The SA20 is a Twenty20 franchise cricket tournament to be played in the South Africa.[1][2] The first edition of the tournament is scheduled to take place between January and February 2023, with six teams based on various South African cities competing.[3] In August 2022, the league was formally named the SA20.[4]
History
CSA forayed into franchise-based Twenty20 Cricket in 2017 with the T20 Global League, modelled on the likes of Indian Premier League and Big Bash League. However, the league which was scheduled to be held from November 2017, was deferred by a year due to lack of a broadcast deal and title sponsor. In June, 2018, the event was replaced by Mzansi Super League, a league featuring six CSA-owned teams.[5]
The tournament was founded by Cricket South Africa (CSA) in 2022 through a newly-formed entity named Africa Cricket Development (Pty) Limited (ACD), in which CSA is the majority stakeholder, with 50%, while broadcaster SuperSport has a 30% share and former IPL COO Sundar Raman, the remaining 20%.[6]
All six of the teams were bought by franchises from the Indian Premier League (IPL).[7] In July 2022, CSA announced that the ODI series against Australia in January 2023 would be cancelled due to focussing more on the tournament.[8] In August 2022, Graeme Smith was announced as the commissioner for the tournament.[9] Later the same month, the marquee players of the tournament were announced.[3]
Organisation
The six teams shall play each other in a double round before the top three sides move to the play-off stages. CSA has announced that teams can acquire players through an auction model as opposed to the draft model, making it the second league in the world after the IPL to do so. Each team will have a squad of 17 players, and will be able to pre-sign up to five players made up of three international players, one Proteas player and one uncapped South African player prior to the auction. Over 30 marquee international players have already been signed by the League, in addition to all contracted Proteas and domestic players who have committed to the League.[10][11]
Teams
The following teams and their owners were announced as taking part in the tournament:[12]
In April 2022, the SA20 was announced by CSA CEO Pholetsi Moseki in partnership with SuperSport, who has committed to live broadcast of all the matches and production of the world feed. It was emphasised that it was an entirely new event with a sustainable business model being created for both the League and the teams.[2]
Controversy
In July 2022, Hermis Sports Ventures Limited, the owners of Pretoria Mavericks from the now defunct Global T20 League, wrote to CSA asking for a "reasonable opportunity," to submit an application to acquire a franchise in the new tournament, failing which they would consider applying to the courts to issue an interdict to stop the games from going ahead, based on the then CSA CEO Thabang Moroe's assurance that if in the future CSA starts a T20 league, the GLT20 franchise owners will be entitled to ownership of the teams in the new league. However, CSA is confident of seeing off the legal challenge.[13]
Lance Klusener
Stephen Fleming
Simon Katich
