MI Cape Town are SA20 champions after ruthless display with bat and ball

MI Cape Town are crowned champions. (Photo: Ron Gaunt / SA20 / Sportzpics).

9 Feb 2025

After two seasons as basement dwellers, MI Cape Town crushed the two-time defending champions Sunrisers Eastern Cape by 76 runs in the SA20 final.

There’s finally a new SA20 champion after MI Cape Town triumphed over the two-time reigning champions Sunrisers Eastern Cape by 76 runs at a sold-out Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg.

After spending two seasons as the basement dwellers, MI Cape Town were deserved champions this season, having only lost two of the 12 matches they’ve played all season.

The victory was set up in the first six overs of both innings as MI Cape Town’s 181 for six proved too much for Sunrisers as they were bowled out for 105 in the 19th over.

Sunrisers Eastern Cape came into the match with their bowling attack having been their strength throughout the tournament. But a relentless display of attacking batting, despite wickets falling throughout, saw MI Cape Town post a slightly above-par score of 181 after winning the toss and electing to bat.

For a team as reliant on their bowlers as the Sunrisers, it was always going to be an uphill battle for them.

None of the Sunrisers batters cut loose at any stage, with the highest strike rate for a double-digit score being Englishman Tom Abell’s 120 (30 off 25).

By contrast, MI Cape Town’s batters continued to pulverise the white leather against or beyond the boundary cushioning, regardless of the state of their innings.

MI Cape Town SA20 Fast bowler Kagiso Rabada of MI Cape Town celebrates the wicket of Marco Jansen. Rabada took a magnificent 4-25. (Photo: Kagiso Rabada / SA20 / Sportzpics).

MI threatened to take the match well out of Sunrisers’ reach with a score in excess of 200 on a few occasions, but every time they looked likely, a wicket would fall.

Ryan Rickelton (33 off 15) started the carnage, Dewald Brevis (38 off 18) looked in the mood to do serious damage and after spending most of his innings at a run-a-ball, and Connor Esterhuizen (39 off 26) was just starting to strike the ball sweetly before he was dismissed.

None of them went on to play a match-defining innings but in combination, along with cameos from George Linde (20 off 14) and Rassie van der Dussen (23 off 25), the side from Cape Town posted a competitive score despite losing eight batters’ wickets.

Openers against openers

In the hotly anticipated match-up, Sunrisers Eastern Cape’s star opening bowlers against MI Cape Town’s shining opening batters started the proceedings.

The latter got on top early, targeting Marco Jansen – who had 11 powerplay wickets before the final – in particular.

Rickelton and Van der Dussen took 31 runs off his two powerplay overs to guide their side to a fast start of 41 after four overs. Six sixes were struck in the first five overs – four clubbed by Rickelton – before Craig Overton picked up the destructive left-hander with a clever slower ball.

Dewald Brevis of MI Cape Town scored 38 off 18 deliveries in the final. (Photo: Shaun Roy / SA20 / Sportzpics)

Marco Jansen of Sunrisers Eastern Cape returned figures of 2-39 in the Betway SA20 final against MI Cape Town. (Photo: Ron Gaunt / SA20 / Sportzpics).

Sunrisers Eastern Cape pegged down the scoring rate through the spin of Liam Dawson who only conceded seven runs in his first two overs while dismissing Van der Dussen via a smart stumping by Tristan Stubbs.

MI Cape Town didn’t run away with the scoring rate at any stage because of the regular fall of wickets, led by another English star, Richard Gleeson.

The tall right-arm was the stand-out bowler for Sunrisers Eastern Cape, with his extra pace and tight lines and varying lengths bothering the MI batters.

He only conceded 10 runs off his first three overs, taking two wickets, before the final over of the innings, off his bowling, went for 12 courtesy of two streaky boundaries off the blade of Delano Potgieter and Kagiso Rabada.

MI Cape Town SA20 MI Cape Town are crowned champions. (Photo: Ron Gaunt / SA20 / Sportzpics).

Swing kings

An exhibition of new-ball bowling by Trent Boult and Rabada broke the back of the Sunrisers’ chase as they got the ball to move through the air under the Wanderers floodlights in the early evening.

Off the first three overs of the chase they only had nine runs on the board and two wickets were down, to Boult and Rabada.

Tom Abell and Tony de Zorzi rebuilt with a backs-to-the-wall partnership of 57 runs off 42 balls. The expanding pressure of the increasing run rate meant the set batters had to play more attacking after the steady but slow reassembling of the innings.

It led to Abell, De Zorzi and skipper Aiden Markram losing their wickets in consecutive overs to spinners Linde and Rashid Khan.

The match was practically wrapped up then in the 12th over, with the required run rate climbing to 12 and their highest run scorer in the tournament, Markram, already dismissed.

Rabada picked up three wickets in his return two-over spell to finish off the innings and see MI Cape Town become the first team besides Sunrisers to lift the SA20 trophy. DM

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South Africa

Openers against openers

Swing kings