“SOLD!”
That’s what auctioneer Richard Madley shouted before striking his hammer and concluding the sale of Lungisani Ngidi at the SA20 player auction, held at Cape Town’s International Conference Centre on Monday.
Fixtures for the 6-team franchise cricket competition will come to life in January.
Ngidi was snapped-up for R3.4m by the Paarl Royals, the franchise team that will play their home matches in Boland Park .
The other competing franchises are the Durban Super Giants (Kingsmead), Joburg Super Kings (Wanderers), Pretoria Capitals (Centurion) MI Cape Town (Newlands), Paarl Royals (Boland Park) and the St, George’s Park based Sunrisers Eastern Cape.
The SA20 is the local cricketing authority’s take-3 at producing a T20 competition in the ilk of the hugely popular Indian Premier League.
It’s not surprising that the local competition will have a strong Indian influence as all six SA20 franchises are owned by IPL bosses.
A big spin-off for locals playing in the SA20 is the possibility of being drafted into the respective IPL squads.
As part of their commitment to growing the South African game, the owners have also pledged support for local cricket development programmes.
Graeme Smith is the SA20’s commissioner.
Ahead of the players going under the hammer, Smith, during his address, recalled how Yuvraj Singh smashed six consecutives 6’s of a Stuart Broad over when India played England at Kingsmead during a T20 World Cup, which was played in South Africa in 2007.
India won that tournament and the IPL emerged the following year.
He said SA20 competition would go a long way towards improving South African cricket and it had the potential to put at least 60 local players on the international stage during each edition of the competition.
Each franchise will have 17 players and the number of foreigners has been capped at seven and the match-day line-up must include a maximum of four overseas players.
In the initial stages of bidding, the franchises showed reluctance in staking claims for the available imported players.
After three blocks of bidding Tristan Stubbs, was bought for R9.2m by MI Cape Town.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE