The SA20 season continues on Saturday with a double header of action where by the end of the day every team will have got their campaign underway. The first game sees the Paarl Royals hosting the defending champions Sunrisers Eastern Cape.
The Royals begin their season in this match and will be looking to get off to a winning start at home while the Sunrisers were walloped in their first game and will not be wanting to drop a second match to start their title defence.
Paarl Royals
The Paarl Royals went into the tournament as the rank outsiders to win the event and they have a chance here to show that they are better than the billing that they were given. If they can open up with a win against the defending champions then it would set them up nicely. Paarl have made the playoffs in both seasons of this competition to date so they haven’t been among the weakest in the event which should give them some confidence here.
One of the reasons why they have gone well in the two previous editions of the competition is that their home ground isn’t always the easiest to bat on and that makes home advantage significant for them. One issue they might have this term is they look a little on the light side when it comes to the batting, at least on paper. They certainly look like a team which is going to be stronger with the ball rather than the bat, which is no bad thing given the difficulty of scoring on their home ground.
Sunrisers Eastern Cape
To say that the beginning of their title defence didn’t go to plan for the Sunrisers Eastern Cape would be something of an understatement. They were absolutely thrashed by the MI Cape Town outfit on home soil and now they will be looking to rebound in this one because they will create pressure for themselves if they drop their first two matches, especially with their net run rate taking the battering that it took in that defeat in the opener.
To be fair to the Sunrisers, they looked to have the MI Cape Town innings under control at 132-7 with 21 balls remaining but they couldn’t manage the last couple of overs well enough and ended up chasing a score bigger than they should have been and never got up and running with the bat at all. They will be looking to perform better at the back end of the bowling innings here but if they do that there is a decent batting unit there, although it will need to dust itself off and forget about that first game.
Special Offer
Open a new Sporting Index account and bet £10 on the tournament (min odds 1/2) to get £20 in free bets (2x£10 free bets) to use on any sports market! Click the image below to take advantage of this great offer! 18+ T&Cs apply. Gamble Responsibly.
Key Players
David Miller is the captain of the Paarl Royals and you would imagine if they are going to win matches he is going to have a big role to play with the bat in hand. If he can explode into life on a tough pitch it will do no harm.
Aiden Markram was probably the only Sunrisers Eastern Cape batter who got going in that first game but he wasn’t around for nearly long enough to make an impression on the run chase. He’ll look to go much better in this one.
Betting
I was interested to see what the run line would be for this match. We’ve had a couple of matches where the ball has flown to the boundary but that might not be the case here. South Africa played an ODI here against Pakistan where neither side got bowled out and at the same time neither team made 250 which in the modern game is getting more and more unheard of and that tells us that the square isn’t playing brilliantly in this part of the world.
When you then factor in that the Paarl Royals look a little light of batting power and the Sunrisers Eastern Cape arrive here off the back of being rolled for 77 and haven’t had a huge amount of time to rebound from that effort, the scoring looks like it is going to be low here. At 319.5 we’re looking at scores of 160 needed for this line to be covered and generally this wicket gets better the longer the season goes on so first up I’m happy to play the under.
Tips
Back Under 319.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
Be the first to comment on "SA20 2025 – Paarl Royals vs Sunrisers Eastern Cape Tips and Betting Preview"