After months of waiting, Cricket South Africa has finally announced a domestic schedule for both men and women’s franchise teams.
Despite no international schedule yet confirmed for the Proteas, three revised franchise competitions have been established for the 2020-21 cricket season in South Africa.
With the cancellation of the Mzansi Super League for 2020, CSA also confirmed a new T20 competition for the start of next year.
READ: Nortje full of praise for Ponting
The season will officially start on 2 November with the CSA 4-Day Franchise Series with the final scheduled for 25 February next year, while the Momentum One Day Cup will run from 8 January until 13 February.
A single-round CSA T20 Challenge will then commence on 10 March and will feature all six of the local franchises in preparation of next year’s T20 World Cup in India.
‘We are pleased that no matches have been reduced despite the late start to the season,’ commented CSA Acting Chief Executive Kugandrie Govender. ‘Both the four-day series and the Momentum One-Day Cup will have the six competing teams divided into two pools of three teams each. They will play a double round of fixtures against teams in their own pool and a single round of cross-pool matches.
‘This provides for a minimum of seven matches for each franchise and these will be followed by a five-day final at the conclusion of the CSA Four-Day Franchise Series contested by the two teams topping its respective pool. In the Momentum One-Day Cup after the conclusion of the preliminary round teams ending first and second in each pool will contest a cross-pool semi-final each with the respective winners progressing through to the final.
‘The T20 competition will be played over a single round (5 matches) with the top two teams qualifying for the final.
‘I cannot stress enough the importance of our domestic system and the important role it plays in our talent development pipeline for the Proteas. One only has to look at the number of players who made successful international debuts in the three formats last season,’ concluded Govender.
