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With momentum firmly on its side, SA20 now has its sights set on being the biggest league outside India. Smith, in an exclusive interview with Cricketnext in Pretoria, acknowledged the trust placed in the league by stakeholders and fans, as well as the support from…Read More
Graeme Smith believes that the current league model will prove to be a success. (Image Credit: Sportzpics)
SA20 has breathed a new life into South African cricket, winning back fans and restoring faith in the game. And for the league commissioner Graeme Smith, it’s become a remarkable journey – from a bold idea to a thriving competition that’s now drawing new audiences to cricket. Smith credits the league’s success to its competitive edge, world-class players, and vibrant in-stadium experiences that have made fans fall in love with the sport again.
With momentum firmly on its side, SA20 now has its sights set on becoming the biggest league outside India. Smith, in an exclusive interview with CricketNext in Pretoria, acknowledged the trust placed in the league by stakeholders and fans, as well as the support from the BCCI during its formative stages. “Our ambition is to be the biggest league outside India,” he says confidently, as the league continues to build a platform for players and fans alike while aiming for global prominence.
Excerpts
SA20’s 100th game is a major milestone. How do you reflect on the journey so far?
It is incredible that we are sitting here 100th games of SA20, I think about how much work we had to do to build it initially, bring back confidence in SA cricket, people who trusted us in the beginning and what we’re building, six franchises and the fans who turned up in numbers. The other exciting thing is in SA we introduced a lot of new fans to cricket [via SA20], it is going to be a goosebump moment, good time to reflect on what we built.
South Africa had tried various iterations of franchise-based T20 leagues in the past with not much success. SA20, however, in its third year, seems to be here to stay. As league commissioner, what sets SA20 apart and made it successful as opposed to the previous attempts?
Well, I think we set some big goals and I think we’ve built a model that allows us to be successful. I also think we’ve been very intentional about what’s important to us. I think attracting outstanding players, putting the best South African players together and creating a really competitive cricket league, I think is hugely important. I think we’ve managed to get that right every year and it’s gone from strength to strength. And then the sports and entertainment side of what we do.
If you come into our stadiums, the fan experience in a stadium, what’s on offer from the music to the entertainment to everything in and around, the giveaways, the sponsor activations has really just enabled people to want to come and experience it. And then they’ve fallen in love with cricket. So I think where cricket was three years ago in South Africa, 3-4-5 years ago, where the team maybe wasn’t doing so well, there was a lot of administrative issues, people that got despondent with cricket.
I think where we see now that our national team has improved, is challenging in the World Test Championship Finals, has made a final of a T20 World Cup. And Betway SA20 has really gone from strength to strength even on this year.
Success seems to create momentum. Is SA20 considering expansion now, or is consolidation still the focus? And are you aiming for more returns, like you managed Dinesh Karthik this year, are there talks to bringing in more Indian players for the eyeballs?
We want to grow. I mean, look, the IPL is its own beast and we’re very lucky that we have a good relationship with the BCCI. They’ve been unbelievable in helping guide us at certain times while we were building SA20. I think for us, it’s about obviously how do you keep getting better every year, establishing the product even more, getting more people to tune in and want to experience SA20 from around the world. I mean, those are our ultimate goals. We’ve got to keep growing and getting bigger.
Our ambition is to be the biggest league outside of India. I think people are talking about us, we want to be the league of the choice for players. I think the international players are choosing to be here because the cricket is really hard and, in our window, it’s competitive, the fans, it’s summer, it’s a great feel. And I think once those things start to fall into place, it really does help you be able to even lift it a little bit more.
With multiple franchise leagues happening simultaneously, there are challenges, like the country vs franchise dilemma seen last year during the SA20. How do you navigate this and find a sustainable window for SA20’s growth? Could it involve prioritising certain formats or rethinking bilateral series?
Well, we work with Cricket South Africa heavily on that. They still are a majority shareholder. We’ve now announced our next three-year windows, and we worked closely with them on their schedules and how it works for them and where we can slot in. So we spent lots of time in the room with them.
I mean, obviously, I think bilateral cricket’s got its own scheduling issues. It’s not just a South Africa thing. I mean, SA20 is five weeks in an entire calendar year. It’s a busy calendar year. I get that. It’s the T20 World Cup next year in February. South Africa’s in India till mid-December. So all these are challenges just in the short term.
But I think as we get to the next FTP cycles and stuff, then it gets easier to really plan this all out over a five-year period. Right now, the investment is to establish the product. Cricket South Africa have made some big decisions in terms of making sure that they develop a league. We know franchise cricket’s growing, so it was very important for South Africa to have a really strong competition.
I allude to one of your comments that you had made in reference to an ILT20 where they are bringing in the international players and that’s it as opposed to try and develop players or work at the grassroots level. How important is that for SA20 to grow?
My comments around those is just related to the amount of international players that they require. I don’t know if that’s exciting for the game where, I think there’s got to be more of an element of trying to grow your local base and I think we’re doing that. At SA20 now, we’ve invested in the schools program.
We’ve launched over 500 schools now in a five-month competition, both girls and boys, over 1,000 games. We’ve done under-19 girls camps, we’ve sent our under-19 girls coach on experience stuff, so we are working on the talent pipeline all the time.
We’ve introduced the rookie system into the main event and this year you saw a number of those rookies playing and playing well – Mbaka, Pretorius – some of the exciting ones and so on. So, it’s been great to see and hopefully we’ll see that we can get to a place where India has got to the IPL where they can put out two amazing teams and play in two different parts of the world and still be really competitive.
If we can grow our player base to 30, 35, 40 people that can play for South Africa in a given day, then you’re going to see South African cricket go like that.
- Location :
Pretoria (South Africa)
