Graeme Smith wants SA20 to be world’s second-best T20 league

The tie-in with IPL owners is far-reaching, with several South African sides sharing names with their Indian counterparts.

The Johannesburg side, owned by the parent company of the Chennai Super Kings, will be the Joburg Super Kings, with Sunrisers Eastern Cape and MI Cape Town – after Sunrisers Hyderabad and Mumbai Indians – also continuing franchise names.

However, Smith is adamant that the SA20 will improve the quality of South African cricket itself.

“It’s no secret that the the IPL owners are looking to expand and have done that, a little bit into the United Arab Emirates but extensively into South Africa now,” Smith said.

“We are going be focusing and building 60, 70, potentially 80 household South African names every year and improving the standard of those guys, putting them on a global platform.

“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.

“They (IPL franchise owners) have also taken on a huge grassroots investment, as well as the development of the game in South Africa. All these team owners are going to be investing capital and experience into various levels of our grassroots programmes and development programmes.”

This will be the third attempt at launching a successful T20 league in South Africa, after the aborted Global League T20 in 2017 and the watered-down Mzansi Super League the following two years.

“I think the biggest challenge up front was overcoming some of the legacy issues – trying to build confidence into the marketplace, from a player and ownership perspective,” Smith said.

“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 in the player group and pre-signed a number of outstanding players.”