The team that had finished last twice
MI Cape Town came into the third season with the worst record in the competition. They had won three of ten matches in 2023 and three of ten in 2024, finishing bottom both times, despite a squad funded by the owners of the Mumbai Indians and a home ground at Newlands. In 2025 they won seven of their ten league games, collected five bonus points - more than any side in any season so far - and finished with a net run rate of 2.446, which was not close to anybody else's.
The change was mostly in the bowling. Kagiso Rabada, Trent Boult and Rashid Khan gave the side three attacking options in an eleven, and Delano Potgieter set the tone in the opening match at St George's Park by taking 5/10 as the defending champions were dismissed for 77. MI Cape Town won that game by 97 runs and never dropped out of the top two.
Sunrisers keep arriving
Sunrisers Eastern Cape had a poor league campaign - five wins, five defeats, fifth place on wins but third on points thanks to four bonus points - and reached the final anyway, which by now was becoming their habit. They beat Joburg Super Kings by 32 runs in the Eliminator and then chased down 176 against Paarl Royals in Qualifier 2 with four balls to spare. It was their third final in three seasons.
Paarl Royals, who had won seven league matches, lost Qualifier 1 to MI Cape Town by 39 runs and then Qualifier 2, so a season that had begun with six wins in seven ended without a final.
The Wanderers, 8 February
MI Cape Town batted first and made 181/8, a total assembled without an individual fifty; Connor Esterhuizen's 39 from 26 balls was the largest contribution. It proved more than enough. Sunrisers lost wickets steadily against Boult and Rabada and were bowled out for 105 in 18.4 overs, Rabada taking 4/25. The 76-run margin was the second-largest in an SA20 final, and Boult, who had bowled the two most economical overs of the innings, was named player of the match.
Marco Jansen, on the losing side, was player of the tournament with 19 wickets. The batting award of the season went to an 18-year-old: Lhuan-dre Pretorius made 397 runs for Paarl Royals, a total beaten by nobody in a season interrupted repeatedly by rain. Three league matches finished without a result and one was abandoned, the most weather the competition had lost in a single January.