Spinner Roelof van der Merwe welcomed the Player of the Match award, as the Tshwane Spartans beat the Paarl Rocks by eight wickets in Friday’s Mzansi Super League fixture at SuperSport Park in Centurion.

Van der Merwe took three key wickets in the Rocks’ final total of 126 all out, which the Spartans surpassed with 30 deliveries to spare on the back of batsman AB de Villiers’ unbeaten 69.

Also see: De Kock concedes ‘momentum is gone’

The key dismissal of Rocks captain Faf du Plessis was among Van der Merwe’s telling haul.

‘It was good to have one of those games where it comes out nicely and it all comes off for yo. It was a good pitch for batting here, so you had to keep your lengths away from the batsmen. It paid off for me,’ said Van der Merwe.

The left-armer was the lone spinner in a Spartans bowling attack otherwise lined with fast bowlers Lutho Sipamla, Morne Morkel and Lungi Ngidi.

‘If you bowl behind seamers like that, it makes my job a whole lot easier. We can take a bit of momentum into the next game, as the bowlers are doing really well,’ he added.

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