Africa-Press – South-Africa. Having worked hard to attract foreign stars to build its credibility the SA20 and South African cricket is at a point where it’s the local stars who have become headline attractions and could garner huge pay packets at next week’s player auction ahead of the competition’s fourth season.
Graeme Smith is not bothered that the Ashes, West Indies playing in New Zealand or even the Big Bash Down Under — all of which will run concurrently with next season’s SA20 — will impinge the quality of players available for the auction.
“You may lose (players) through the Ashes, but you gain through England white ball players, or for next season West Indies players like Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, who are both playing for the first time and Nicholas Pooran who has been pre-signed by MI Cape Town,” said the league’s commissioner.
More important for Smith however, are the local players. “The big storylines will be the South African marquee players and how teams bid for them.”
Aiden Markram and Dewald Brevis are the headline names among the local contingent with both having a base price of R500,000. Smith expects Tristan Stubbs’s record fee of R9.2m — set in the first auction — to be surpassed next week with Markram and Brevis, the favourites to possibly breach the R10m mark.
“I think the franchises understand the South African players a lot more than they did in season one. We’ve seen over the three years, some local players really stand out,” said Smith.
With both hailing from Northerns, and the Pretoria Capitals, led by a new coaching staff headed up by Sourav Ganguly, with Shaun Pollock as his assistant, having the largest available cap space at R32m, it represents an obvious option for a return home for either player. Markram led the Sunrisers Eastern Cape to the title in the first two seasons, while Brevis was part of the MI Cape Town side that won last season’s competition.
There are a host of top local players available in the auction — including Matthew Breetzke, who’s been on a hot streak in the ODI format and has set his base price at R200,000, which is likely to cause high bidding. Kwena Maphaka, Gerald Coetzee, Tristan Luus and Lutho Sipamla are among a host of talented fast bowlers available, as are World Test Championship winners Lungi Ngidi, Kyle Verreynne, David Bedingham, Keshav Maharaj and Wiaan Mulder.
Despite the international programme, Smith said it was a tribute to how the tournament is viewed internationally that players like Russell, Narine, Jos Buttler and Rashid Khan have already been pre-signed by franchises, and that others, including the great Jimmy Anderson and Bangladeshi star Shakib Al-Hasan, have all submitted their names to the auction.
The tournament has done away with the Rookie selection this season and instead franchises have to sign two South African under-23 players. “The reason for that was we didn’t want a turnover of young players, we wanted them to be able to be picked up young and be developed in the system over three years.”
There are 84 spots available across the six franchises at next week’s auction with R131m expected to be spent on players.
All squads are required to include 19 players, with a minimum of nine South African players, a maximum of seven international players, two U23 South African players and a Wildcard player.
In the absence of Test cricket next summer, the fourth season of SA20, which will start on December 26, will occupy prime time on the calendar, with matches also scheduled for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
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