Ken Borland

A new T20 league co-owned by Cricket South Africa and SuperSport will be held in January and Indian Premier League teams are believed to be interested in four of the six pies that are up for sale.

According to a statement released by CSA on Friday, the new league will comprise six privately-owned franchises playing each other in a double round, before the top three sides move to the playoff stages.

These six teams will be totally divorced from the existing domestic teams, who will continue to play their own T20 competition. But grounds like the Wanderers, SuperSport Park, Kingsmead and Newlands are bound to be used as venues and will be paid hosting fees.

The previous problems faced by the ill-fated T20 Global League and Mzansi Super League in securing decent broadcast deals for the events are a thing of the past thanks to SuperSport’s investment not only in televising the matches and providing a global feed, but also as actual stakeholders in the tournament. SuperSport CEO Marc Jury told Saturday Citizen on Friday that “shareholding details will be provided later, but we can confirm that SuperSport and CSA are co-owners.”

The new franchise league seems to already have a better foundation than its predecessors and there has apparently been interest from four of the major IPL teams in getting involved. Names such as Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders have been mentioned, but Jury said the ongoing “discussions are confidential and SuperSport are not at liberty to provide more details at this time”.

While some local CEOs were a little gun-shy at the prospect of another T20 franchise league being launched, saying “we have heard and been through all this before”, others said they were “really excited and it’s a great opportunity” for what CSA have marketed as “all-action cricket sportainment”.

January provides a gap in the international calendar such that all the top local players, including the Proteas, should be available, as well as international stars, except for those who are playing in Australia’s Big Bash, which traditionally runs through until the end of January.

CSA chief executive Pholetsi Moseki said “a sustainable business model has been created for both the league and the teams, with a healthy salary bill to attract the very best local and international players.

“The league also represents a fresh injection of funds into the sport in SA, which will help grow the game.”

There will be a player auction and all the teams will be entitled to field up to four overseas players in any starting XI. No transformation targets will apply to the competition.

This summer’s premier T20 tournament may be confined to a bubble in Gqeberha, but there has still been space for some highly entertaining, impressive cricket in the first week of the CSA T20 Challenge.

The eight provinces have all played twice and the Boland Rocks and Free State Knights are the only teams who have not yet won a game. Overall it has been a highly competitive event, with Boland coming agonisingly close to beating the Northerns Titans.

The North-West Dragons, with the only bonus point so far, and Western Province are the two sides who have won both their matches, but the gap between them and the KZN Dolphins, Central Gauteng Lions, Northerns and Eastern Province Warriors is not large.

The Lions get the chance to show that on Sunday when they take on WP.

Looking at the bigger picture, and a future that includes another T20 World Cup in October/November in Australia, who are the players that the national selectors will be keeping an eye on?

One first needs to ask where are the gaps in the current Proteas team, who performed better than expected in the previous T20 World Cup, albeit in conditions that will be very different to Australia.

The well-travelled David Miller has world-class T20 stats – he averaged 47 last year at a strike-rate of 149 – and is a certainty for Australia, but there is hopefully space in the squad for another finisher, someone who can be groomed to succeed the 32-year-old somewhere down the line.

Two youngsters who have caught the eye are the 21-year-old Tristan Stubbs of EP and 23-year-old Donovan Ferreira of the Titans. They are scoring at a strike-rate of 189 and 152 respectively in this tournament, while Stubbs has a career strike-rate of 148 and Ferreira 157.

The Lions owe a considerable debt to Sisanda Magala for ensuring they are not with Boland and Free State at the bottom of the log with zero points. The burly pace bowler has been superb with the ball, especially at the death, and his eight overs so far have cost just 6.62 runs per over, and he chipped in with a couple of key wickets that killed off the KZN charge to victory on Thursday.

Magala also shone with the bat. Coming in at 95/5 in the 12^th over, he scored a punishing 37 off just 27 balls to lift the Lions to 156/8, which proved to be just enough.

Magala has not yet shown the same expertise at international level, but in a team that is often criticised for their bowling skills on flat pitches (expected in Australia), he brings a package that still looks useful.

South Africa will no doubt have to restructure their team a bit in Australia to reflect the more pace-friendly conditions, but young fast bowlers have not exactly been shoving their hands up in the CSA T20. The best quicks have been veterans like Magala, Hardus Viljoen, Junior Dala and Beuran Hendricks.

But it has been pleasing to see the change in mindset surrounding the use of spin that Mark Boucher spearheaded in the national team start to filter down to the provinces. Spinners have done wonderfully well on the slow pitches at St George’s Park and some potential stars are starting to come through.

Left-armer Johannes Diseko has been key to North-West’s surprise charge to the top of the log, while Proteas like George Linde, Senuran Muthusamy, Bjorn Fortuin and Aaron Phangiso continue to shine.

Prenelan Subrayen has shown he is a quality off-spinner and Imraan Manack is key to the Boland attack; 19-year-old leg-spinner Caleb Seleka looks highly promising for North-West too.

Most positively, the presence of Proteas stars like Miller, Tabraiz Shamsi, Janneman Malan, Quinton de Kock and Dwaine Pretorius has ensured that quality runs through this summer’s CSA T20 Challenge.

There is little chance of Dean Elgar leaving the Proteas to become a T20 mercenary because his white-ball ability is, frankly, under-rated, but the nuggety left-hander is surely worth his weight in gold to the South African Test team.

Since making his debut in Perth at the end of 2012, and bagging a pair, Elgar has worked his way into the hearts of Proteas Test fans and is now the captain tasked with rebuilding the team to the sort of former glories they were in when he was first chosen.

For someone with such tenacity and bounce-back-ability – the tougher the situation the better Elgar seems to bat – it was perhaps fitting that his Test career should start with two ducks against the fearsome Mitchell Johnson.

Elgar certainly leads from the front on the field, putting his body on the line and valuing his wicket as greatly as anyone. But it is off the field where it seems he is also having a major impact. Never afraid to speak his mind, the 34-year-old is a no-nonsense cricketer, he plays the game hard and he expects his team-mates to do so too. Soft excuses are not tolerated and he is gradually dragging the best out of a Test team that has been gutted, in the years since he made his debut, by the retirements of Smith, Amla, Kallis, De Villiers, Du Plessis, Philander, Steyn and Morkel.

Test cricket is far from the sanitary, gentlemanly environment of the past and the second Test between South Africa and India at the Wanderers was a spicy affair. Stung by their poor performance in the first Test, it was good to see the Proteas willing to fight fire with fire. There was no standing back against the world’s No.1-ranked side.

That willingness to fight was shown by rookie Marco Jansen not backing off against Jasprit Bumrah; by Rassie van der Dussen, who put a difficult time behind him and also withstood the verbal volleys of wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant, the man who dismissed him in the first innings when he claimed a catch on the bounce. Temba Bavuma was a cool head in the tense closing stages and refused to be rushed at the crease by the Indian bowlers running in before he was ready.

With Elgar fighting so hard at the other end, it was easy to see why his team-mates were inspired.

It has been a disappointing last year for the South African batting line-up as a whole, but there are runs to be had in the third Test starting at Newlands on Tuesday, with the pitch expected to be the best for batting the Proteas would have experienced for a long while.

There are still question marks over Aiden Markram and fans of Kyle Verreynne are expectant that he will soon make a Test score to match the three ODI half-centuries he has already scored.

But Bavuma and Elgar look in fine fettle, Van der Dussen and Keegan Petersen have the confidence of scores to their name, and the bowlers are a potent unit when they fire together.

You can forgive the Proteas misreading the Wanderers pitch and playing Keshav Maharaj, who only ended up bowling two overs in the match. He is bound to have a much greater role in Cape Town and we may even see him bowling alongside another left-arm spinner in George Linde.

Batting at No.7 still seems a slot too high for the talented Jansen and Linde has similar all-round credentials to Wiaan Mulder, so if conditions suit he could be in line for his fourth Test cap and first at home.

For now, a magnificent effort by the Proteas deserves to be celebrated while the anticipation builds for the decider at Newlands.

People sometimes like to think of T20 cricket as being as complicated a strategic game as, say, backgammon, but for David Miller, the Proteas need to keep it as simple as possible in their crunch World Cup game against England in Sharjah on Saturday.

Of course South Africa have worked hard on implementing the right tactics against the tournament favourites, but Miller said the team, since bouncing back from their loss to Australia in their opening match, have broken their play down into small bits.

“We’ve bounced back from the loss and been really good in the last three games,” Miller said. “We have a blueprint that we are striving to perfect, and although there has been huge growth, we are still learning.

“It’s a massive game for us but we mustn’t be looking at the end result. We have to stick to our processes, take it ball-by-ball, over-by over. It’s a big cliché, but we have to do that.

“We need to be clear in our planning and preparation against England, we want to simplify what we have to do, and it’s important to really enjoy ourselves out there as well,” Miller said.

While South Africa have certainly not cured all their batting issues after some ham-fisted efforts in recent times, to have Miller back in peak form after injury is a massive bonus and the successive sixes he smoked in the final over to beat Sri Lanka will live long in the memory.

Top-level sport only loans its competitors confidence depending on the vagaries of their results, but the 32-year-old left-hander said the Proteas currently feel like they are riding a wave, having not only won consistently over the last six months but also, and certainly not coincidentally, having kept the same squad of players together.

“We’re nice and focused and ready for the next game, the team is in a good space and feeling refreshed. We’ve had a similar squad for the last six months and we’ve built up a really nice bond.

“We’re finding ways to win matches and that makes us really chuffed. We’ve won 12 of our last 14 games and that has definitely given us confidence going into this must-win match.

“In those tight moments in a game, you grab hold of every bit of confidence that you can. Winning does not necessarily have to be pretty – some of our games have been clinical and smooth, and some we still won when our performance was neither here nor there.

“We’ve happened to win one or two close games now, and hopefully that confidence, momentum and growth can keep going. Having the same squad means that we’ve learnt how to play with each other, what makes your team-mates tick,” Miller said.