South Africa is another nation where cricket enjoys a lot of popularity. The betting site online 1xBet allows you to place wagers on this sport at any moment. One of the newest professional competitions of this sport in this part of the world is the SA20.
As its name might already suggest, it features the Twenty20 variation of the game. It is contested by 6 teams from all across the nation, which are:
- MI Cape Town;
- the Durban’s Super Giants;
- the Joburg Super Kings;
- the Paarl Royals;
- the Pretoria Capitals;
- and the Sunrisers Eastern Cape.
It is worth noting that this isn’t the 1st time that South Africa tried to establish a local professional Twenty20 cricket competition. The 1st attempt was the T20 Global League, which was established in 2017 but lasted only 1 season before being scrapped due to problems finding sponsors.
A 2nd attempt was made in 2018 with the Mzansi Super League. While this competition had a seemingly better start than its predecessor, only 2 seasons could be played, with the last of it taking place in 2019. The 1xBet platform is an online betting site where you can always wager on cricket competitions that take place in South Africa and elsewhere too.
The Mzansi Super League was scheduled to continue with its 3rd season in 2020. Unfortunately for South African cricket fans, we all know too well what happened during that year. Those external events led to the cancellation of multiple sporting events and competitions too, including the Mzansi Super League. It seemed that Twenty20 cricket was really unlucky in this part of the world.
But, as they say, the 3rd time’s the charm. A new attempt to establish a professional Twenty20 competition in South Africa was attempted in 2022. This time, Cricket South Africa secured sponsorship and TV deals in order to make the tournament work. The name of this brand new competition would be SA20.
The tournament kicks off
Finally, after much deliberation, the 1st season of the SA20 took place between the 20th of January and 12th of February 2023. The 6 aforementioned teams were organized in a single group where a double round-robin would be played. This meant that each of the 6 teams would face its 5 opponents on 2 occasions, in 1 home and 1 away match. The Indian Premier League is another great cricket competition, and at https://india.1xbet.com/line/cricket/988155-india-premier-league you can always wager on it.
33 matches were played in total, with the 30 initial matches being part of the round-robin stage. Here the Pretoria Capitals secured 1st place with 7 victories and 3 defeats. They, alongside the Jobung Super Kings, the Sunrisers Eastern Cape and the Paarl Royals qualified for the semi-finals, as they finished in the top 4 places.
On the other side, the Durban’s Super Giants and MI Cape Town were eliminated after finishing in 5th and 6th place respectively.
The 1st semi-final saw the Pretoria Capitals defeating the Paarl Royals by 29 runs. And in the 2nd one, the Sunrisers Eastern Cape won by 14 runs. All of this led to the final that took place on the 12th of February 2023 at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg. It is worth noting that the match was originally going to take place on the 11th. However, a very strong rain forced it to be delayed by 24 hours.
After a highly electric match, the Sunrisers Eastern Cape defeated the Pretoria Capitals by 4 wickets. For this reason, the Sunrisers Eastern Cape were the 1st ever champions of the SA20.
This concluded the 1st season of the entertaining SA20, which, hopefully, will work better than its predecessors. At least, it has been off to a much more promising start, and you can wager on all matches from this competition by visiting the 1xBet platform.
Some players that had great performances and deserve to be highlighted are Jos Buttler and Roelof van der Merwe. The former was the top scorer of runs with 391 across the season, while the latter was the top wicket taker with 20 in total.
