Though he acknowledged they had a strong, well-rounded squad, Sunrisers Eastern Cape captain Tristan Stubbs also credited head coach Adrian Birrell for his “simple” approach after the two-time former champions reached their fourth successive SA20 final.
The Sunrisers defeated the Paarl Royals by seven wickets with more than eight overs to spare in their qualifier play-off at the Wanderers on Friday night.
While the Eastern Cape side progressed to the trophy decider to be played against the Pretoria Capitals in Cape Town on Sunday, the Royals were knocked out of the competition.
“This year we’ve got a really balanced team. I think we’ve got all bases covered,” Stubbs said.
“But the way Adi (Birrell) runs the show is very simple. He drills in the basics, and if you do the basics really well in South Africa you tend to do quite well and you’re quite consistent as a team.”
While they won their first two games of the tournament, and two of their matches in the league stage were rained out, the Sunrisers have not secured two victories on the trot in their last eight fixtures which have ended with results. But Stubbs was confident they could find some consistency this weekend.
“We’ve done this the whole comp where we’ve played a really good game, then lost closely, then played a good game. It’s sort of been a trend that we will rectify on Sunday,” the skipper said.
‘Underdog’ Royals put up a fight
Meanwhile, Royals head coach Trevor Penney was satisfied with his team’s overall performances in the competition, despite missing out on reaching the final for the first time.
The Paarl side were bowled out for 49 runs in their opening match, with the Sunrisers coasting to a 137-run win, but they recovered from that disastrous start. They went on to win five of their matches in the round-robin stage and they beat the Joburg Super Kings in an eliminator play-off on Thursday to progress to Friday’s qualifier.
“Since that (opening) game we got together, created a good team spirit and the guys started playing better cricket,” Penney said.
“We’ve got some youngsters as well, which we’ve actually groomed, and they’ve played very well. So I’m really proud of the team.
“I thought as underdogs this year we were actually going to win it. I had a good feeling, so it’s a bit of a shame that we didn’t get the right score on the board today (in the play-off against the Sunrisers) but overall I’m super impressed with our squad.”
