New home players for T20 League

SOUTH African sports fans had better get used to welcoming new ‘home players’ when Cricket SA’s T20 League kicks off in January next year.

Players once of Joburg will now represent Cape Town, those from Gqeberha will play for Tshwane, and then there’s Faf du Plessis.

The former Proteas captain, who was schooled at Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool across the road from Loftus Versfeld, played for Northerns and now lives in Cape Town, represented the Paarl Rocks, had been a star for the Chennai Super Kings in the IPL, and then moved to the Royal Challenges Bangalore this year.

However, according to website Cricbuzz.com, Du Plessis will be back in the colours of the Super Kings, whose owners bought the franchise that will be based in Johannesburg .

Kagiso Rabada from Johannesburg will be playing in Cape Town, as will Dewald Brevis, who is from Tshwane.

Aiden Markram, also from Tshwane, will be heading to Gqeberha, and Anrich Nortje, who is from Gqeberha, will be playing in Tshwane.

There’s likely to be more of that kind of merry-go-round as provincial favourites go where the IPL owners of the six SA franchises want them to play.

It’s part of a much bigger changing outlook for the sport, where franchises are going to become more important than national teams.

Thus, players who until now had been accustomed to signing with a national federation will sign with the owners of the IPL franchise, and wherever that owner runs a team, that player could be contracted to play there.

Brevis, for example, who has yet to play a first-class match, has been in England recently playing for the Mumbai Indians’ development team. Reliance Industries, which owns the Mumbai and Cape Town franchises, could theoretically get him to play in the UAE League in Dubai, where the company also owns a team.

The new Cape Town franchise will be known as MI Cape Town. Its full name is Mumbai Indians Cape Town, but that is confusing, with two cities contained in one sports team’s name.

To avoid problems, the owners have opted for MI Cape Town, with the ‘MI’ bit to be pronounced as ‘My’.

Rabada and Brevis will share the Newlands change-room with England duo Liam Livingstone and Sam Curran, while Afghanistan leg-spinner Rashid Khan has also been signed up.

The new competition – Cricket SA’s third attempt at starting a

T20 League – is being viewed as the saviour for the sport in the country. The seriousness with which CSA views the new tournament was proven by the fact that they withdrew the national men’s team from a three-match one-day international series in Australia, which was due to be held at the same time as the new T20 League, putting the Proteas’ chances of qualifying for the 2023 World Cup in jeopardy.

Cricket SA stated that it needed the nationally contracted Proteas to participate in the new competition given the level of financial backing that has already been made.

Broadcaster SuperSport has already invested nearly $90-million (about R1.46-billion) in the venture, while the new owners poured in about $150m to purchase the franchises

England’s Jos Buttler and

Moeen Ali and West Indies captain Jason Holder are some of the star names who have already signed up to participate in the tournament.

Each franchise can sign five players and a player auction will be held in the next few weeks to fill the 17-player rosters for each of the six teams. Each team will have 10 SA players and seven overseas players.