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SEASON 3 TEAM-BY-TEAM REVIEW | PRETORIA CAPITALS

26 Feb 20253 mins

Pretoria Capitals had a second successive Betway SA20 season to forget.

The highs of the inaugural season where the Capitals topped the table after the group stage before finishing runners-up to the Sunrisers Eastern Cape seems a distant memory.

Not even a coaching change-up with South African-born former England batter Jonathan Trott replacing Graham Ford for Season 3 could alter the fortunes of the Centurion-based team.

New Capitals coach Jonathan Trott was excited about his squad ahead of Betway SA20 Season 3

The Capitals’ slide can, however, be directly attributed to loss of star fast bowler Anrich Nortje for the second successive season. Nortje was the competition’s joint leading wicket-taker in Season 1 but has not played a single Betway SA20 match since.

The Capitals had high hopes that Nortje would spearhead their attack in Season 3, but a back injury saw him ruled out of the entire competition early on.

It went from bad to worse for the Capitals when former captain and leading wicket-taker Wayne Parnell was also forced to leave the squad due to injury without playing a single game.

The fast-bowling injury crisis continued when fellow seamer Daryn Dupavillon suffered a hamstring injury that also ruled him out of the competition.

The growing injury list disrupted the Capitals’ momentum greatly as they were forced to bring in a host of late replacements such as Australian duo Jason Behrendorff and Tom Rogers along with Gideon Peters and Matthew Boast.

The tone for the season was set in the very first game when the Capitals snatched defeat from the jaws of victory against the Durban’s Super Giants in a thrilling encounter at Kingsmead.

Their highlights of Season 3 were the two victories over the Sunrisers Eastern Cape and Joburg Super Kings and the emergence of Rookie Keagan Lion-Cachet as a young player with a promising future.