New Years Eve – Lucky for Some

New Year’s Eve proved to be the good luck charm for Pretoria Capitals and Paarl Royals with both teams opening their Betway SA20 Season 4 accounts with their respective first victories on Wednesday.

The Capitals trounced MI Cape Town by 85 runs to earn a bonus point victory at Newlands, while the Royals edged home by five wickets over the Sunrisers Eastern Cape in a thrilling run-chase at St George’s Park.

Sherfane Rutherford enjoyed a New Year’s Eve to remember with the West Indies allrounder delivering the perfect all-round performance for the Pretoria Capitals.

Rutherford (47 not out 15 balls, 6×6) and Dewald Brevis (36 not out off 13 balls, 1×4, 4×6) brought the fireworks with the bat before the Windies superstar delivered a career-best bowling performance of 4/24 to dismiss MI Cape Town for just 135 in response to the Capitals’ mammoth 220/5.

The Pretoria Capitals pair delivered an explosive 86-run partnership off just 27 balls that offset a poor Powerplay after a fit-again Kagiso Rabada had helped reduce the visitors to 36/3.

It was a belligerent exhibition of power-hitting with 92 runs for the loss of just one wicket at a run-rate of 18.2 coming in the last five overs.

The duo almost matched each other shot for shot, but it was Rutherford’s astonishing assault on Dewald Pretorius in the penultimate over that shocked the Newlands faithful. The West Indian blasted four successive maximums, which formed part of a sequence of a half dozen sixes in a row that had been kickstarted by Brevis’ double in the previous over.

It was the perfect ending after Shai Hope (45 off 30 balls, 3×4, 2×6) and Wihan Lubbe (60 off 36 balls, 7×4, 2×6) had done the initial resurrection job.

MI Cape Town’s chase was always going to be dependent on their openers Ryan Rickleton (33 off 17 balls) and Rassie van der Dussen (28 off 20 balls) and the pair duly delivered a 60-run stand within the Powerplay.

But their dismissal within a short period of each scuppered MI Cape Town’s run chase, despite Nicholas Pooran matching his fellow West Indian Rutherford by also smashing Keshav Maharaj (3/28) for four consecutive sixes in his six-ball 25.

Maharaj, though, had the last laugh by having Pooran caught in the midst of a three-wicket spell that ripped the heart out of MI Cape Town’s middle-order and ultimately the hosts’ challenge.

Earlier in the day, Paarl Royals captain David Miller masterminded his team’s successful run-chase with a timely unbeaten 71 runs off just 38 balls.