New league in a bit of a muddle
CSA’S PROBLEM: WORLD STARS WON’T SEE IT THROUGH
Ken Borland
At the time of going to press, Cricket South Africa had not yet been able to officially introduce to the public who the six coaches will be in the Mzansi Super League, but it is they who will be in the spotlight at Montecasino tonight as the player draft is held.
The Cape Town Blitz have tweeted about Ashwell Prince being their coach and with the whole T20 tournament being such a rush, it is believed four of the other five teams will follow suit and appoint the franchise coaches from their own city.
The exception is believed to be the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants, who are bringing in former Proteas all-rounder Eric Simons, who has plenty of years of coaching in the IPL under his belt.
There is also some confusion over whether the six marquee Proteas – Faf du Plessis, AB de Villiers, Hashim Amla, Quinton de Kock (replacing the injured JP Duminy), Kagiso Rabada and Imran Tahir – are part of the draft or whether they will stay with the cities they were allocated to when the T20 Global League was introduced last year, without ever seeing the light of day.
There are also six international players to be drafted – England captain Eoin Morgan and his countrymen Jason Roy and Dawid Malan, West Indian T20 legend Chris Gayle and his compatriot Dwayne Bravo, and a new face to South African fans in Rashid Khan, Afghanistan’s new leg-spinning sensation.
Three major drawcards in Brendon McCullum, Lasith Malinga and Kieron Pollard have fallen off the marquee international list due to their unavailability and the lack of quality among the other international players in the draft suggests the global community are not as enamoured by the Mzansi Super League business model as Cricket South Africa are.
Another aspect of the draft that has not been well-publicised is that most of the top international players are only available for some of the tournament, due to their prior commitments to the Abu Dhabi T10 League from mid-November to early December.
Six Marquee players: Eoin Morgan, Jason Roy and Dawid Malan (all England), Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo (both the West Indies) and Rashid Khan (Afghanistan).