SA20: MI Cape Town v Paarl Royals Prediction & Best Bets

The two favourites of the inaugural SA20 competition go head-to-head in the later today. A star-studded MI Cape Town side takes on a Paarl Royals side full of experience at Newlands in what should be an entertaining affair. Lwanele Poswayo has the best bets and a prediction for the SA20 opener.

Jos Buttler

Jos Buttler is one of the best batters in T20 cricket and will be the main man for the Paarl Royals. Buttler scored a brilliant 90 in the warm-up game recently and will be coming into this game full of confidence. He’s always done well in T20 competitions and I expect this one to be no different.

MI Cape Town have a great attack but I expect him to weather the storm early on and take advantage of the middle overs. Back England’s T20I captain to get off to a brilliant start in this competition.

Sam Curran

I expect a lot from the Englishmen in this game and in the tournament and Curran is definitely the man to watch. He was superb in last year’s T20 World Cup and was named the Player of the Tournament after taking 13 wickets and helping England to World Cup glory.

I expect him to start the tournament well and justify becoming the most expensive player in IPL history in the recent auction. His odds of 5.00 to be MI Cape Town’s top bowler are just too good to ignore.

Highest Individual Score

The average score batting first at Newlands is 154 which makes it a reasonable surface for batting in this format. Both teams have high-class batters and I expect at least one to score over 66.5 runs.

Prediction

These first few games are going to be difficult to predict as we’ve yet to see how certain players and teams will perform in this tournament. There’s also no clear favourite for this game with the home side at 1.83 and Paarl Royals at 1.95 to win. With that being said, Paarl Royals have enough firepower with both bat and ball to win this game. I’m backing David Miller’s side to win the opener.