It’s Preity exciting, says Stellenbosch Kings mogul
“IT’S very exciting to be here in Stellenbosch‚” Preity Zinta said in Paarl yesterday.
Her challenges with the local geography aside‚ the movie-star-cum-T20-franchise-mogul had done her homework.
“I had to write down ‘Stellenbosch’ five times so I didn’t misspell it‚” she said.
“The last IPL [Indian Premier League] I learnt to say ‘baie dankie’.”
At which point a reporter from an Afrikaans-language newspaper who was also at a media conference announcing the team formerly known as the Stellenbosch Monarchs – they will be the Stellenbosch Kings in the inaugural edition of the T20 Global League (T20GL) in November and December – shut his notebook. “I’ve got my story‚” he said. How had the Bollywood actor‚ who already owns the Punjab Kings XI‚ come to be the knight in shining armour who rode to the rescue of the Stellenbosch franchise when the originally announced owners‚ Brimstone Investments‚ pulled out?
“I bumped into [Cricket South Africa chief executive] Haroon [Lorgat] in a hotel [in Dubai] and that was pretty much it‚” Zinta said. “It was an overnight decision.”
Brimstone were one of only two South African owners among the eight originally announced‚ a fact Lorgat described as a personal disappointment.
But cricket is moving from a game run on international rivalries to a business built around a few T20 leagues spread around the world featuring the same old faces.
“The way the format is and the way leagues are structured‚ I think in the near future you are going to see league cricket take over in some ways‚” Zinta said. “The country sport is there and it’s important‚ but the league takes over at some point.
“If you look at the viewer patterns and the analytics‚ people today have shorter attention spans, so I do think this will grow.
“[T20GL] will definitely change the whole landscape of cricket in this country.”
But while the T20GL has Zinta‚ lights and action‚ it still does not have cameras.
Less than two months before the first ball is scheduled to be bowled‚ the broadcaster has yet to be named.
“In South Africa we’re in the situation where there’s one pretty strong broadcaster – you can guess as good as I can who we’re talking to‚” Lorgat said when asked if the broadcaster would be SuperSport.
“I could have sold these broadcast rights 12 months ago‚ and I can tell you what Preity has done in the last week has pumped up what we’re expecting ourselves.
“So we’re in no rush to go and do something and then say we shouldn’t have.”