Cricket SA dazed by Mickey Mouse moves
● What does it tell us about the state of SA cricket that all sorts of Mickey Mouse operations are getting into the T20 market and Cricket South Africa (CSA) don’t seem to be up to organising a tournament for love nor money?
In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for instance, T20x will take to the world’s screens in December and January with AB de Villiers as the nonplaying brand ambassador and David Miller as one of six marquee players.
Sounds good. Or not, given the manipulative engineering of the squads’ composition. They must include three players from the UAE national squad, three from International Cricket Council associate members, and four must be “emerging” from around the world. All that for only 22 games played by just five teams at a piddling three grounds.
The shoddiness of the outfit was clear after organisers offered, on Monday morning, a telephone interview with Miller at 5pm that day. At 5.03pm “technical difficulties” were blamed for the phone not ringing. At 9.46am on Tuesday they were “waiting for a reply from Miami”. Nothing has been heard from them since.
For all its amateurishness there is little doubt T20x will go ahead. But here CSA are, scrambling to put out the fires of what was to have been called the T20 Global League (T20GL) and should have launched last year.
CSA’s latest attempt at damage control came on Friday in the shape of a release that spent 1,207 words to make two points: that they have set mid-September as the deadline for deciding what they’re going to do about their Frankenstein’s T20 monster, and that they might keep the cursed thing on ice: “… the desire to host such event cannot be considered at all cost. In this regard the CSA approach to cautious optimism might not be a popular approach.”
That followed SuperSport saying this week that “… discussions on the in-principle shareholding agreement” with CSA on the T20GL’s replacement had “terminated on 23 July 2018”. And with the T20GL owners slinging letters between each other fired with phrases like “… let’s stop this bullshit and go to court and get an interdict on this so-called new league”. What of CSA’s key employees, the players, who are going to have to make this thing — whatever it turns out to be, if it ever does — look respectable?
“The entire uncertainty around issues is a concern,” Tony Irish, the CE of the SA Cricketers’ Association, said.
“That includes the fact that we aren’t sure exactly what’s going to happen. The SuperSport deal seems to have changed and there’s a lot of noise around issues with the previous owners.
“We definitely need the league but the time within which we’re now given for it to happen is a concern and lots of the uncertainties around it are concerns.”
Irish, who is also the CE of the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations, had news for those who wonder why so much effort and energy is being spent on a form of the game that should get out of the way so we can play — and watch — proper cricket.
“The big [T20] leagues are growing the game and attracting new audiences at a far greater rate than international cricket does. They’re good for the game.”
About the only certainty in all this is that Russell Adams, who has proved his capability in the Indian Premier League, remains CSA’s T20 tournament director.
Asked how confident he was, considering everything, of the venture’s chances, he had a one-word reply: “Confident.”