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Pretoria Capitals get beaten again, but all is not lost

The Pretoria Capitals hurt their chances of making the SA20 play-offs when they lost to MI Cape Town during a high-scoring match in Centurion on Thursday, but there is still a glimmer of hope for Wayne Parnell and his men.

February 2, 2024
Koos Venter 3 minutes read
Although the Pretoria Capitals lost the match in Centurion against the MI Cape Town team, Kyle Verreynne was named man of the match, after his unbeaten innings of 116 off 52 balls deprived the visitors of a bonus point and kept the home team's chance alive to reach the play-off stage. Photo: SA20

The Pretoria Capitals, who were involved in the final of the SA20 international T20 cricket tournament last season, knew before the start of Thursday night’s match against the MI Cape Town team that this dual would be one of utmost importance in determining their fate in terms of the playoffs starting next week.

All Wayne Parnell and his teammates had to do is to win their last two games convincingly – the first one at home and the other away – against the MI Cape Town team. This would see them finish fourth on the log and therefore ensure that they would be the last team to secure a play-off spot.

This task seemed very achievable, as the team from Cape Town was still at the bottom of the log on Thursday, with one league point less than the Pretoria Capitals.

However, Robin Peterson and his men had other plans and they didn’t come to Centurion just to finish their league obligations – they came to keep their own slim chance of qualifying for the play-offs alive.

After the captain of the Capetonians, Kieron Pollard, won the toss, he chose to bat first on a beautiful evening in Centurion, which did not posed any obvious threat of rain.

Rassie van der Dussen (21 off 9 balls) and especially Ryan Rickelton (90 off 45 balls) started the innings for MI Cape Town like an express train at full speed and their bats flashed in the last sunlight of the day from the very first ball.

Solid innings by Dewald Brevis (66 off 32 balls) and Sam Curran (22 off 12 balls) enabled the visitors to eventually finish with a big total of 248/4, posing a huge challenge to the home side’s batsmen.

Brevis, especially in the last two overs together with his captain, Kieran Pollard (27 off 7 balls), really opened his shoulders to hit the boundary shots one after the other.

Those 40-plus runs in the last two overs by Brevis and Pollard took the visitors’ total to 248, meaning the Pretoria Capitals had to bat at an average of 12.45 runs per over to win. Could they do it on a relatively batsman-friendly pitch?

The home team’s opening batsmen, Phil Salt (5 off 4 balls) and especially Will Jacks (26 off 9) clearly accepted the challenge and these two men started the innings at a solid pace, but before Salt could really get going, he was caught of Sam Curran’s bowling by Nealan van Heerden.

Wayne Parnell led his team by example again on Thursday when he took three wickets and then scored 23 runs off 25 balls – the third highest score of the home team – against MI Cape Town.
Photo: SA20

Then came the big disaster, with Kagiso Rabada and the Sri Lankan fast bowler, Nuwan Thushara, starting to take wickets of the home team almost in tandem.

In the space of four overs, Rabada got rid of Will Jacks and Theunis de Bruyn (4 off 7 balls), while Thushara’s victims were Rilee Rossouw (0) and Colin Ingram (0) with consecutive balls, after which he also sent Shane Dadswell (0) walking back to the pavilion a few balls later.

The Pretoria Capitals’ captain, Wayne Parnell, joined Kyle Verreynne at 42/6 and the two tried hard to save what could be saved, until Parnell (23 off 25 balls) was caught by Rabada from the bowling of Pollard with the score on 120.

After that, the bonus point win for the MI Cape Town team was basically a formality, while all that was left for the Pretoria Capitals was to try to survive and not get bowled out.

The Capetians got their victory as they restricted the home side to 214/8.

But one big factor went in favour of Parnell and his teammates. Verreynne, who ended up hitting a decisive unbeaten 116 runs off 52 balls, in the process also prevented the Capetonians from earning a bonus point, after he had taken the team past 196 runs (the bonus cut off point) in the 19th over.

This means that the MI Cape Town team now has only 13 points on the log, the same as the Joburg Super Kings.

The back door is therefore still open for the Pretoria Capitals to slip in and finish fourth on the log.

If they can beat the MI Cape Town team on Saturday at Newlands and prevent Pollard and his men from earning any league points, they will finish on 14 points, one point ahead of the Cape Town side.

Then they have to hope that the leaders on the log, the Durban Super Giants, can do the same with the Joburg Super Kings a little later on Saturday. In this way, the men from Centurion can still qualify for the play-off matches.

 

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At Caxton, every story is written by humans. We use AI only to perform quality checks - never to generate the news. Happy reading!
February 2, 2024
Koos Venter 3 minutes read

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Koos Venter

Koos Venter is an experienced journalist who started his career 35 years ago, before the days of cellphones, modern computer systems, the internet and digital cameras, as a correspondent for Nexus, the former national magazine of the Department of Correctional Services. He has since worked for various other publications in all aspects of news coverage, as a columnist and in the production side of newspapers and online publications. Since 2007 he has specialized as a sports writer, while he is also regularly used as an analyst and commentator by several radio stations.
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