South Africa has finally started a franchise T20 tournament after three tries. The SA20 starts on Tuesday. It is not the Global League T20 or the Mzansi Super League. Here’s what you need to know about the new league.

If it doesn’t have a T, is it still a T20 tournament?

Aha, so you’ve noticed this odd thing. Well, this T20 tournament doesn’t have a T, and it also doesn’t say “Premier League” or “League.” So it’s really becoming a naming trend all by itself. In fact, Graeme Smith, the SA20 commissioner, said that they left out the T to show that they wanted to be different.

So what makes it different?

There is one big thing, though. Before the toss, captains will be able to choose 13 players for their teams. After the toss, they will choose the final XI. So, once they know whether they’ll bat or bowl first, they can make decisions about how to play as a team. But other than that, it’s still a T20 tournament, even without the T, and it’s pretty similar to one you may have heard of. There are a total of six teams, and they will play a round-robin phase where each team plays the other team both at home and away. After that, there will be semi-finals and a final. There was an auction before the tournament, and each team can have up to 18 players. Most of these players are from South Africa. On game days, they will be able to put four foreign players in each starting lineup.

This reminds us the a little of the IPL…

Ka-ching! All six teams are owned by IPL franchises, and their cutesy names have even been given to cities in South Africa. We have the Joburg Super Kings, the Pretoria Capitals, the Durban Super Giants, the Sunrisers Eastern Cape, the Paarl Royals, and everyone’s favorite reinterpretation, MI Cape Town (pronounced MY Cape Town).

This must mean a lot of money is at stake, right?

You’re right about that. IPL teams’ high bids are one reason why no South African business was able to join the league. Even though the prices haven’t been made public, it’s been said that each franchise cost more than a million dollars, with Johannesburg and Cape Town being the most expensive at USD 28 million each. The good news is that these investors will get their money back as soon as the first year is over. Even though CSA said it would take five years, the league is expected to make money as early as the first year, thanks to a good broadcast deal in India and then with other global TV providers.

There are prizes worth more than $4 million. At the auction, mega bucks were also thrown around. Tristan Stubbs was the most expensive buy at USD 520,000, which is worth a whopping R9.2 million. Other Rand millionaires include Rilee Rossouw, Donovan Ferreira, Marco and Duan Jansen, Lungi Ngidi, Wayne Parnell, Sisanda Magala, George Linde, Heinrich Klaasen, Reeza Hendricks, Tabraiz Shamsi, Rassie van der Dussen, Daryn Dupavillon.

You’ve said a lot of names, but what about Temba Bavuma, who is the captain of South Africa’s white-ball team?

Bavuma, who had a base price of R850,000 (USD 50,000), did not sell at the auction because he had been hurt for a long time and was not in good shape. At the time of the auction on September 19, Bavuma had not played competitive cricket in more than three months due to an elbow injury that kept him out of South Africa’s entire tour of England. His T20I record was also not very good. He had played 25 games with an average score of 26.86 and a strike rate of 120.60, which was the most worrying number. Still, he said that he was sad that he wasn’t picked for the tournament. Then things went from bad to worse. Bavuma had a hard time getting back into the game. In a series against India, he was out for two ducks and three runs, and in five T20 World Cup games, he scored 70 runs at a strike rate of less than 100.

Since then, there have been questions about whether he should even be on South Africa’s T20 team as a batter, let alone be the captain. When you think about the fact that Bavuma is South Africa’s first black African captain and has led the team through some of its hardest times, the whole thing is just a mess.

But he wasn’t the only one who was forgotten. Some of the better-known South African players who will not play are Dean Elgar and Keegan Petersen. Andile Phehlukwayo, a South African all-rounder, also didn’t sell at the auction, but Paarl Royals picked him up as a “wild card” player.

And the slights didn’t just happen to players, did they?

That is correct. A whole part of South Africa was left out of the SA20, and it is getting less and less important in high-profile cricket. The central area, which includes the province of Free State and the cities of Bloemfontein and Kimberley, does not have a SA20 team, so it will not host any games or take part in the event. The Bloemfontein-Kimberley team, called the Knights, was one of the six teams in South Africa’s former top tier, and the Free State provincial team plays in Division 1 of the current domestic structure. This is a pretty cold shoulder.

Even though the central region isn’t the most attractive part of the country, it has produced some of the best cricket players, like Allan Donald, and is home to some of the best cricket schools, like Grey College. We don’t know if that talent is being used in other ways or if it’s just being ignored. For now, the 3 million people who live in the Free State won’t get to see any of the glitz and glamour of the SA20, but they will get three World Cup Super League ODIs against England from January 27 to February 1.

Wait, there are ODIs in the middle of the SA20?

There are, and it couldn’t be helped. These are the games that were put off in November 2020, when Covid-19 broke out in both the South African and English camps and the beta variant was found. This caused England to leave the tournament early. South Africa has to win at least one of these games if they want to automatically qualify for the 2023 World Cup. This is because the broadcast rights for these games are worth a lot of money. South Africa is currently 11th in the table. They have only five matches left after giving up three ODIs in Australia to make room for…you guessed it…the SA20. To move up to eighth place, they have to win at least three of those five, and if they don’t, they’ll have to go to Zimbabwe in June for a qualifying event.

Wow, this is all getting pretty sad pretty fast. Can we talk about David Miller’s pink plasters on his nose?

If you haven’t seen it yet, you have no choice but to. The ads are nothing less than incredible. They show Quinton de Kock wearing a jeweled hat and wings, Shamsi making a phone call from a neon pink platform shoe, Parnell snorkeling in a bathtub, women’s captain Dane van Niekerk jamming in some glittery clothes, and David Miller’s unique nipple covers, which Janneman Malan, dressed as gold dust, calls “silly.” They are all set to Pharrell Williams’ “Happy.” What more could you want?

We’ll tell you! Like the Hundred, the SA20 will have some of South Africa’s best musicians performing on the grounds. Master KG (not KG Rabada), who is known for his hit song Jerusalema (you have to know the dance), and Sho Majozi, who performed her song John Cena on the Ellen show, will be the headliners. Get with the program. You already know you do.

And in the end, all of this is good for South African cricket, right?

We certainly hope so, because Cricket South Africa needs it like hell. The organization is in a lot of financial trouble, which is in part because Thabang Moroe was a wasteful CEO from 2017 to 2019. During that time, they also lost almost all of their sponsors. The national men’s team and all three domestic competitions still don’t have corporate sponsorship, and CSA has lost money for the last two years and will lose money again this year. Their cash reserves are so low (down from over a billion rand a few years ago to just tens of millions now) that some insiders say they won’t be able to last more than a year or two unless something fills the coffers soon, and this is supposed to be it.

But money isn’t the only reason. The South African cricket team’s morale is at an all-time low because the Test team did so badly in Australia and the white-ball teams are so far from winning the World Cup. The country needs a shot of fun and a place where players can move away from the boring style of play that has come to dominate the game and toward a more active and fun way of being.

How will we keep track of this tournament when the ILT20, BPL, and BBL are also going on?

We’re being asked! The only thing we can tell you will make your schedule even messier. The first Under-19 Women’s T20 World Cup is also going on at the same time as the New Zealand men’s series in India, the Ireland men’s series in Zimbabwe, the Pakistan women’s series in Australia and India, and the West Indies women’s series in South Africa. Enjoy.