Former South Africa skipper Graeme Smith has pinned his hopes on new SA20 league to revive cricket in the country.
In the past few years, the quality in South African cricket has gone down as they failed to make into the knockout stages of the last five ICC white-ball tournaments.
While the emergence of T20 leagues in other cricketing nations has helped them immensely, South Africa have failed to find replacements for their legendary players like AB de Villiers, Hashim Amla among others.
From a commercial angle, India, Australia and England are heading the list. However, the rise of the Indian Premier League has put BCCI at the top because of the sheer amount of revenue it generates through the T20 tournament.
“South Africa needed to develop a product that it could make it’s own. I think commercially it needs to be viable, so South Africa think it needs the product of its own and not be reliant on ICC grants or all these bilateral challenges that are challenging the marketplace," Smith told CricketNext.
He acknowledged that India, England and Australia are way ahead of everybody else and now it’s time for the Proteas to bounce back.
“South Africa has kind of just moved off the radar as a real powerhouse cricketing nation. The Top three in India, England, and Australia are way ahead of everybody else, and I don’t think that’s good for the game. So I think also with the fast-changing pace of the world with the T20 Cricket, South Africa couldn’t afford to be left behind anymore," he added.
Smith believes the new franchise league will help South Africa unearth new talent.
“I think we’ve now got a product that can be built into the future both commercially and from a cricket perspective. I think from a cricket perspective, I truly believe in South Africa that SA20 will bring new hope to a lot of cricketers, to a lot of the youngsters looking at the game now and that is something that we really wanna do. We wanna put 50 to 80 cricketers every year on the map. Develop more talent and they can go into the international game and hopefully keeps South Africa strong. Commercial is a very important part of the project, but from a cricket perspective, we need to revive cricket in South Africa. I truly believe SA20 is gonna do that," he remarked.
(With CricketNext inputs)
