The team is Lucknow Super Giants' sister franchise, which he represented in IPL2025.
The T20I captain of South Africa, Aiden Markram, has been appointed as the captain of Durban’s Super Giants for the SA20 2026. The team is Lucknow Super Giants’ (LSG) sister franchise, which he represents in the Indian Premier League (IPL). The announcement came just after the recent SA20 2026 auction, where the player was acquired for a huge amount of R14 million (approximately INR 7 crores) by the franchise.
This also made him the second most expensive player in the T20 tournament’s history, after youngster Dewald Brevis, who secured a whopping R16.5 million (approximately INR 8.3 crore) on the same day from the Pretoria Capitals. Previously, the record for the highest-paid player was held by Tristan Stubbs. The Sunrisers Eastern Cape roped him in for R9.2 million (approximately Rs 4.6 crore) ahead of the inaugural SA20 season in 2023 and had also retained him prior to the latest player auction.
However, Stubbs is now set to captain the Eastern Cape, which had won consecutive titles in the initial two editions of the SA20 league under the leadership of Markram. Moreover, they became the only team to reach three successive SA20 Finals, but fell short against MI Cape Town to register a hat-trick of titles in South Africa’s premier T20 league.
Notably, the 30-year-old had a commendable outing for LSG in the IPL 2025. After a three-year stint with the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), whom he also led in the IPL 2023, the batter joined the Giants for INR 2 crores. He was part of several blistering opening partnerships with the T20I skipper of Australia, Mitchell Marsh, and scored 445 runs in 13 matches at a strike rate of 148.83.
His 99-run opening stand with Marsh against the IPL 2024 champions, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), was the highlight of the season as it became the highest opening partnership of the IPL 2025. However, the batter is looking forward to leading the Super Giants’ team in the SA20 2026, and also acknowledged how the tournament has helped in increasing the country’s bench strength, considering the international format.
“Now that I’m with them in two of the leagues is really awesome. You understand how people work and how best we can all work together and I think that’s good from a longevity point of view. If I look at how SA20 really helped cricket in South Africa from the national team point of view, it’s grown the player pool in terms of the depth of cricketers within South Africa,” he stated to Times of India.
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The batter had a tough pill to swallow as the captain of the side that botched an easy chase in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 Final against India. However, their recent victory in the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) 2025 against the reigning champions, Australia, has motivated the Proteas to accomplish their unfulfilled feat in the upcoming edition.
“The focus is on the T20 World Cup and we’ve had a good couple of previous ICC events and managed to win one. When you get that close you become quite hungry to want to get the job done fully. If you go across India, each venue is quite different. It’ll be important to have all bases covered. I don’t want to have too many preconceived ideas,” stressed Markram.
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