Rain? In Cape Town? Now? Truly, the climate crisis is real. January accounts, on average, for less than 3% of the city's annual rainfall. Almost two-thirds comes down from May to September.

Even so, the wet stuff was in the sky on Tuesday, drippy more than driving - but enough to delay the start of the SA20 game between Mumbai Indians Cape Town and Joburg Super Kings by an hour.

And just when it seemed we were good to go, we weren't and the covers billowed back onto the field. But only for another 11 minutes until, finally, Trent Boult stood ready to bowl to James Vince.

Thirty-three minutes later, during which six overs were sent down, more thin grey soup was ladled over the scene and the players and umpires went in the opposite direction from the groundstaff.

The most memorable aspect of what we had seen by then starred Faf du Plessis, cricket's youngest 41-year-old, newly slicked back hair and all. He put Kagiso Rabada away for four fours in the second over, hit George Linde for six in the fifth, and took three fours and a six off Boult in the sixth. It was a masterclass in controlled, easy-on-the-eye fury. And it took Du Plessis to an unbeaten 43 off 18. And then rain...

We were off for 71 minutes, and the innings were reduced to a dozen overs a side. Du Plessis' dash was done at 44 with the fourth ball after the resumption. He looked to muscle Rashid Khan over long-on for six, but a deft hop, skip and jump by Reeza Hendricks to parry the ball upward, leap the cushions, re-enter the field of play and complete the catch once he was safely back inside put an end to the Du Plessis show.

The rest of Joburg's truncated innings was a litany of fits and starts that ended at 123/7 with Corbin Bosch taking 3/24. Cape Town were set 128 to win, and Nicholas Pooran launched all but three of his 33 in sixes to keep the home side in it. He and Rassie van der Dussen shared 43 off 21 for the second wicket. Van der Dussen's contribution? Eight off six. Pooran holed out to deep extra cover in the sixth trying to fetch a wide one from Nandre Burger to quell Cape Town.

A veil of mist shrouded everything like an ethereal cover, lending the night a ghostly glow. Van der Dussen shone through it, a whiter shade of pale. But he couldn't do it on his own, and the contest seemed over when Burger had him caught at cover for 35 off 24 with 26 needed off 12. Jason Smith - his place in South Africa's T20 World Cup squad much maligned - had scored eight off three when Van der Dussen got out. He would club 22 off seven in all, hitting Wiaan Mulder for a six and Richard Gleeson for two in as many balls - to wrench the game back into the balance. Karim Janat and Corbin Bosch took Cape Town home by four wickets with four balls to spare.

Of course, in cricket's weird universe, no overs were lost before play started. So another bumper crowd - only 300 tickets were available at noon - sat and stared at nothing and were soaked. Because Newlands does not allow spectators to bring umbrellas into the ground.

That anyone at all was there, on a random drizzly weekday at a time when the streets around the ground are choked with traffic, to support a team who were winless after five matches, four of them lost, and languishing at the bottom of the standings, was noteworthy.

It helped that, despite the rain, the temperature was a comfortable 21 degrees Celsius. And also that the wind that can make watching cricket at this ground a miserable experience, was mercifully absent. Then again, wind would have blown the rain away.

Tuesday marked the halfway point of the tournament's league stage, and three of the 15 matches have been washed out. There were two in the inaugural 2023 edition, when the final had to be postponed by a day for the same reason. A year later, the first game was rained off. But there was only one other such disappointment. Last year, three of the first 16 games were washed out, but no others. That's 10 washouts in all the 116 SA20 matches yet played, or 8.62%. Not bad.

And, no, Kingsmead doesn't lead the soggy stakes. Rain and Durban seem to appear in the same sentence as often as Trump and crisis, but the same number of SA20 washouts have been suffered there as at the Wanderers and Centurion: three each. The other was at St George's Park.

With this year's competition starting nine or 10 days earlier than in the past, and with unseasonally persistent rain on the Highveld - where summer storms are usually short, sharp and spectacular, but not this year - more abandonments for rain wouldn't come as a surprise.

But at least Cape Town's crowd, most of whom braved the weather and stayed, went home happy with their team's first win in the six games they have played this season. They went home damp, but dazzled.