The SA20 player auction: all you need to know
Which players are up for grabs, how much can the teams spend, the IPL connection, and the tricky traffic jam in the cricket calendar - all this and more in our FAQs
CSA is trying to ensure maximum local participation in the SA20 • AFP/Getty Images
Well, it sounds and looks different, and saves a bit of space on the communication material. Doesn't matter hugely, does it? Anyway, if you're really interested, SA20 commissioner Graeme Smith was quoted as saying that it "shows our intention to be different".
Six teams will be playing the inaugural edition of the tournament: MI Cape Town, Durban Super Giants, Johannesburg Super Kings, Paarl Royals, Pretoria Capitals and Sunrisers Eastern Cape. The tournament will be held in a window in January-February 2023, and will be spread across the six cities the teams represent: Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Paarl, Pretoria and Gqeberha.
Couldn't have missed that, really. The teams belong to groups that own IPL teams. Some of them are expanding their businesses with franchises in the CPL and also in the other new T20 league, in the UAE, called International League T20 (ILT20). At the SA20, they own all the six teams - that's quite something, isn't it?
Well, yes. Maybe because the owners like the auction format, being used to it for so long at the IPL... It's on September 19, that's Monday, in the evening. In Cape Town.
A total of 533 players have been listed, but not all of them might need to go under the hammer. You see, each team can have a maximum of 17 players. However, they have already signed on a combined 22 players from a pool of 30 via a pre-auction direct-acquisition process. They could pick a maximum of five players pre-auction. Some of them have chosen only two, some all five. That limit of five, by the way, can have a maximum of three overseas [non-South Africa] players, one South Africa international, and one uncapped South African player.
Franchises will be permitted to sign up to seven international players and ten South Africans in their 17, with a view of fielding a maximum of four overseas players in the XI - the same rule as in IPL. Of the 533 players who will be part of the auction, 248 are South Africans.
Just take a look at this graphic below - it's got everything.
A total of 33 matches will be played in the tournament. All teams will play each other twice - on a home-and-away basis - with two semi-finals and the final to follow. However, the complete schedule is yet to be released by CSA.
A stream of the auction, and a blog with blow-by-blow updates, will be live on ESPNcricinfo.
Indeed. The SA20 will take place in the same period as the ILT20, and also clash in parts with the BBL in Australia and the BPL in Bangladesh. Player availability might be an issue in some cases. Rashid Khan and Liam Livingstone, for example, will be available only for part of the BBL, because they had signed with the SA20 first.
Himanshu Agrawal is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo