MUMBAI: Suryakumar Yadav’s blazing form, which has seen him smashed 1164 runs in 31 T20Is @46.56 this year, has made him the current heartthrob of world cricket.
On Friday, former South African captain Graeme Smith, who is the commissioner of SA20, South Africa’s upcoming six-team T20 league, didn’t have to think too hard while replying to a question about which Indian player he’d love to see in the league. “Surya, can he play for South Africa!” quipped Smith in jest.
On a serious note, he said that he had “respect” for the BCCI’s decision, which is currently clear that India’s players, unless they are retired, cannot play in overseas leagues. “We’re fortunate that South African cricket has really good relations with Indian cricket. India has one of the most talented cricketers in the world. Obviously, everyone wants to add some of the stars to see them live in South Africa. But it’s the BCCI’s prerogative, it’s their players, they play as a group, they have the opportunity to make those choices. We’ll respect what the BCCI, or Indian cricket, has decided for its own players,” said Smith, who scored more than 16,000 runs in 347 international matches, and captained the Proteas at the age of just 22.
“If that changes in time, we’ll hopefully be able to bring some outstanding Indian talent to South Africa. But at the moment, it is what it is,” he added.
Will this new league help South Africa improve their abysmal record in the World Cups? For all the talent that the Proteas possess, they are yet to win a World Cup, and were knocked out after suffering an upset defeat against The Netherlands in the recently-held T20 World Cup despite looking impressive initially.
“I actually thought that we had a strong team in this World Cup playing in Australia, I thought we had a good chance. But obviously disappointed with the way we finished. I think what we want to create in this league is that there’s so much talent – hope we can develop that talent to play under pressure on a global stage. I know I keep talking about the IPL but you look at the amount of strong cricketers that have come through in the IPL. (We’re) Looking at trying to find 15 players, hopefully there’ll be 25-35 players in the next couple of years at a level where it makes the selectors’ jobs very, very difficult. Those are used to playing big games, exposed to big games. Unfortunately, South Africa has to deal with these questions all the time until they actually win a tournament. ICC has given them a lot of chances now, every year there’s a tournament. Hopefully over the next couple of years that will change,” the 41-year-old said.
The launch of this six-team league scuttled the ODI series between Australia and South Africa in January, thereby affecting Proteas’ chances of qualifying directly for the 2023 ODI World Cup in India. The genuine fear is, we could see more of this in the future. Smith blamed SA’s qualification mess on the team playing badly, rather than anything else.
“I think that South Africa’s World Cup qualification was bad because they played bad,” retorted Smith. “I mean, they had a lot of time to control that. I think that this three ODIs cancellation, I actually feel for Cricket South Africa in many ways, because I know the effort that went in to move those three ODIs to open up a window for the league. The league will have a window free of international cricket in South Africa, like the IPL for a period every year,” he said.
Smith revealed that Cricket South Africa tried hard to accommodate the three ODIs against Australia in January, but ultimately couldn’t do it as the launch of this league was important to it too. “You know, what is different, for South Africa, is that in India, Australia or England’s home summer, you never really see the other teams… Australia never travel on the Boxing Day or New Year’s…England are never away from home in their summer. It’s incredible that South African cricket still has decided that they’ll earn zero revenues this year because they’re going to Australia for 3 Tests. So, I know that they went out of their way with Cricket Australia to find a way to make those 3 ODIs work, but it’s just wasn’t practical and eventually South African cricket had to make a choice…it was going to start its own league and it needed to give it a chance and make a proper statement that it was going to make a success of it,” he explained.
It wasn’t good advertisement for the league that South Africa’s T20 captain Temba Bavuma went unsold in the auction of the league some time back. Smith pinned this on the dynamics of the auction, and the need of today’s T20 teams’ owners-all the six Indians and IPL team owners in this case-to go for impact players, or big-hitters basically.
“I feel for Temba. Having been involved in auctions myself…they don’t always work out. I mean, you’ve got your ideas about who’s going to be successful at the next auction, or the previous big auction. It never works out entirely the way you think it’s going to. We’ve got 6 teams that have got ian ncredible guide base of how they want to play T20 cricket. The type of players that they want. And we know that the IPL (franchisees) in particular.. they love power, they love the ball going out of the ground. They look for impact players across the board. And as much as I feel for Temba, it’s unfortunate… we hope that he’ll use this (snub) in a way that it’ll improve his game and he goes and scores tons of runs and proves everyone wrong,” he said.
On Friday, former South African captain Graeme Smith, who is the commissioner of SA20, South Africa’s upcoming six-team T20 league, didn’t have to think too hard while replying to a question about which Indian player he’d love to see in the league. “Surya, can he play for South Africa!” quipped Smith in jest.
On a serious note, he said that he had “respect” for the BCCI’s decision, which is currently clear that India’s players, unless they are retired, cannot play in overseas leagues. “We’re fortunate that South African cricket has really good relations with Indian cricket. India has one of the most talented cricketers in the world. Obviously, everyone wants to add some of the stars to see them live in South Africa. But it’s the BCCI’s prerogative, it’s their players, they play as a group, they have the opportunity to make those choices. We’ll respect what the BCCI, or Indian cricket, has decided for its own players,” said Smith, who scored more than 16,000 runs in 347 international matches, and captained the Proteas at the age of just 22.
“If that changes in time, we’ll hopefully be able to bring some outstanding Indian talent to South Africa. But at the moment, it is what it is,” he added.
Will this new league help South Africa improve their abysmal record in the World Cups? For all the talent that the Proteas possess, they are yet to win a World Cup, and were knocked out after suffering an upset defeat against The Netherlands in the recently-held T20 World Cup despite looking impressive initially.
“I actually thought that we had a strong team in this World Cup playing in Australia, I thought we had a good chance. But obviously disappointed with the way we finished. I think what we want to create in this league is that there’s so much talent – hope we can develop that talent to play under pressure on a global stage. I know I keep talking about the IPL but you look at the amount of strong cricketers that have come through in the IPL. (We’re) Looking at trying to find 15 players, hopefully there’ll be 25-35 players in the next couple of years at a level where it makes the selectors’ jobs very, very difficult. Those are used to playing big games, exposed to big games. Unfortunately, South Africa has to deal with these questions all the time until they actually win a tournament. ICC has given them a lot of chances now, every year there’s a tournament. Hopefully over the next couple of years that will change,” the 41-year-old said.
The launch of this six-team league scuttled the ODI series between Australia and South Africa in January, thereby affecting Proteas’ chances of qualifying directly for the 2023 ODI World Cup in India. The genuine fear is, we could see more of this in the future. Smith blamed SA’s qualification mess on the team playing badly, rather than anything else.
“I think that South Africa’s World Cup qualification was bad because they played bad,” retorted Smith. “I mean, they had a lot of time to control that. I think that this three ODIs cancellation, I actually feel for Cricket South Africa in many ways, because I know the effort that went in to move those three ODIs to open up a window for the league. The league will have a window free of international cricket in South Africa, like the IPL for a period every year,” he said.
Smith revealed that Cricket South Africa tried hard to accommodate the three ODIs against Australia in January, but ultimately couldn’t do it as the launch of this league was important to it too. “You know, what is different, for South Africa, is that in India, Australia or England’s home summer, you never really see the other teams… Australia never travel on the Boxing Day or New Year’s…England are never away from home in their summer. It’s incredible that South African cricket still has decided that they’ll earn zero revenues this year because they’re going to Australia for 3 Tests. So, I know that they went out of their way with Cricket Australia to find a way to make those 3 ODIs work, but it’s just wasn’t practical and eventually South African cricket had to make a choice…it was going to start its own league and it needed to give it a chance and make a proper statement that it was going to make a success of it,” he explained.
It wasn’t good advertisement for the league that South Africa’s T20 captain Temba Bavuma went unsold in the auction of the league some time back. Smith pinned this on the dynamics of the auction, and the need of today’s T20 teams’ owners-all the six Indians and IPL team owners in this case-to go for impact players, or big-hitters basically.
“I feel for Temba. Having been involved in auctions myself…they don’t always work out. I mean, you’ve got your ideas about who’s going to be successful at the next auction, or the previous big auction. It never works out entirely the way you think it’s going to. We’ve got 6 teams that have got ian ncredible guide base of how they want to play T20 cricket. The type of players that they want. And we know that the IPL (franchisees) in particular.. they love power, they love the ball going out of the ground. They look for impact players across the board. And as much as I feel for Temba, it’s unfortunate… we hope that he’ll use this (snub) in a way that it’ll improve his game and he goes and scores tons of runs and proves everyone wrong,” he said.
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