Experienced South Africa batter Rilee Rossouw fell for 97 during the 2025 CSA Provincial T20 Knockout tournament opener between the Knights and Northern Cape Heat on Friday.
Batting first, the Knights got off to a roaring start in the tournament opener at Kimberley. At the helm of the carnage was Russouw, who brought up a fifty off just 22 balls. He continued to press the accelerator after reaching his landmark and looked set for a well-deserved century. As luck would have it, he was dismissed just three runs shy of the three-figure mark.
Despite the dismissal, his 46-ball 97 was a stunning knock, notable for its incredible boundary percentage, taking the Knights to 223-4. A remarkable 80 of his 97 runs – 82.47 percent – came from boundaries (eight fours and eight sixes). The T20 record for the most runs in boundaries in an innings belongs to Chris Gayle. He scored 154 out of his unbeaten 175 – 88 percent – from fours and sixes during a 2013 IPL match. However, the CSA Provincial T20 Knockout tournament doesn't have an official status.
Match 1, Northern Cape vs Knights
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What's Rilee Rossouw's record in T20s?
Rossouw has played 29 T20Is and 36 ODIs for South Africa. In 2022, he returned to the national side after a six-year gap, having previously been under a Kolpak deal. Just a few matches in, he became the first player from a Full Member nation to score consecutive T20I hundreds, with an unbeaten 100 against India followed by 109 against Bangladesh. The latter century, scored in the T20 World Cup, also made him the only South African player to ton up in the tournament's history. However, poor form followed this high, and his most recent international appearance was in March 2023.
Rossouw currently ranks joint-third on the list of players with the most T20 centuries. He and Virat Kohli are tied on nine, with only Babar Azam (11) and Chris Gayle (22) ahead of them.
A regular feature in the PSL, Rossouw has also established himself as one of the most successful overseas batters in the tournament's history. He has scored 2,287 runs at an average of 32.21 and a strike rate of 146.22.
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