The Paarl Royals relied heavily on their senior players to fashion a five-wicket victory over the Sunrisers Eastern Cape in their Betway SA20 clash at St George\u2019s Park in Gqeberha on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The tournament\u2019s leading run-scorer Jos Buttler stroked 51 – his third half-century of the competition – before captain David Miller bludgeoned 37 not out off just 23 balls at a critical juncture to take Royals over the line.<\/p>\n
The batting heroics followed a superb bowling performance that was led by the Royals\u2019 Proteas duo Lungi Ngidi and Andile Phehlukwayo.<\/p>\n
The latter was making his Betway SA20 debut and immediately showed his experience and knowledge of the conditions to produce a superb spell of 2\/26.<\/p>\n
Ngidi has been in good form throughout the competition and continued in this vein as he led the attack with equally miserly figures of 1\/21.<\/p>\n
Evan Jones was also never going to miss out as he grew his tally of tournament wickets to 12 after another impressive 2\/27 as the Royals restricted the home team to 130\/7.<\/p>\n
Only Jon Jon Smuts played with any form of freedom as the veteran all-rounder struck 65 off 49 balls.<\/p>\n
Although the Sunrisers\u2019 total was below par, the match was still evenly balanced heading into the decisive 18th over when the Royals still required 30 off 18 balls.<\/p>\n
But that was when Miller went into overdrive by smashing Sisanda Magala for three sixes in the over. Dane Vilas added a further boundary off the final delivery as the Royals took 25 runs off Magala\u2019s over.<\/p>\n
This left the Royals requiring just five runs off the remaining 12 balls and the Royals were virtually home.<\/p>\n
Both the Royals and Sunrisers are now locked on 17 points in second and third place respectively on the Betway SA20 table.<\/p>\n
image: SA20, sportzpics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"