Skip to main content

Watch: David Miller scores the fastest T20 international hundred

In the second of out feel good series. We look back on David Miller scoring a 35-ball hundred against Bangladesh. A look back on better times.

Decoding Cricket South Africa's restructure




Cricket South Africa announced sweeping new measures for the 2020-21 cricket season, ostensibly to cut costs spent on domestic cricket. The biggest change will see the First Class and One Day Cups adopt a rather strange format where there will now be two groups of three teams, instead of the old round-robin format. Having seen how unpopular the Conference system proved to be in Super Rugby, CSA has decided that it would serve as the ideal format for their restructured domestic system.
Essentially, each team plays the teams in their conference or group twice, once at home and once away. Then they face the team in the opposing conference one. Presumably, the home/away will alternate every year, for cross-conference matchups. One advantage this system has over the Super Rugby equivalent is that teams will still face each team in the competition. Largely due to the fact there are so few teams in the domestic set-up. Another advantage is that with the conferences likely to be set according to geography, this will likely lead to reduced travel costs for all the teams involved.

Costs. The real story here is that Cricket South Africa has cut the amount of domestic First Class and 50-over cricket by 30% because of cost. Due to their insistence on hosting the often lamented Mzansi Super League, CSA has had to cut corners elsewhere in other competitions. Namely, the ones which are not on TV, nor particularly well attended. It should be remembered that CSA has been forecast to lose R654 million (about $35 million) over the next four years and they have desperately sought to find a way to minimize that however possible. Previously this included doing away with the franchise system and returning to the old Districts format. A proposal which ended up in court. Now, in 2020, it seems they have decided the way forward is to simply cut the amount of games you host. Sure, this may hinder the development of South African cricketers in formats other than T20. And yes, this may lead to even longer periods of mediocrity at an international level. But CSA wants a lucrative and successful T20 tournament and they are prepared to mortgage their future to get it. WE can only hope that the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow isn't fool's gold.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Watch: Hansie Cronje slaps Shane Warne all around the Wanderers

As one of the greatest cricketers in history, Shane Warne has generally had the upper hand when it came to most battles, but on this fateful day at the Wanderers, it didn't matter what he bowled, he had to fetch it in Row Z.   

Theunis de Bruyn might not be very good

The last time Theunis de Bruyn was in the subcontinent, he scored a fourth innings hundred in Sri Lanka. A fourth innings ton in the subcontinent buys you a lot of time, especially in tours to the sub-continent. The reason is pretty simple, the fourth innings of a game is when the pitch is at it's most decrepit, Asian pitches generally take turn sooner than non-subcontinental pitches, so it does reason that if you score a ton in the fourth innings in Asia, you must by definition be some sort of genius level player of spin.  That is the only reason Theunis de Bruyn is on this tour. We would not be in favour of dropping him after just the one Test, but his dismissal in the first innings, a big booming cover drive against Ravindra Jadeja, with light fading and the day nearly done, was both reckless and unnecessary. Yes, batting is about scoring runs, and as such if balls are in slots which  players identify as their strong zones, they should feel within their rights to have ...

We are keeping Quinton down

Quinton de Kock is good at cricket. Everyone who plays cricket at an international level is good at cricket, but even in that hallowed territory, one can see that Quinton de Kock is exceptionally good at cricket. He boasts no obvious weakness, and there are very few good balls which he can't turn into boundary balls. He also happens to be, both on form and reputation, South Africa's best batsman, especially now that the great Hashim Amla has retired. This presents a quandary of sorts, because while de Kock's prodigious ability to take a game away from the opposition batting at 7 is not in question, the reality is more often than not, he has had to come in and repair some very creaky holes in the ship. In the history of cricket, only one team has ever had their best batsman keep wicket. Andy Flower, the Zimabwean great, was the only man who managed this feat of endurance and focus. You could arguably place AB de Villiers on this shortlist, but he only kept for 23 Tests an...