The maiden season of Cricket South Africa’s Global T20 League which was initially scheduled to begin on November 3 has been postponed to November 2018. The decision was taken at a joint board meeting of the CSA officials and Global T20 League board members.
The main reasons which were understood by the franchises about the delay were that they were not able to secure a television broadcasting deal and central rights sponsorship for the mega event.
CSA has informed all the eight franchises about the delay. CSA’s acting CEO Thabang Moore while talking about the delay said, “We have not come to this decision lightly. Having discussed it with all our stakeholders including the franchise owners, we believe that the interest of the league should be our first priority. We have re-assessed our strategy and believe that postponing the first edition of the T20 Global League to next year will serve us well. We will regroup and come back stronger and better.”
“I feel so sorry for all the youngsters who were going to learn and earn out of this competition. Disaster for SA sport. To think of the number of SA youngsters, players about to retire and coaches missing out this season is simply not good enough, “Peterson said on social media after hearing the news.
With less than a month to start, the mega event faced several challenges along with their inability to confirm a broadcast deal or title sponsor. However, local broadcaster SuperSport was inching closer to crack a deal but it was much less than what CSA expected.
Moore replaced Haroon Lorgat, who was the main man behind the T20 league had to part his ways with CSA as his relationship with the cricketing body became untenable. One of the franchise owners said that Lorgat’s absence has created a ’much bigger challenge’ to put up the tournament as it was his brainchild as reported by ESPNcricinfo.
However, this delay will create a six-week gap where all the national and domestic players will be out of action from any form of cricket as this period was left out of the schedule for this event. South Africa will a play a boxing-day day-night, four-day match against Zimbabwe which is awaiting a test status from the ICC after their Bangladesh series ends on October 29.