Embryonic MSL has plenty of teething pains
The Mzansi Super League is now a fortnight old with last Friday night’s clash between the Jozi Stars and the Durban Heat being the 16th match and the final on December 16 will be the 32nd game in the new T20 tournament.
And yet, in contrast to the often frenetic cricket played out in the middle, there does not seem to be a great sense of urgency to rush out and get tickets for what Cricket South Africa are optimistically billing as the best thing to ever happen to the game in SA.
It would be harsh to judge the Mzansi Super League right now because it is still very much in its infancy and, as AB de Villiers pointed out yesterday, even the IPL was “all over the place” in the first couple of years but now, 11 years later, it is indisputably the top T20 tournament in the world.
Some shrieking “influencer” let loose with a microphone at SuperSport Park this week said the MSL was the greatest T20 tournament ever held in South Africa, which is a gross exaggeration when one considers we have actually hosted the IPL for a year, as well as the World T20 and some of the Standard Bank Pro20 seasons were more memorable and slick than what is currently on offer.
But the MSL could potentially become a big drawcard and in order to reach the heights CSA are hoping for, they need to attract more big-name foreigners, and they need to be here for the whole tournament.
The inaugural MSL hasn’t caught alight yet and, with all due respect, batsmen like Janneman Malan, Gihahn Cloete and Asif Ali, and bowlers like Jeewan Mendis, Anrich Nortje (now injured) and Junior Dala are topping their respective standings but they are
Ken Borland
not the sort of drawcards that will have flocks of people rushing out to buy tickets to see them play.
Day/night cricket used to be such a popular occasion but in order to become that sort of crowd-puller the MSL really needs to be better marketed and the scheduling needs to be better.
This week the Tshwane Spartans hosted the Jozi Stars in a Gauteng derby but CSA barely bothered to put together any extra marketing whatsoever, even though the AB de Villiers versus Kagiso Rabada angle was obvious. It didn’t help either when the Jozi Stars chose to have their only media opportunity of the week on Thursday, the day after the game!
To exacerbate the problem, the Gauteng derby was scheduled for 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon, which is never going to encourage crowds either. A disappointing attendance of just over 2 000 was the result – no bigger than for a normal franchise T20 match – but that’s what will become of the MSL unless CSA find a way to make their new product more attractive. Stadiums have mostly been half-full and the games are competing with the demands of exams for the youngsters and the older folk trying to finish off the working year.
At the moment it all just seems like the same old T20 cricket played by the same old players, with the added negative of some of the worst music and most lacklustre dancers I have ever had the misfortune to experience. I’m not sure who chose what is apparently the theme “music” for the MSL, but the beneficiaries must either be family members or were chosen by deaf people because they are as musically talented as a dozen cats wailing for food. There were times at SuperSport Park in midweek when it was a genuinely unpleasant place to be.
The television viewership on SABC does bode well for the tournament though, with 3.4 million viewers for the first four games. That compares favourably with the average viewership for Test matches or Super Rugby games, but before CSA chief executive Thabang Moroe does cartwheels of delight, it should be remembered that viewership on the same platform when Temba Bavuma scored his memorable maiden Test century at Newlands in 2016 topped 10 million on one day.