Lions

Gauteng grew rich on gold and finance, and its two old cricket unions, Transvaal and Western Transvaal, spent decades as separate entities before South African cricket restructured around a franchise system. In 2003 the two merged into a single side covering Johannesburg and the neighbouring North West province, and the Lions took shape as the region's answer to that new order.

The team plays out of SuperSport Park in Centurion, a ground with room for around 22,000, and shares fixtures with the Wanderers Stadium back in Johannesburg. Sponsors have rewritten the name more than once — Highveld Lions at first, Imperial Lions through much of the 2010s, and DP World Lions since 2022 — but the Royal Blue and Gold has stayed constant, and so has the nickname, Roaring Lions.

Their strongest run has come in first-class cricket: three titles in the CSA 4-Day Series, in 2014–15, 2018–19 and 2019–20, a run matched by four T20 Challenge trophies stretched between 2006–07 and 2020–21. The nearest they came to continental honours was 2012, when they reached the final of the Champions League Twenty20 and lost out to the Sydney Sixers.

Against the Titans, the derby carries the Highveld's name, and little needs adding to that. What the Lions have supplied more consistently is players: Kagiso Rabada and Temba Bavuma both came up through the franchise before becoming fixtures of the national side, and the production line behind them is the club's clearest claim on the domestic game. Under the DP World banner, that pathway is still the job.