If South Africa’s new T20 cricket league, the SA20, was meant to hoick the local game out of the doldrums and onto a good wicket, many believe the competition took off on the right trajectory this week.
“Local is lekker” was the overwhelming theme to emerge when nearly 80 cricketers were sold at the SA20 player auctions held at Cape Town’s International Conference Centre on Monday.
Connections of the six participating SA20 franchise teams preferred bids for local players to fill up their respective squads, over the overseas professionals that were available.
The SA20 is South Africa’s response to the Indian Premier League, which is known to be head and shoulders above any other domestic T20 competition in terms of viewing audiences, calibre of players and generating revenue.
TV rights for the IPL were recently sold for $6 billion (R102 billion) over the next five years.
With the SA20 being the country’s third attempt at producing a thriving T20 league, its brains trust decided to follow closely in the IPL’s footsteps.
All six SA20 franchises; Durban Super Giants (Kingsmead), Joburg Super Kings (Wanderers), Pretoria Capitals (Centurion), MI Cape Town (Newlands), Paarl Royals based at Boland Park and the Sunrisers Eastern Cape using St. George’s Park as their home venue, belong to IPL team owners.
The SA20 and the IPL are the only T20 leagues to hold player auctions.
The six franchises landed a few players ahead of the auction, and each outfit was handed a total budget of $2 million (R34m) to assemble a squad of 17 players.
According to the rules, each squad must contain 10 South Africans and on match day, seven must start.
The franchises have also committed to contributing to local cricket development programmes.
Graeme Smith, the SA20’s commissioner, said their aim was to make this competition second best to only the IPL.
Smith said the purpose of the SA20 was to improve South African cricket and locals would get a chance to earn well and to display their talents to international audiences during the month-long competition.
Much of the big bids were for local talent, even if they were fledglings who had little or no international experience, but whose respective games suited the T20 format.
Local player, Tristan Stubbs, 22, with a handful of international caps (6), but known for his explosive batting, was the most expensive buy at the auction.
The Sunrisers Eastern Cape spent R9.2 million on him.
Duan Jansen, 22, with no national team experience, was bought for R3.3m by MI Cape Town, while his twin brother Marco, who is a Proteas regular, was purchased for R6.1 by the Sunrisers.
Another surprise buy was the R5.5m spent by the Joburg Super Kings on Donavon (Corr) Ferreira, 24, who is yet to play for the Proteas.
The sum of money bid goes entirely to the player.
However, a big side-show was the snub Temba Bavuma, the SA One-Day captain, received from the six franchises.
Gary Kirsten, who has had much success as a player for the Proteas and coached the Indian team to World Cup victory in 2011, said: “It was great the owners pumped lots of money into South African cricket and it is a good opportunity for young aspiring players without international experience to earn a good living.
“The IPL has become a great breeding ground for young Indian players, I’d like to see the same in South Africa”.
Kirsten said the SA20 would also be something local coaches could aspire towards and also pointed out that every country has its own way of doing things.
“We have a complicated history in the game. It is important that people who financially contribute to the game in this country, understand and appreciate the local cricket landscape,” he said.
Jason Sathiaseelan, the chief executive of the KZN Inland Cricket Union, said he fully supported the SA20 League and the auction had a strong “local is lekker” flavour.
“This competition was intended for the benefit of local cricket and it is starting to happen.
“A guy like Donavon Ferreira, who plays white ball cricket for the Titans and has a full-time job, has fetched over R5m. That is brilliant for the game.
“Many youngsters will now start to play the shorter form of the game because you can come in from anywhere, have one good season, and make a million bucks,” he said.
Sathiaseelan said the SA20 will contribute immensely to cricket longevity and would bring an injection of new life.
“The people at the top may not have realised that cricket was dying, as less and less youngsters played the game. I found this in the communities I worked in.
“People would have seen the auction and how some unknown players were going to receive large sums of money,” he said.
Sathiaseelan predicted more youngsters would now be interested in cricket.
Keshav Maharaj, a senior Proteas player, was purchased by the Durban franchise for R2.5m, said it made sense for teams to go for local players as they were more accustomed to local conditions, just as they do in the IPL.
“This competition would allow talent to blossom and guys who don’t play international cricket would get to rub shoulders with the best in the game,” he said.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE