Debated bringing in impact player for SA20 season three but felt not quite ready, says Smith

New Delhi, Sep 9 (IANS) Graeme Smith, League Commissioner, SA20, revealed the tournament considered bringing in the Impact Player rule for its third season starting on January 9 next year. But with the feeling that the competition wasn’t ready for the ruling and the need to keep things simple for fans, they decided against introducing it.

The Impact Player rule has been present since IPL 2023, where it allows teams to bring in a player from the five nominated substitutes at any point in a match to replace a player in the playing eleven once the match begins. However, many players and coaches voiced against the ruling in IPL 2024, citing the disruption of balance in the game caused by it.

“On the innovation side, we debate every year. What we will do is we will probably end up sticking to the innovations we brought in last year around deciding the team selection. For example, after the toss, depending on whether you are batting or bowling. We debated bringing in the impact player.”

“But we felt that we were not quite ready for the impact player. With all the introduction of new fans and people watching for the first time, we felt that it is important to establish and keep things as simple as possible for the people who are watching. So they can learn and fall in love with the game and understand it. So, we are not doing that,” said former South Africa captain Smith in an exclusive conversation with IANS.

With leagues like IPL, The Hundred, CPL and BBL having a successful women’s version of the tournament, Smith said the SA20 is assessing every year to see when the time would be right to bring in a franchise-based T20 league for women’s cricket in South Africa.

“If you look at IPL it took a long time before they got a really strong program (WPL). For us what we have said is, we have invested in under-19 girls camps, coaching and now the schools program. South African cricket has probably got its first professional domestic women’s league happening now.”

“It is about increasing the talent pool in South Africa and growing that base. Every year we will assess whether the national women’s team tour program is increasing the touring and whether they are playing more and more games on the FTP. We will just assess every year whether the opportunity is right to introduce it. But we are investing heavily in grassroots programs on both the boys and the girls side.”

In an interesting development, SA20 has introduced a school version of the tournament which aims to discover and nurture cricket talent among both girls and boys across 16 provinces of South Africa. The competition will run from September 2024 to March 2025 and is divided into three phases – provincial competitions, regional playoffs and national finals.

“It is about introducing an opportunity at the school level where kids have a competition or context to something brilliant. We want to identify young talent, expose them to the game and want them to love the game of cricket from a young age. For us, it was no brainer to invest in a school program and to try and build that talent pipeline. In our season one we have taken on a huge task.”

“We are going to have over 500 schools, both girls and boys, over 1,000 games being played in the school season. We hope that we will identify some great young superstars and both boys and girls sides to come through. It is really our opportunity to invest in the talent pipeline and hopefully get kids to fall in love with the game of cricket early,” stated Smith.

In September last year, SA20 introduced a rookie player system for the six teams to pick a rookie player aged 22 or below, who didn’t play in the league before. All-rounder Andile Simelane, a rookie pick by Sunrisers Eastern Cape in SA20 2024, earned a call-up to South Africa squad for the ODI series against Afghanistan and T20Is against Ireland on Monday.

“It is something we are very excited about. Last year we introduced it and we were very happy to see how six franchises embraced the rookie player. It has been interesting to see that a lot of those rookie players have been kept in the main squads for this year. We will introduce another six rookies to the system.”

“For us, it is about growing and introducing young talented cricketers to the opportunity of SA20. Our goal is in 10-15 years’ time to be like what IPL has done – producing so many talented cricketers who can go on to represent India. These little introductions are hugely important to future stars of South African cricket,” concluded Smith.

–IANS

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