Cricket South Africa has confirmed the Imperial Lions and Hollywoodbets Dolphins as the 2019-20 winners of the respective 4-Day Domestic Series and Momentum One-Day Cup competition.

The two teams were top of the respective standings before the Covid-19 pandemic halted all cricket competitions across the country.

But, increasing coronavirus threats have forced CSA to end the domestic season and endorse the decision made by interim director of cricket Graeme Smith to hand the Lions and Dolphins the titles for their efforts.

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‘This is undoubtedly the fairest way to decide the various winners. In the provincial competitions where some teams have played more games than others, we have taken the average number of points per game to decide on final log positions.

‘In the Momentum One-Day Cup it was also important that we put extra weight on the performances of the teams that earned home-ground advantage for the knockout stage,’ commented Smith.

In the CSA Provincial One-Day Challenge, Free State and Northern Cape walked away as joint winners after finishing top of Pools A and B, respectively, while Easterns and Kwa-Zulu Natal received similar accolades in the CSA Provincial Three-Day Cup.

In the National League, Border secured promotion while the Free State team suffered relegation to the Regional Pool.

CSA interim CEO Dr Jacques Faul applauded all teams and franchises for their efforts under the extreme circumstances.

‘Congratulations to all the winners and indeed to all our franchises and provinces for making our domestic cricket once again highly competitive and providing an important pipeline of talent to our Standard Bank Proteas men’s team and Momentum Proteas women’s team,’ he said.