Hello and welcome to Stumped, your intercontinental hit of news features and debate from the quirky world of cricket.
I'm Alison Mitchell and I am at BBC Sport HQ in Manchester this week, I'm finally in a proper radio studio
rather than being at home but I've been in Manchester for a little while. We had the Test match.
England's men against South Africa.
Then a little bit of a break before a Hundred match up here as well, managed to take a stroll
out to Alderley Edge. Very picturesque part of the world up here. So it's been an enjoyable
few weeks. And gosh! Going from Test cricket to the pace of the Hundred. These days, that's not much difference is it?
Yes, it's Jim Maxwell in Sydney and nice to see you in that studio Ali and for us, it's springtime.
It's just broken a couple of weeks ahead of the official start of the cricket season.
But the Australian men's team have been playing a couple of matches up in Queensland in the warm weather in
Townsville against Zimbabwe. And they'll be backing that up after that against New Zealand
in three One Dayers in Cairns. And I am Sunil Gupta for All India Radio in New Dehli
and of course, the big news happening here is the Asia Cup, which is now
well underway and the big news of course, as I'm sure some of you have been following
is the emergence of Afghanistan as a serious contender because they absolutely ran through
Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka, beat them by eight wickets, Bangladesh, by seven
and that means Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are actually fighting for the last Super Four spots.
So that's the big news insofar as the teams are concerned. But the big news insofar as the Indian
team is concerned is that the top three are still scratching around. Rahul, Rohit and of course,
Virat Kohli but the big man is the guy, nicknamed Sky. And that is Suryakumar Yadav. And
if anybody saw his innings against, albeit Hong Kong, but still it was an innings on a
cricket pitch. I can tell you, he is a star waiting to be discovered at the World T20s.
Watch out for Suryakumar Yadav because the sky is literally the limit for him.
Yeah, the T20 World Cup always picks out some talent doesn't it? Just get those names on the big stage,
the world's focus is on them and it feels if new names get unearthed. Looking forward to that
later in the year, for sure. We're gonna focus the show this week on cricket in South Africa because
Cricket South Africa has twice before tried to launch a world class T20 competition and twice
it hasn't succeeded. But this time around, they are attracting some of the biggest names
in the world to play in a six team men's T20 league that will start in late January.
And the league is so important to South Africa that they even scrapped a One Day International
series against Australia to make sure that they had their best home players available. A sign of
the shifting times, maybe? They've also got one of the biggest names in cricket as commissioner
of the tournament and that is former South Africa captain Graeme Smith, who's with us on the show
this week. Hi Graeme, how you doing? Ali, thank you. Biggest name, I appreciate that!
We like to puff up our guests a bit, make you feel at home on Stumped.
Puff me out before you start grilling me. You know exactly. Tell us, first of all then though,
why did Cricket South Africa deem it so important to create this league?
Ali, I think it's pretty simple, actually. I think financial stress, in particular, you start looking at
the way of the world and the world game and South African Cricket
really needed to build a product that it owned itself, that it could develop itself. We've seen
all the other nations do that successfully. As you mentioned, we haven't been able to do that here.
I think we finally got the model right and we were able to attract a really good
host broadcaster in sub-Saharan Africa and then attracted the right type of partnerships, which
can help build and sustain the league into the future. Unfortunately, I think with the way of
the world, the ICC has become more event-based, everyone else is becoming event-based. Cricket
South Africa's windows are getting tighter. There needed to be an investment into our game and
this is something that they can own and really use the big platform.
So you're commissioner, what does that mean exactly? What does that role entail?
I'm effectively the CEO. They wanted to use a fancier name, the shareholders.
They're also just trying to prop me up a little bit Ali.
What would you say has been the biggest challenge in doing that so far? And how ultimately
will success be measured, in terms of this tournament meeting an end goal
or an ongoing goal? Success is quite a broad question, cos there's a lot of different
viewpoints on that. I think just a high level, you know we would love to capture the imagination
of the South African fans, to have full houses and great energy. I think everyone will talk about the
standard of cricket, so that is something that is first and foremost. Our goal is to be the second
best league behind the IPL. I think It's very difficult to knock out IPL off their perch, but
our goal is to be right there, right behind them. The biggest challenge up front was overcoming some
of the legacy issues that you mention that Cricket South Africa. you know, trying to build confidence into
the marketplace from a player and an ownership perspective. Getting the modelling right.
You can't hide away from the things that have gone wrong in South African cricket, but
we were able to work through them. We were able to build some confidence at the player group,
pre signed a number of outstanding players, which is a very difficult marketplace as
James will tell you. Big Bash is struggling. The UAE is definitely there or thereabouts. So that
was tough. The difference between us and them is that we are gonna be focusing and building 60, 70,
potentially 80 household South African names every year and improving the standard of those guys and
putting them on a global platform. So that is our goal and where we kind of differentiate ourselves.
This has supplanted the One Day Series, you were going to play in Australia.
Why is this league more important than an international series against one of the world's best teams?
Oz are not one of the world's best James, come on man! They've won more than anyone else.
You know James, I look at it fairly differently and I know Cricket South Africa engaged tirelessly
with Cricket Australia to find a solution for this window. If you look at it from a South African perspective,
financially to be out of their country at this time of year, it s a no-go. Have you ever seen
your Australian team tour over Boxing Day and New Year's anywhere else, James?
Before you were born, they went to South Africa in the old regime but that is a long time ago.
I actually think that Cricket South Africa's doing an amazing thing for the world game. It's giving up its
home revenue over a key part of the summer to come spend it in yours James, for the sake of cricket. So
I think that that is a perspective that probably hasn't been spoken about. And so, Cricket South
Africa have created this window to invest in their own product. They worked tirelessly with Cricket
Australia to find a solution for these games and there was no solution to be found so ultimately
they had to make a tough decision. Already out of their country for most of the summer,
loss of revenue and so if you're going to commit to building this thing, you kind of had to.
Will it benefit the South African national side holding this tournament?
I think that's the goal. I mean, if you just look at India,
for example James in the IPL, they've elevated enough players
to have a number of teams across the board in all formats and I think that's the goal here. Cricket
South Africa, they're cutting costs and the players standards aren't there. We'll fade away from the world game.
I think this opportunity here is to really lift and elevate. If you play for South Africa,
we have 15 to 20 guys that are elevated at a global level. And we've seen that standard has
fluctuated of late and we wanna just get that up to a level where we can compete with the Englands,
the Indias, the Australians and the likes on a consistent level. I don't think the world game
needs South African players to fade away, it needs them to remain strong. And we feel like this is
a real opportunity to grow that player base, to strengthen it and to create more competition in
our set-up across the board. But the structure of the game's changing, people moving away
more and more, probably as they get older to franchise cricket rather than playing for their country.
How's this going to affect men's and women's game in South Africa?
Cricket South Africa will still run their entire programme
with four day cricket, their one day cricket. They'll also have a feeder
T20 system to this. This will just be one of the premier events, like the Hundred or the Big Bash
that happens. For us, it's a three and a half four week period at most in a season that our
SA20 will happen. I guess for me, I guess the older guys are retiring slightly earlier
because there's opportunities to do your trade around here. But the interesting question for the
world game is the next generation of cricketers that start signing permanently with franchises and so on.
That's going to be the debate to see the likes of a Brevis, a Tim David, for example, that's
just been selected. You know, he has options. So I think those are the discussions and maybe
see it around the world game and an understanding of how this is going to navigate going forward.
Even if you look at the ICC, I guess their focus has become world event-based and less
bilateral as well. They're investing hugely in a tournament every year now. So I guess
that there probably does need to be a discussion on how this will structure and move forward.
So does this tournament have an official name? Will it be called the Cricket South Africa T20
league or something a bit more flashier? Jim, I'm so sad our news hasn't arrived in Australia yet.
We launched yesterday. It's a simple name - SA20. It's something that we feel we can bring to life.
It's a strong name and we've done a lot of work on it and hopefully over the next few weeks,
we'll capture your imagination as we've built our auction on the 19th.
The names of the teams obviously have a lot of bearing
on what the Indian IPL teams are. So, could you tell us
a little bit about the close ties between this league and the IPL?
Yeah, look I think it's no secret that
the IPL owners are looking to expand and have done that a little bit into the UAE but extensively
into South Africa now. I think that not all of them are announced. I see that the Super
Kings announced this morning, they did a launch. So, a lot of it, their brands have stayed the same
but related to cities in South Africa, Sunil. So MI Cape Town, Joburg Super Kings,
Pretoria Capitals. That's been the approach. Are these close ties between the IPL, India, South Africa
one of the main reasons why no Pakistani players have been signed to play in the tournament as yet?
No, that's actually not the case. So we've allowed everyone to register for the auction.
Centrally as the league, we don't get involved in selection. Our job is to facilitate the players
and get them onto the portals and get them registered for the auction.
We had a number of Pakistan players registered but we're waiting on the PCB and their approach
to our league and UAE and Big Bash and various others. So obviously the follow up question
relates to Indian players. Now as you know, the BCCI has a very strict rule about Indian players,
including those playing in the IPL, not playing in international franchises.
Are you a) surprised about that? And just to add on to this question, do you think there will come
a time, when they will be allowed, especially since the teams are largely Indian either owned or named?
Sunil, it's not a surprise to me. I mean, obviously, we've noted it for a long time in the T20 formats,
the protection of the IPL and that's extracted serious value and done wonders for Indian cricket.
So you know, our hope would be that we could play a role in developing Indian talent and
attracting it in time. I think everybody wishes that. We've had discussions with the BCCI, we
understand their position currently. If that changes in the future then I think we will be
nicely position to be able to help Indian cricket as well and benefit our league
with the likes of the Indian stars. But that's just something that we just have to
cross when it happens. Graeme, I was gonna ask you about the women's game.
Is this an opportunity missed to launch two tournaments side-by-side
in the manner in which the Hundred has been able to
launch with a real bang and arguably, I think it's widely acknowledged that the women's game has
almost benefited more so than the men's.
Yeah Ali, fair question and we debated it upfront but
one of the key issues that we had was the Women's World Cup, starting just around the corner.
So we finish season one and then the Women's World Cup kicks off almost straight away.
So, with teams preparing for that ability to access the type of talent that was required,
to pull it off with the same level was going to be a challenge in Year one. It's definitely in our
key focus for Year two, three to get something at that level that you guys have been able to achieve
in England. I mean, I was there for the Test match at Lord's, then I went to two Hundred games at the
Oval, including the one, where the ladies game was the evening game at the Oval.
So, that was great to see and it's definitely in our plans. When you're speaking about developing that
core of South African local cricketers that can become household names, does the SA20 league,
does that adhere to the same transformation targets as every other domestic competition in
South Africa as well? Does that come under the same banner? No, I think Cricket South Africa have
been clear on that with the investment that we have had into our game. There's huge investment
at different levels from Cricket South Africa to grow that and policies in place. But here, from
a league and a Cricket South Africa perspective, we don't get involved in selection. We leave that
up to the teams and the owners to build their own squads. Do you think that the league, given
that it will have such a high profile and a big platform. does it have with it a responsibility
to help with the education and the aiding of the transformation picture in cricket within South
Africa, given I suppose the last year or so, in particular with the social justice hearings
there's been such a spotlight put on that? Yeah. I mean, there's a huge investment from
the owners into the grassroots as well. We're structuring meetings all the time with Cricket South Africa's
pathways and their development programmes and all these team owners are going to be investing capital
and the experience into various levels of our grassroots programmes and development programmes
that hopefully will aid in bringing equality through that these discussions never
have to happen. I mean Cricket South Africa's now almost thirty years deep into these investments
and their policies are very stringent and that will carry on. When you talk about a
global platform. I don't think there's any bigger, global platform than representing your country. So
I think Cricket South Africa have really focused hard on that. Their job is to make sure there is enough
talent to come in and that this conversation doesn't need to happen anymore. But certainly in
our prospectus and our bid documents, that was a key focus. And we had, I think in the end, I think 14, 15,
16 people that bid on team ownership and in the end, there was one or two of the differentiators
is the investment into these grassroot programmes. We can't wait to see how it all unfolds. Graeme,
thanks so much for being with us on Stumped. Good luck with the league once it gets going in January
and we look forward to following it closely. Brilliant, thank you and thank you for the time
Ali, Sunil and Jim, nice to see you. Pleasure.
And take care.
Well, that is it for this week's Stumped. Thanks to Jim Maxwell and to Sunil Gupta and of course to Graeme Smith, our guest
and all of you for listening. We'll see you again next week for a little bit more chat. Bye bye for now.