Cricket South Africa Try to Revive Plans for New T20 League

The quest of Cricket South Africa (CSA) to start the fresh Twenty20 tournament, will finally be realised in the upcoming November. It was confirmed after CSA signed an equity deal with its main broadcast partner SuperSport.

However, the new tournament doesn’t have a name, as of now. The CSA opted to ditch the Global Twenty League brand that started the controversy eventually costing them more than R180 million when the first edition of the tournament was called off last year.

Moreover, the scope of the tournament is yet to be decided. But, CSA on Friday (June 8) announced that the audience can witness a ‘world class” competition in the near future. It will be delivered to the global-level audience.

The partnership with Supersport represents a total 180-degree shift in the relationship between the two prominent organizations. There was a huge rift between the broadcaster and CSA owing to the fallout.

The then CSA Chief executive Haroon Lorgat ordered a broadcast fee double the amount which SuperSport was willing to pay. The organization sacked Lorgat. He failed to agree on a fee with the broadcaster which postponed the competition.

However, it was just a couple of weeks ago CSA’s acting chief Thabang Moroe denied the allegations with SuperSport.

The deal has however been settled, as of now. Despite CSA not revealing the percentage stake that Supersport holds, it did confirm that the governing body has the major part of the shareholder. It will be of a new company which will run the tournament.

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“CSA is delighted to announce this equity partnership with our long-term broadcast partners, SuperSport. We have put the problems we experienced with the proposed Global T20 League behind us and look forward to hosting the new competition (which will be named later). This event will create wonderful opportunities for local players (including current Proteas and up and coming youngsters) to hone their white-ball skills,” Moroe said in a statement.

Supersport calls CSA an outstanding partner:

Meanwhile, the chief executive of Supersport also heaped praises on Cricket South Africa and called them an outstanding partner.

“CSA has been an outstanding partner of SuperSport’s for many years,” said Gideon Khobane.

“This agreement sees our relationship taken to the next level, where we will pool our mutual resources in a partnership which will create high-quality cricket and provide entertaining content for cricket fans locally and broadcast viewers both domestically and globally. To have Proteas and international stars competing together with local talent will improve the quality of T20 cricket produced by South Africa,” he said.

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