South Africa’s domestic T20 league in mess again

Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) quest to see a flourishing T20 competition within its border has hit a wall again. South African TV network Supersport has backed out of an equity deal with the cricket board for a new T20 league this year to form a third entity to run the competition. According to the network’s report, they ended discussions for an agreement on July 23 though they are interested to broadcast the tournament.

Supersport’s withdrawal means the CSA now has no investor and puts the T20 league in a spot. The television network was to have a 49 per cent stake but it wasn’t liked by former T20 Global owners who had quite a heated discussion with CSA officials in Dubai and Mumbai.

“We have used our best endeavours to reach consensus with CSA around that shareholding model, but this has unfortunately not happened. The discussions on the in-principle shareholding agreement terminated on 23 July 2018. We have therefore decided to discontinue negotiations about shareholding. We are, however, engaged in constructive discussions with CSA regarding the broadcast of the event,” SuperSport’s CEO Gideon Khobane said.

Little has been done

The proposed T20 tournament is in jeopardy with no details over it finalised as of now. No business model has been clarified while no name has been given to any of the six franchises. No expression of interest document to players other than last year’s top players like Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Jason Roy and others have been provided.

The tournament was not played last year since it (called Global T20 League then) was postponed for over a year since October 2017 in the wake of the departure of CSA’s CEO Haroon Lorgat. The league, the launch of which seems to be in a mess for the second consecutive year now, doesn’t even have a new name.

“The button on this should have been pressed a week ago and it hasn’t. The tournament is now two-and-a-half months away and very little has been done,” sources in the CSA said as quoted by Sportscafe.

Earlier, the South African cricket board’s acting head of communications Koketso Gaofetoge refused to make a remark when asked about the current state of affairs. He only said that CSA’s CEO Thabang Moroe would release in due course a statement on the T20 tournament’s future.

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