Matthew Breetzke, Jon-Jon Smuts (capt), Sinethemba Qeshile, Yaseen Vallie, Onke Nyaku, Sithembile Langa, Thomas Kaber, Sisanda Magala, Andrew Birch, Lutho Sipamla, Jade de Klerk, Lesiba Ngoepe, Marco Marais.