Sunday Times

So, the Mzanzi Super League it is, after much toing and froing

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● Don’t look now, people whose idea of summer isn’t complete without thoughts of cricket, but not before time, and after much fear and loathing, we seem to have a T20 tournament on our hands.

Feel it, the Mzansi Super League (MSL) is here.

At least, it will be 26 days from today. That’s if Cricket SA make good on their promise, which they failed to last year. But first a word from the sponsors . . . Ah yes! None have yet been announced. At least as of this writing, on Friday.

Not that we should hang the suits by their pinstripes, again, just yet: this time last week the ink was not quite dry on the names of the competitio­n and its franchises. En kyk hoe lyk’it nou.

If the MSL keeps following this predictabl­y unpredicta­ble script, sponsors are liable to tumble out of its accompanyi­ng tangle of press releases sooner rather than later.

That’s not to pretend the competitio­n is the gods’ gift to T20 cricket, freshly fallen just about fully formed from the sky.

Not having the South African players around for the first weekend — they’ll be on tour in Australia — and having to do without the big-name foreigners for a dozen days — while they’re travelling to and fro and playing in a T10 tournament in Sharjah — can only hurt the

What’s not to like about a mirror image of Joburg’s skyline

tournament.

Happily all will be aboard for the last two weeks of the MSL, which is about the attention span of the average T20 devotee, anyway.

But will the MSL live up to its billing? Will it compete with others of its ilk? And, most importantl­y, considerin­g the format, will it be fun?

We don’t know. We do know that, for once, the marketing people have done some decent work. The Jozi Stars? The Durban Heat? The Paarl Rocks? Whoever came up with those zingers deserves considerat­ion for a proper job one day. Nice touch, for instance, to use Jozi instead of Johannesbu­rg, where everybody thinks they’re a star.

Not so much the Cape Town Blitz — in which war was the city bombed from the sky? — nor the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants — an unwieldy mouthful, and not nearly as good as the Eascapers would have been.

The Stars win the logo competitio­n easily. What’s not to like about a mirror image of Joburg’s skyline that looks not a little like oil seeping into the trafficcho­ked city’s streets?

But the Durban side’s shirts could easily be confused with a Deep Heat logo, the Tshwane Spartans will look like the enforcers in a security company, and is that grey pile on the Blitz’ badge supposed to be Table Mountain or a lump of dog shit on the Sea Point promenade?

See. It’s fun already.

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