The inaugural season of South Africa’s SA20 league will carry a total prize purse of Rand 70 million (upwards of USD 4 million). That, as a CSA media statement said, is “the biggest prize pool in the history of South African franchise cricket”.
The six teams in the fray are all owned by groups that own teams in the IPL: MI Cape Town and Paarl Royals share owners with Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan Royals respectively, while the others are Johannesburg Super Kings (Chennai Super Kings), Pretoria Capitals (Delhi Capitals), Durban’s Super Giants (Lucknow Super Giants) and Sunrisers Eastern Cape (Sunrisers Hyderabad).
“I think what we want to create in this league is that there’s so much talent – hope we can develop that talent to play under pressure on a global stage,” he had said at an event in Mumbai earlier this month. “I know I keep talking about the IPL but you look at the amount of strong cricketers that have come through in the IPL.
“Looking at trying to find 15 players, hopefully there’s 25-35 players in the next couple of years at a level where it makes the selectors jobs very, very difficult. Those that are used to playing big games, exposed to big games. Unfortunately South Africa has to deal with these questions all the time until they actually win a [global] tournament.”