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SA20 100 Days to Go: New Faces Ready for Season Five
With 100 days to go, Rowles, Bavuma, Whitehead and Overton were the new faces of SA20 Season 5.
By Saleem Sial · 9 Oct 2026
One hundred days before the first ball of Season 5, the SA20's new faces were already telling the story of the winter. The league marked the countdown by pointing to the signings that will shape the season: a teenage spinner going home, a young all-rounder moving to the coast, a Test captain joining a new franchise and a fast bowler returning to the ground where he won titles. The season starts on 17 January 2027, and the countdown made the wait feel shorter. The mark itself fell on 9 October, exactly 100 days before the first ball.
The headline name is Jason Rowles, the eighteen-year-old left-arm spinner who joined his hometown franchise, Joburg Super Kings, for R2.9 million. For a player still at school, the move to the Wanderers is the kind of homecoming most cricketers never get, and Rowles has described it as a dream come true. The fee made him the most expensive buy of the auction, and the hometown angle made him its best story.
At the other end of the experience scale, Temba Bavuma joined Pretoria Capitals after missing the last two SA20 seasons. Bavuma captains South Africa's Test and one-day sides and led the country to the World Test Championship, and he will play under Keshav Maharaj's captaincy at the Capitals. It is his third stint in the league, after winning the first two titles with Sunrisers Eastern Cape, and it gives the Capitals a leader who has won this competition before.
MI Cape Town's new face is Oliver Whitehead, an under-23 all-rounder who was schooled near Newlands and now gets to play home games there. Sunrisers Eastern Cape, meanwhile, welcomed back Craig Overton, who spoke about being happy to return to St George's Park and chasing a fourth trophy in five seasons with the defending champions. Between them, the four signings cover every stage of a career: schoolboy, young professional, established international and returning champion.
The opener itself adds to the occasion. Sunrisers Eastern Cape against Pretoria Capitals at St George's Park is a rematch of the Season 4 final, which means the season starts with the two teams that ended the last one. Tickets were part of the countdown too: a limited number of R50 tickets were offered for each team's first home game, the playoffs and the final in a pre-sale window that needed registration before 18 October, and general sale opened on 5 November 2026.
Source: https://www.sa20.co.za/news/S5-100-days-to-go