SA20: Hit for six or swing and a miss?

T20 cricket, the shortest format of the game and arguably the most popular in the modern day, has just started yet another league — this time in South Africa. Teams such the Paarl Royals or the Joburg Super Kings are currently battling it out in order to be crowned the inaugural champions of the SA20 league.

If by this stage you’re thinking that the names of these teams sound familiar, well, that’s because they are. The franchises of these teams have been rather overtly plucked from the Indian Premier League (IPL), the largest short format league in the world.

The IPL is the biggest and most lucrative league there is; with the South African version being unlikely to challenge this, the organisers have set their sights on this becoming the second biggest cricket league in the world. That’s no easy feat considering that leagues in England such as the Hundred or the BBL in Australia are already established and have big fan bases that have been growing for years.

The SA20 is also important for

Toby Brisley, Sport Editor, assesses South Africa's new cricket league

South African cricket as a whole. Interest in the sport has been on the decline for a while, with the Test team having underperformed in the last few years and a dismal performance in the last World Cup meaning viewership of cricket in the country has tumbled in recent years.

This really has added to the pressure placed on the league for it to be a success. Whilst there have been attempts in previous years to form a T20 league in South Africa, none of them have been fruitful so far, resulting in them being cancelled fairly quickly after they were started. However, this league feels different, with big money backing it and even bigger names playing. It has all the makings of being a success.

The formation of the new league in South Africa also poses the bigger question of how cricket has changed in recent years, with short format cricket surpassing Test cricket (viewed as the purest version of the sport by traditional fans) in popularity. This has made some people worried that the game has evolved too much and is now almost unrecognisable from what the sport used to be. Leagues like the Hundred in England have completely changed the rules on things such as overs and changing ends. This may seem minor to some, but others question just how far changes to rules will go in order to bring in more money.

Some players have at times opted not to represent their country in Test cricket, due to the sheer amount of money you can make from playing a short stint in a T20 league. This is a real worry again, with this previously having been seen as something unimaginable for players to do.

However, despite all the criticisms that some people give the new short format leagues, my view is that this has saved the sport. Bigger crowds, bigger funding, bigger stadiums have all increased the popularity of the sport and helped to ensure that the standard of players is now far higher across the entirety of it. Test matches also have seen a resurgence in attendance, with people who came for the short format falling in love with the sport and ending up staying for the long one. In other words, if T20 didn’t exist, then most likely, neither would Test cricket any more.

The SA20 league might be just another cricket league compared to others. However, South Africa’s cricketing pedigree and cricketing future arguably relies on its success, just like other countries' respective leagues. Without them, cricket as the sport we know today, would almost certainly not be here.