Match-winning awareness make Sunrisers dangerous as SA20 playoffs loom

Rather than fret over what has been an inconsistent campaign in this year’s Betway SA20, the Sunrisers Eastern Cape are trusting that their tournament-winning know-how will come to the fore in the final week. 

The Sunrisers will no longer be able to rely on their partisan home crowd as they hunt their third title, but assistant coach Russell Domingo said they weren’t concerned.

“Aiden (Markram) has been really good at making the team understand that, while we haven’t played perfect cricket, we also haven’t clicked yet. But we are still in the competition and we are a team with really good match-winners, and if we do click on the day, then a lot of teams are nervous about playing us,” he said. 

It’s a significant advantage that none of the other three playoff teams have. The Sunrisers have won the previous editions of the competition and taken different routes to those successes. In Season 1 they started slowly, snuck into third spot and won a semifinal in Centurion, thanks to a hundred from their skipper, Markram. 

Last year, they finished on top of the table and in the revised play-off format that will be used again this week, twice smashed the Durban Super Giants to earn their second title. “We’ve won this tournament two years in a row, there’s a know-how about winning these big games,” said Domingo. 

Not that it was needed, but yesterday they gave themselves a timely boost before the play-offs with a 48-run thumping of the Paarl Royals in front of their boisterous home crowd at St George’s Park. 

There was even recognition from supporters for this morning’s T20 under-19 women’s final in which South Africa face India, illustrating their excitement at how engaged they’ve been with the sport’s success in this country recently.

The Royals had secured second spot before the start of yesterday’s match, and used the opportunity to give some of the wider squad a chance but, even more importantly, get some match time into their new recruit, Australian Mitchell Owen. 

“What we’ve seen from Mitch in the last few weeks in Australia certainly warrants the tag of ‘match winner’, which is what we’ll need at this stage of the competition,” said the Royals assistant coach Richard das Neves. 

Owen starred for the Hobart Hurricanes in the final of the Big Bash competition last week, blasting 104 off 39 balls to propel the Tasmanian franchise to its first title. He joined the Royals last Thursday as a replacement for Joe Root, who had a profound impact and was a key component in their second place finish. 

It wasn’t just Root’s 279 runs, which included three half centuries, but also his involvement off the field, where young players like Lhuan-dre Pretorius and Rubin Hermann have sponged information from him. 

In the two matches since Root’s departure to join England in India, the Royals have struggled to fill the hole at the top of their order. Yesterday’s collapse, which saw them lose five wickets in the power play, was even worse than last Thursday, when they finished on 42/4 after the first six overs against the Joburg Super Kings. 

By virtue of finishing second, the Royals will get two bites of the cherry in the playoffs. They face table topping MI Cape Town in the “qualifier” in Gqeberha on Tuesday, with the winner going straight through to next Saturday’s final. 

The losing team plays the winner from Wednesday’s “eliminator” between the Sunrisers and the Super Kings in Centurion on Thursday.  “In this system, since it was started in the IPL, teams finishing one and two always seem to end up winning the trophy. So, it was very important for us to get into (top two),” said Das Neves.