Graeme Smith, Former South Africa captain and the commissioner of the domestic T20 league Image: Brenton Geach/ AFP
As South Africa’s most successful cricket captain, Graeme Smith has forged his nerves in steel. He took over the reins post the team’s shock exit from the 2003 World Cup, at a time it was still reeling from the aftershocks of ex-captain Hansie Cronje’s match-fixing scandal, and led it to an unbeaten streak in away Test matches between 2007 and 2013.
Nearly a decade on, as an administrator—although, he says he doesn’t like the word—Smith’s building SA20, South Africa’s domestic T20 franchise league, with lofty ambitions of making it the second-biggest after the IPL.
In its very first year, SA20 had set a trend and turned profitable; its second season (that concluded in February 2024) is said to have contributed significantly to the coffers of CSA (Cricket South Africa), which recorded its first profitable fiscal in three years. Global viewership is said to have increased 21 percent across nine broadcasters, and local by 24 percent.
Ahead of the third season beginning January 9, Smith tells Forbes India how South Africa got third time lucky with a T20 league, learnings from the Indian franchise owners and roping in Dinesh Karthik as the brand ambassador and the first Indian player for the league. Edited excerpts:
Q. You’ve had two blockbuster seasons of SA20. What should we expect from the third season?
A lot of it’s going to be, hopefully, once again doing the stuff we’ve done really well. [The auction for this season] was really interesting for me to watch from a cricket perspective because a large majority of our international players had two-year contracts. This was the first year that teams could release players in the contract cycle. So I was really interested to see what would happen when it came to player availability, the type of players that would be attracted to come. And I think the biggest achievement we’ve had outside of rebuilding the cricket fan community and attracting new cricket fans to South Africa is to see the quality of the players that are coming for Season 3. If you look at the ICC rankings, we’ve got some incredible, high-performing players, which shows we’ve got to a league that’s highly competitive and which top players in the world want to be a part of. For me, that is a big achievement.
Q. The league, besides bilaterals with India, is said to be one of the key reasons why Cricket South Africa (CSA) made a profit of 815 million rands (Rs380 crore) in FY24, after reporting losses for three years. What has made the league such a huge financial success?
You always want to try and attract the right partners and, in the beginning you are basically selling a dream or a vision to them. We were very fortunate that we were able to secure six really strong franchises and broadcast partners that backed us in key markets—Jio-Viacom in India, Supersport in Sub-Saharan Africa, Sky in the UK; and then we managed to grow in the other markets. But in Season 1, it was very important for us to get that base. You can’t be the biggest league outside India if you haven’t secured strong broadcast deals. [Before SA20], cricket in South Africa was in a negative space there—there was a lot of politics and the team hadn’t been doing well. So, the people who backed us bought into our vision. Two years later, it’s easy to show the proof, but I’ll always be grateful to the people who backed us in the beginning.
Q. You’ve mentioned cricket in South Africa was in a bad space some years ago. And before SA20, three attempts to start a T20 league had failed there. How did you convince partners back then that this time was going to be different?
I was working on broadcast in the IPL that year when we were building SA20, and I was having conversations with some of the top players. It’s no secret that we built SA20 up against other competitors, the IL20 in Dubai, the Big Bash League. And because of the failed attempts, players were nervous to commit their time, their contract. They had options on the table. In those conversations, we pre-signed some top international players that supported me—the likes of Jos Buttler, Liam Livingstone. And this was before we got six IPL franchises to buy teams here. And there were so many more that came in Season 1.
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Q. The six franchises you are talking about are all top Indian business houses. How has the Indian connection benefitted the league?
Massively. The six franchises that we got are a huge reason for our success. They come with lots of experience, they’re highly competitive, they look after players well. They also bring professionalism to South African cricket that, maybe, had fallen away. And they bring a business element that really challenges everybody to be better.
The other point that never really gets spoken about is how fast that managed to attract the fan base in South Africa. When you walk into the stadiums and you see the fans behind their teams, it’s incredible to see how fast that has developed. I can never speak highly enough in terms of the value they’ve added to South African cricket and to the league.
Q. This year we’ve got Dinesh Karthik as the first Indian cricketer to play in SA20. Are you looking at more Indian retired players to join the league?
I know I say it every year, but I’m getting MS [Dhoni] at some point when he’s finished playing [laughs].
The other point is that our working relationship with India is very good. The BCCI has always been a phone call away when we’ve had an important question, be it our first-ever auction or venue management, working with the franchises. We respect their policies [of not allowing active Indian players to play in other T20 leagues] and we’ll wait to see what they do in future.
South African fans love Indian players and I’d be lying if I say we don’t want them to play at some point. But we’ll work with the BCCI to see where it ends up.
Q. With the cricket calendar pretty much chock-a-block, are you worried about scheduling clashes and availability of top players? For example, this year, the ILT20 runs concurrently and the Champions Trophy starts just about a week after the SA20 finals.
For us, I think it will get easier. Of course CSA had to make one or two tough decisions up front in terms of committing the best players in South to the league, and finding a 4-5-week window that works for SA20.
The difference between us and the Dubai league is that the majority of our players are South African. In terms of international players in the line-up, we are very similar to IPL and not like the Dubai league that has a majority of them. One of our major objectives is to improve South African players, keep South Africa cricket strong and build an ecosystem that’s self-sustainable. On the international player front, there will always be challenges every year on their availability. But our teams have shown now for three years that they’ve been able to attract some of the best international talent. Because we’ve been so successful, a lot of international players feel this is where they want to be.
Q. What makes this league any different from a number of T20 leagues that have mushroomed around the world?
From a global growth perspective, our time zone is very good. It fits in really well with key global markets for us. The teams with six incredible franchises have been really competitive. In South Africa, you have a core fanbase, a good cricket ecosystem. We are seeing full houses, and the incredible cricket on top of that. The feedback we get is that it really comes through amazingly on TV. For us, it’s about growth now and continually trying to establish ourselves alongside the IPL as among the biggest cricket leagues. Cricket’s in a fluid position right now with a lot of changes, and we want to own the Southern hemisphere window and make sure we are the most dominant league in the December, January, February period.