A CSA BOOST FOR THE SIDE
Border look to a bright future
Exciting times are on the horizon for the Border Cricket Union after Cricket South Africa recently announced that they would be dropping the franchise model and moving to a 12team provincial model from the 2020-2021 season.
This will see Border make the move from a semi-professional team back to a professional side as they were before the franchise model came into play.
“The new CSA cricket model means that Border Cricket will have its own professional team,” explained Border Cricket CEO Thando Booi.
“This is exciting news for us as we will revert to 12 provinces, as it used to be before the franchise system was introduced. Prior to the franchise system, we had a successful Border Bears team.”
A lot of changes will thus be on the cards for Border over the coming year as they prepare themselves for professional cricket.
Booi admits that there will be a lot of benefits stemming from the change in system and that it could revive cricket support in East London.
“Our focus will be on preparing for the 2020-2021 season, there is going to be a lot of work behind the scenes in ensuring that we are ready for 20202021,” admitted Booi.
“CSA will be making that announcement soon on what type of competition we will be seeing next year.
“The benefits to the union will be more matches being played at Buffalo Park, with more content we intend to attract more commercial partners and our players will be receiving more playing opportunities at that level, which will reduce the exodus of our players to other affiliates.”
Border themselves will be set to make some exciting announcements in the near future, but one of the biggest challenges they will face is getting together a competitive team that will be able to face up to the might of the big unions like Gauteng, Northerns, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
“The contracting window for 2020-2021 has not opened yet, once the window is opened I’m sure that we will be approaching a number of top players, especially our local talents to sign with us,” said Booi.
“In order for us to attract marquee players we’ll need sponsors.
“But Border will definitely be making some big announcements in the near future and we look forward to sharing them with everyone.”
So the Border semi-professional team will have one more season, getting under way probably in September with the annual Africa Cup T20 competition, followed by the CSA three-day and one-day competitions in October.
A large contingent of the current Border squad are very young players and after a very underwhelming 2018-2019 season, they will need to impress heavily over the 2019-2020 campaign to give themselves a chance of being offered a contract with the professional side.
It will also be very interesting to see where some of the Warriors-contracted Border players end up after their final season with the Eastern Cape franchise.
A lot of changes will thus be on the cards for Border over the coming year to be pros