Why has the “T” in the SA20 title been dropped?
There is no T in SA20 and may be no future for the revered South Africa test side
In January of 2023, the newly started SA20 saw the dropping of “T” from the title and according to league commissioner Graeme Smith, the T was dropped intentionally.
The reason sighted by Smith is that there are many leagues of these kinds nowadays and the South Africans feel that this name would make them stick out from others.
Another such match will start in the UAE as ILT20.
The Indian premier league has put a lot of funds into both competitions.
They are the owners of all six teams in the South-Africa and three of the UAE’s teams. So many new competitions are coming up like TV series. So this was the IPL of South Africa.
In this tourney, Rashid khan was present as he had been for other matches such as IPL, Hundred, Caribbean premier league, Abu Dhabi T10, and this year’s blowout in South Africa.
And also present were Sam Curran and Jos Buttler, David Miller and Eoin Morgan too. The same game, with the same players in the same type of kits. In this era of T20, you can see toss being done somewhere around.
The SA20 game was different than others as it saw Jofra Archer’s comeback in the game and he played the game as if he had never been away from the game.
And the other feature was the batting of Ryan Rickelton and Dewald Brevis both South African players in the second innings.
Out of them, Rickelton had played some international games but Brevis is quite young at 19 and has not played any international games. In this particular match, they scored 90 together, splendidly.
In fact, Rickelton and Brevis were supposed to play against Australia in Tasmania, but the South African board retreated from the series as they wanted their players to be available for this tourney.
Right now the team is in 11th position in the world cup super league standings. And if they do not come up in the top 8 positions then they have to play and win another qualifying match to go in for the world cup in autumn this year.
So it is not the many changes like dropping the T or captain changing the team after the toss or changes in coverage techniques as the commentator commenting from an armchair from the square of the wicket that makes the SA20 unique but its that the South African team has given a front role to SA20 tourney in contrast to domestic, test and one-day matches.
The South African team is at crossroads now. Their men’s team is scheduled to play only 28 tests as compared to 38 tests of India, 40 tests of Australia, and 43 tests of England.
The South African team’s franchise side played in first-class cricket for the last 17 years has been dismissed, restored by 15 provincial teams divided into two sections.
The board was not left with much choice. As it has lost a lot of money for a long that it was time to take some extreme steps.
South Africans are ranked as the 3rd oldest nation in the world, performing for more than 130 years, and Currie Cup, the domestic competition was once considered one of the strongest in the world.
But the game became unfeasible for the country. The game of cricket is changing in more than one way. And that is going to become problematic for all.
The team of England realized that some of their young players denied going for a development series to Sri Lanka as they had commitments to South Africa and UAE.
The only expectation is that the proceeds from the SA20 will be used for the betterment of their first-class cricket and with time there will be an improvement in the test team too. The condition is that if they are still in the format of playing the game.
