CSA Provincial T20 | Titans, Knights, South Western Districts, Western Province enter quarter-finals

With the group stage of matches finished for the First Division teams, the Cricket South Africa Provincial T20, the domestic T20 tournament and also the season opener of South Africa’s cricket summer of 2021-22, the four quarter-final berths have been confirmed. 

In the new set-up of Domestic cricket in South Africa, the franchise set-up was discontinued from the 2021-22 season, and all 15 provinces of the South African nation got representation in a two-division List A and First class system and unified T20 competition. Thus the CSA Provincial T20 Knockout competition is that unified tournament. 

In this tournament, the eight First Division teams were segregated into two groups of A and B with four teams each while the seven Second Division teams along with South Africa Under-19 unit were pooled together in Group D which was further segregated into two sections. 

Four teams from First Division groups have qualified for the Quarter Finals and will play against each other while two teams each from the two sections of Group D will also reach the quarterfinals and face each other to make it to the Semi-Finals. It is only in the semi-finals that the teams from the First and Second divisions will clash. 

The tournament started on September 24 with Grup A games where four teams namely, Western Province, Highveld Lions, Northern Cape Heat and South Western Districts faced each other in a single round-robin format. 

At the end of the round, three teams i.e. Western Province, Lions and South Western Districts had eight points each from two wins, but due to better runs rate, only Western Province and South Western Districts made it to the quarterfinals. 

The Group B matches started on September 28 with four teams namely, Knights, Titans, Kwazulu-Natal-Inland and Mpumalanga Rhinos faced each other in the round-robin format. 

The matches were disturbed by rain gods and as a result, while a game between table-toppers Knights and last placed Rhinos had to be cancelled. The game between Titans and Rhinos was decided on the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method and Titans won it by nine runs to become the second team along with Knights to qualify for the quarterfinals. 

In the quarterfinals, these four teams will now face each other with Knights, the toppers of Group B taking on the second-placed team from Group A Western Province in quarterfinal-3 and Group A topper South Western Districts facing Titans from Group B in quarterfinal-1. Winners from these quarterfinals will then collide with winners from quarterfinals 2 and 4, teams for which are yet to be decided.