Knights

Hashim Amla spent his early first-class years wearing the colours of a side that carried a different name back then. When the Free State and Griqualand West provincial teams merged in 2003, the new franchise took the field as the Diamond Eagles, and it kept that name through eight seasons before Cricket South Africa's next reshuffle handed it the Knights badge for 2011–12.

Under either name the team built a habit of winning white-ball silverware: the CSA T20 Challenge twice, the CSA One-Day Cup three times, the 4-Day Domestic Series once outright and once shared. Dale Steyn and Kagiso Rabada both came through the same production line.

Cricket South Africa dissolved the franchise system after the 2020–21 season and returned to provincial cricket, but the Free State Cricket Union kept the Knights name as its brand rather than reverting to a provincial title. The following season the side won the CSA Provincial T20 Cup, its first trophy under the reformed structure.

Matches against the Highveld Lions carry the sharpest edge of any fixture on the calendar; beating the Lions in the 2016–17 final delivered the Sunfoil Series title. The Titans sit closest in the table more often than not, though no single match against them has earned a name of its own the way the Lions-Titans derby has.

The side still plays out of the Mangaung Oval in Bloemfontein, a ground that has carried four other names before this one, in front of a capacity of 20,000.