Betway SA20 League Commissioner Graeme Smith believes the recently concluded Season 3 was a “big growth year” for the competition.
It was a season of many firsts, which included the crowning of a new champion MI Cape Town, after they defeated double-defending champions Sunrisers Eastern Cape in an exciting final at the Wanderers last Saturday.
Season 3 saw numerous records being broken with Durban’s Super Giants’ Heinrich Klaasen and MI Cape Town’s Ryan Rickelton being the first batters to pass 1000 runs in Betway SA20 history.
The two Western Cape sides Paarl Royals and MI Cape Town also shattered the glass ceiling by remaining unbeaten at home in their five group matches. It was the first time one – let alone two – teams completed 100% home records. In fact, the Newlands faithful were as faithful as ever, with all of MI Cape Town’s five home matches sold out.
In the process, MI Cape Town set a new league record of 35 points, which included seven victories and five with bonus points.
Smith feels this has created significant brand loyalty from the fans towards their respective teams.
“Fan loyalty has grown from strength to strength in terms of how fans are getting behind their teams. The loyalty has grown” Smith said.
“This in turn has seen home ground advantage grow significantly this year. It was also so good to see so many kids at the stadiums, they have really fallen in love with cricket and SA20, that is fantastic to see.
“It’s really good to see how cricket in general has grown over the last couple of years. We take a lot of pride in our crowd attendance. It’s something that we never take for granted.
“Seventeen sold out games. Our final was sold out 15 or 16 days before the actual event this year, third time in a row.
“I think after establishing the League and putting in a lot of work, I really felt like this year was a big growth year for Betway SA20.”
Smith stated the League is constantly trying to enhance the competition by working in conjunction with Cricket South Africa in regard to the investing in both facilities and grassroots development.
“We are working with Cricket South Africa, obviously on growing the talent pool, creating awareness, building on things. There’s a lot of work that we, behind the scenes, are talking to Cricket South Africa about and jointly trying to improve, like, the upgrade of stadiums before the 2027 World Cup,” Smith said.
“From our perspective now, you can see SA20 just two and a half years in, and the grassroots programmes that we’re personally investing in alongside Cricket South Africa is the Under-19 girls’ camps, Umpire Exchange Programs, and some of our Under-19 coaches from the Ladies went over and experienced firsthand the WPL in India.
“We also launched Schools SA20 this year. I would say outside Cricket South Africa, we are now the single biggest investor back into the grassroots programmes.”
Smith concluded with the exciting prospects to look forward to around Season 4 getting underway on Boxing Day, 26 December, later this year.
“There’s a lot of different factors that you need to consider when you get into these things, but yeah, Boxing Day, it starts again,” he said.
“It really does open up the opportunity to debate: Do you have a New Year’s Eve game? Do you have a New Year’s Day game?
“These are all the things that we’ve got to consider and look at the pros and cons of how we can really maximize the opportunities for fans in Season 4.”
Twix Esses
Sport Trivia: Who was South Africa\’s first Olympic Gold Medal winner? Answer: Reginald Walker. Reginald Walker was born in 1889 in Natal and in 1907 was the South African 100m champion. He battled with finances to get to London for the 1908 Summer Olympics but once he was there he managed, very unexpectedly to all those competing, to beat the field and walk off with the Gold for the 100m. As at 2005 Reggie Walker was still the youngest winner of the 100m Olympic Gold Medal.
The China Wall
When Australia toured England in 1868, each player wore different color caps so that the audience can recognize them.