Paarl's long walk to winning at Newlands

Newlands and Boland Park are only 65 kilometres apart. But in different worlds; the city of Cape Town and the small town of Paarl, the ocean and the winelands, the stadium and the ground.

Newlands thinks of itself as an abundantly treed, leafy cricket ground replete with a mountain brooding nearby. And it is. Even so, it is also a stadium - consisting of stands, hospitality boxes and floodlight pylons - albeit among the prettier examples of the genre.

Boland Park has all of the above, but it is unmistakably a ground. Not a stadium. That's mostly because it holds just 40% of Newlands' capacity. But also because it is cut from the dusty cloth of its modest community, where money is scarce and togetherness plentiful. It is impossible to attend a match there and not come away lifted.

At Newlands, with an exclusive private members club beyond one boundary and luxury homes, hotels and office buildings all around, the stink of money prevails. It's difficult to go to a game there and not, as you arrive and again when you leave, become trapped in a snarl of expensive cars and SUVs.

At Newlands, the crowd rarely emits much more than a sagging sigh of appreciation for the players' efforts. At Boland Park, they profess their passion with garish enthusiasm.

So the SA20, which features both Mumbai Indians Cape Town and Paarl Royals, has had a levelling effect on these starkly contrasting places. Sort of. Going into the current competition, Cape Town had a winnings percentage of 48.38 compared to Paarl's 48.48.

But Paarl, despite reaching the play-offs in all three completed editions of the tournament, when they finished first, third and second in the standings, have never won it. Cape Town finished last in the first two years, then first - and went all the way to the title by beating Sunrisers Eastern Cape, the champions in the first two seasons, by 76 runs in the final at the Wanderers in February.

There's significant daylight between the teams in head-to-head terms. Before this summer's tournament, Cape Town had won five of their seven encounters. At Boland Park on Friday, Paarl evened the score slightly by winning a pulsating game by one run.

Lhuan-dr e Pretorius hit 98 not out off 65 and Asa Tribe made 51 off 34, and they shared 100 off 65 for the first wicket in a total of 181/3. Then Ottneil Baartman took 4/51 and Sikandar Raza claimed 3/27 to keep Cape Town's reply short by one skinny run. The result would have been different had George Linde's whiplash cut off Baartman to the last ball of the match landed over the backward point boundary, not just within it before skipping away for four.

Which brings us to a blustery but sun-soaked Sunday at Newlands, complete with the requisite snarl of expensive cars and SUVs, for the return fixture. Which way would the Cape Town-Paarl seesaw tilt this time?

The star power equation was skewed in favour of Cape Town, whose XI shimmered with Nicholas Pooran, Rashid Khan and Kagiso Rabada. The only player from those rarefied ranks in Paarl's line-up was David Miller.

For the only time in their five matches this summer, Cape Town batted first. Rashid Khan won only two of those tosses, on Sunday and against Durban's Super Giants at Kingsmead last Sunday - when just four overs were possible because of rain. Cape Town lost their three other games. The sell-out crowd wouldn't have liked to know this then, but defeat number four was imminent.

The explosively irrepressible, just about unhittable Raza took two wickets in two balls for the second successive match in his haul of 4/13. Cape Town crumpled for 88 in 18.4 overs - the lowest total in the franchise's history and the lowest of all SA20 teams at Newlands, where the other two first innings in this SA20 were 232/5 and 220/5.

Trent Boult bowled an expansively driving Pretorius with the third ball of Paarl's reply, but victory was just 33 runs away when the next wicket fell in the eighth - thanks to Ryan Rickelton sprinting almost all the way to the deep third boundary to catch Rubin Hermann's top-edged pull off Corbin Bosch. Miller sealed the result, by seven wickets with seven overs to spare, with a pulled six off Rashid.

Consider that Paarl were bowled out for 49 by Eastern Cape in their first game this year, at Boland Park eight days ago. And have since reeled off a hattrick of wins. Consider that Sunday's thumping win was their first in four attempts to beat Cape Town at Newlands. Consider, also, that Paarl have now earned their first bonus point of this year's tournament.

But, before all that, consider what this triumph means to those dancing in the dust of Paarl's modest streets.