Saturday produced an incredible day’s cricket in the Betway SA20 with fluctuating emotions for the MI Cape Town, Pretoria Capitals and Joburg Super Kings supporters.
The two teams who watched the drama unfold, Sunrisers Eastern Cape and Paarl Royals are safe in the knowledge about their play-off fate. But, there is no ‘dead-rubber’ in SA20 and much remains to play for when they meet at St George’s Park today to conclude the group stage.
Durban’s Super Giants’ loss against JSK has left the door open for Sunrisers to finish top of the standings going into the knockout stage – an outright win will move the Orange Army from 29 points above DSG’s 32.
“It’s a relief to already be in the top two,” said captain Aiden Markram after beating Royals on Friday at Boland Park. “So, we’re looking forward to our last game at home, it’s going to be a nice vibe at St George’s Park which is up there with the best support you can get around the world. I feel it will be one last dance there in front of a fantastic crowd.”
The fact that Sunrisers have been able to leave Ottniel Baartman, their highest-ranked player on the Bowler of the Season leaderboard, out shows much about their depth. Particularly considering Daniel Worrall is just one below Baartman and Marco Jansen is just a few rankings points worse of.
The latter’s unbeaten 71 runs, from the unexpected No 4 position (and 2/34 when bowling), also helped him open up a handy lead over Tristan Stubbs in the race for Rising Star of the Season.
“(Promoting Jansen) was to take the spin on. When Royals’ spinners get in a good rhythm at Boland Park they’re quite tough so we thought we’d try mix it up and try something new. He’s a great player of spin, he’s got ‘long levers’ and when he hits them, they stay hit - you don’t have to worry about the boundary size really. Sometimes those sort of things work and sometimes not but he has a lot of ability and we’ve seen quite a few knocks now for South Africa and Sunrisers – he’s proving his worth big time with the bat.”
After scraping into the knockout phase, before going on to win the title, this time Sunrisers have comfortably made the play-offs with six wins from their nine matches to date.
“Firstly, we have a great bunch of guys who are more than happy to fight tooth-and-nail out there on the park. We don’t really speak about outcomes like winning and losing but rather try get into a competition with the opposition and see where it takes us. We have a nice mix between some new guys (like Daniel Worrall and Dawid Malan), some young guys and experienced guys and they keep learning from each other because we also spend a lot of time together off the field and I think that allows for us to mingle well on the field as well.”
Meanwhile, Royals are on a three-match losing streak, and with a buoyant JSK having home ground advantage for their Eliminator fixture on Wednesday, Shane Bond and David Miller’s men in pink will need to find some form and confidence.
“(Friday) was a tough loss, but we have to bounce back on Sunday,” Miller said after Friday’s loss against Sunrisers.
“The execution hasn’t been there in our last three games so that’s an area of our game we have to sit down and talk about because we haven’t been good enough in the back end with our bowling.”
For the majority of the group stage, Lungi Ngidi, has been the leading wicket taker and top of the Bowler of the Season leaderboard but he has slipped down the ranks on both and fellow Royals bowlers Tabraiz Shamsi, Obed McCoy and Bjorn Fortuin have also moved out of the top 10 rankings.
Similarly, Jos Buttler has been the lone Royals player in the top 10 of both the Betway Player of the Season and Batter of the Season standings for a while now.
“We’re going the long way round now after being in a great position (in the top two) a couple of games ago but it is what it is and we’ve made the play-offs. On Sunday we have a few things to correct before we can think about the next Wednesday’s Eliminator.”
The match starts at 3.30pm.
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