Daryn Dupavillon picked two wickets in two balls in his very first over for Pretoria Capitals against Sunrisers Eastern Cape in the SA20 on Tuesday. With Zak Crawley already in the dugout, the score reading 4/1, Dupavillion darted in and first removed David Bedingham and then Aiden Markram for a golden duck. The 4/1 score became 4/3. Dupavillion was unable to convert it into a hat-trick but a maiden two-wicket over set the tone for things to come.
Marco Jansen provided some respectability with a 35-ball 51-run knock and steered the two-time defending champions Sunrisers Eastern Cape to 113 runs. But that was little even on a tricky Centurion pitch, in the end, as the Capitals chased the target down with six-wickets in hand and four overs to spare.
Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Pretoria Capitals started strongly, courtesy Will Jacks and Rahmanullah Gurbaz, to race off to 23/0 in three overs. But the wickets of Gurbaz, Kyle Verreynne, Jacks and Rilee Rossouw across six overs gave Sunrisers Eastern Cape a glimmer of hope.
Those were dashed by a level-headed display by Marques Ackerman (39 off 30) and Liam Livingsone (14 off 14) who forged a 54-run stand to seal the deal.
Eathen Bosch was adjudged the Player of the Match for being economical throughout and getting the start that efefctively put the game past Sunrisers.
Dupavillon acknowledged his contributions in the post-match press conference.
"He (Eathen) makes it easy when he comes out and bowls like that, what he went at 3-4 an over. But we knew with the rain around it was vital to win that toss and obviously to get the opportunity to bowl first on that wicket, it served us in good stead," said Dupavillon.
"We felt in that game in Durban (against Durban's Super Giants) we didn't hit the stumps enough, so a lot of our conversation this week was just trying to get the ball on top of the stumps and so on. I think the first two overs, Eathen and I were lucky enough to get a bit of swing with the cross breeze, so I put that in with the spongy wicket and things worked in our favour," he added.
Sunrisers Eastern Cape are yet to post a win this season, losing all three of their matches by serious margins. Batting coach Russell Domingo pressed on the need to get things in order if they are to stage a turnaround.
"We haven't started well in this format, in this competition in the previous editions and managed to find a way and hopefully we can get into that sort of form and that sort of confidence in the next couple of weeks because we're sort of running out of time now and we need to make a play," said Domingo.