SA20 Gives South Africans Rare Reason to Cheer

You can hear it at Newlands on Tuesdays, Kingsmead on Wednesdays, St George’s Park on Thursdays and Boland Park on Fridays. It was not only the sound of generators keeping the lights on amid the rubble of South Africa’s broken infrastructure. But also the end of SA20’s breathless wait.

“What did you think,” the tournament organizers asked everyone arriving at Newlands after the opening match. They seemed eager for answers, as if anticipating a list of what they could have done better. The list was short: all good. Most of it, at least.

The sell-out crowd witnessed a match featuring Jos Buttler, Jason Roy, David Miller, Eoin Morgan, Tabraiz Shamsi, Dewald Brewis, Sam Curran, Rashid Khan and Jofra Archer. He saw Buttler hit 51 off 42 balls. Brewis score an unbeaten 70 off 41 balls, and Archer – after being out for 17 months with injuries – bowl with reasonable fire to take 3/27.

Mumbai Indians Cape Town sweat it out in their iconic blue shirts as they beat Paarl Royals by eight wickets with 27 balls to spare

If there was anything to be said about it, it was the one-sidedness of stability. Mumbai Indians Cape Town sweated it out in their iconic blue shirts as they beat Paarl Royals by eight wickets with 27 balls to spare. Not that the organizers could have planned for it.

Furthermore, matters were put to rest the next day in Durban. Where the Joburg Super Kings recovered from 27/4 to reach 190/6, not least because Donovan Ferreira scored an unbeaten 82 off 40 balls. Quinton de Kock’s innings of 78 off 52 balls was not good. JSK won a remarkable game by 16 runs: enough to bring home the Super Giants of Durban.

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Up, up and away in the stands at the south end of the ground, Steven Bloy, a health, risk and safety manager in the sugar industry and brother of Centurion curator Brian Bloy, stood as if to stretch his legs, a muscular left paw stuck. And caught a six as Ferreira lofted it down the ground off Senuran Muthusamy. If no one else does during the tournament. Bloy will keep the entire R1 million – USD57,700 – prize money awarded for the crowd catch.

Some may have thought they were about to wake up and smell the diesel of disaster. When the ground’s two pylons of floodlights went dark in the middle of the innings. But this was a temporary setback due to the need to refuel generators between innings, and the lights, cameras and action resumed on cue.

Sudden burst of laughter in South African cricket

The usually calm Shaun Pollock was flabbergasted enough to confuse overs. And wickets in the commentary: “28 for two after zero.” He corrected himself, but the original laughed at South African cricket’s sudden hilarity. The biggest crowd Kingsmead has seen in decades went home happy despite the home side having finished on the wrong side of the result.

Play was interrupted by lightning in Gkebera on Thursday, a rare occurrence for matches in the Eastern Cape. But that could not stop Phil Salt from opening and finishing the Pretoria Capitals’ innings of 193/6 with an unbeaten 77 off 47 balls. Salt and Wayne Parnell, who scored all three runs apart from his nine-ball 29 not out. Studded with fours and sixes, stitched an unbroken 13-ball 36-run partnership. 2/18 of that.

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The weather in Paarl on Friday could not have been more different

The weather in Paarl on Friday could not have been more different. The temperature had reached 30 °C before noon. And the prize for being the first to reach the ground before 1.30 pm was a precious place in the shade under the trees at the edge of the grass. That and, thanks to those generators, relief from blackouts scheduled to rob Paarl of power from 10 a.m. to 2.30 p.m.

The Royals responded to their defeat on Tuesday by scoring 81 runs through JSK and getting to their target inside 11 overs. Bjorn Fortuyn and Evan Jones shared six wickets, and Lungi Ngidi. Playing in his first match after returning from the Test series in Australia, produced his best performance in months. Ngidi claimed 1/13, with only six scoring shots coming from his bowling, half of them in his final over. His rip-roaring celebration after Faf du Plessis’ top edge reached deep third was a thing of raw and powerful beauty. Perhaps it helps not to have played in a South Africa shirt.

The result represented a surprising reversal for both teams. And while the match was even more one-sided than the opening encounter. It restored the balance of unpredictability that is a major selling point of the format – which the tournament needed to maintain an early focus. Have earned And, as the only franchise from small-town South Africa, staying competitive won’t hurt the Royals narrative.