MI Cape Town keep their play-off hopes alive

MI Cape Town have revived their Betway SA20 play-off chances with a three-wicket victory over Sunrisers Eastern Cape at Newlands on Friday evening.

The defending champions collected four valuable points to lift them to 14 points with their all-important final round-robin fixture against Sunrisers at St George’s Park on Sunday remaining.

MI Cape Town, however, missed out on the bonus point, which resulted in Pretoria Capitals (20 points) joining Sunrisers (24 points) and Paarl Royals (24 points) as the third team to advance to the play-offs.

The home team were spurred on by a fifth successive sold-out Newlands crowd from the moment Trent Boult had the in-form Quinton de Kock caught behind the very first ball of the innings.

MI Cape Town maintained the pressure throughout with Boult rediscovering his form with 3/28 before Corbin Bosch closed out the innings with figures of 4/34.

All the Sunrisers batters struggled to adapt to a two-paced Newlands surface with only Marco Jansen striking the ball with any sort of freedom. The lanky allrounder stroked four sixes and three boundaries in his 23-ball 48 and along with a sedate 28 off 27 balls from James Coles, the Sunrisers posted 139/9 in their allotted 20 overs.

Jansen took his batting form straight into the MI Cape Town innings with the left-armer removing both Rassie van der Dussen and the in-form Ryan Rickelton in the Powerplay to provide Sunrisers with the start they would have been hoping for.

But Reeza Hendricks (41 off 43 balls) dug his heels in to play the anchor role to ensure that despite MI Cape Town continuing to lose wickets, they would inch closer to the required total.

The four Player of the Match candidates were Bosch, Boult, Hendricks and Jansen with Bosch taking the honours.

Allrounder George Linde struck a breezy 31 off 18 balls and new import Kieron Pollard contributed 20 off 14 but still Sunrisers stayed in their fight.

It became tricky towards the end when Hendricks was dismissed off the final ball of the penultimate over, caught at deep cover off Anrich Nortje, leaving MI Cape Town requiring four runs off the final over.

For MI Cape Town and the Newlands faithful, Sunrisers allrounder Senuran Muthusamy (2/25) over-stepped to offer up Bosch a free hit to close out the game and keep the champions alive in the competition.