CHENNAI: SA20, South Africa's franchise based T20 league, has seen tremendous growth in the past three seasons. As it heads into the fourth season, the league commissioner Graeme Smith is expecting better quality of cricket, more new names to come to the fore, and act as a springboard to budding young players.
This edition will start early on December 26, keeping in mind the T20 World Cup in India set to begin from February 2026. The tournament will be played for a month, with the final on January 25. The window in which the league is played clashes with the much-anticipated Ashes Test series and the Big Bash League, both set to happen in Australia. Key names like Joe Root, who was one of the top scorers before last season's play-offs, will not be part of this edition.
"That is something (a headache) that the IPL does not have. Every other country deals with ICC's Future Tours Programme. When we started SA20 in 2022, the Big Bash was already an established tournament and our goal was to attract the best players and we have done that," he said in an interaction facilitated by SA20 ahead of the first auction on September 9.
The list of retained players include International stars like Sunil Narine, Noor Ahmed, Jos Buttler, Rashid Khan, Trent Boult, Andre Russell and Jonny Bairstow. "Buttler's making his comeback this year, Russell will be playing for the Pretoria Capitals and so many international players put their name in the auction. So I have no doubt that with the ever-improving quality of South African players, the standard of our league will still be good," he explained.
Indian players will also not be taking part in this edition of SA20. Last year, Dinesh Karthik was the only Indian to play in the league, for the Paarl Royals. This year, Indians like Piyush Chawla, Siddarth Kaul and Ankit Rajpoot had registered themselves in the auction. "With the Indian players, the situation is always fluid. We had 13-14 names but what we do is we send the auction list, which were over 800 to all six franchises and they then send the shortlists back and we collated to bring a shortened list," he said, suggesting that it was on the teams to take in or exclude Indian players. "After three years of play, we felt that it was time to reset the regulations so we forced the team's hands in getting them to strategise who was going to be retained, or who was going to be pre-signed," he explained.
However, one Indian who would be a part of this league as a mentor will be former India captain Sourav Ganguly. He will take up the reins as head coach of the Capitals. Outside the pitch, the South African tournament has continued to grow, with new commercial deals helping in financial growth. "We have said that we want to grow every year. Commercially we have strong broadcast deals in place, some as long as over 10 years. And from a sponsorship and a revenue perspective, we have grown significantly year on year. The league is also growing in terms of its digital reach, in terms of the viewership and the crowds," he elucidated. With The Hundred now fully privatised, Smith feels that franchise cricket will further grow. "I think you will end up seeing four or five leagues that stand out and hopefully grow the game in the future.
