IPL franchise owners buy all six teams in South Africa’s new T20 league

The global footprint of the IPL is expanding swiftly with its franchise owners set to buy all six teams in South Africa’s new T20 league, the inaugural edition of which is scheduled for January 2023.

ESPNcricinfo has learned that Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, Lucknow Super Giants, Sunrisers Hyderabad, Rajasthan Royals and one of the owners of Delhi Capitals have successfully bid for the franchises. The league will be run by Cricket South Africa in partnership with television broadcaster SuperSport.

It is understood that CSK, through parent company Chennai Super Kings Sports Limited, made the highest bid at an informal auction to buy the Johannesburg franchise. Mumbai Indians, owned by Reliance Industries, bought the Cape Town franchise, while the Sun TV Group, which owns Sunrisers, bought the Port Elizabeth franchise.

The RP Sanjeev Goenka group, which paid a record sum of INR 7090 crore to buy the Lucknow IPL franchise late last year, picked up the Durban team, while Rajasthan Royals bought the Paarl team. Pretoria has been taken by Jindal South West Sports, which is headed by Parth Jindal, co-owner of the Delhi Capitals in IPL.

While Cricket South Africa (CSA) is expected to make a formal announcement of the new owners and the cities they will represent once the paperwork is complete, the board has announced former South Africa captain Graeme Smith as the overall head of the T20 league. One of Smith’s early targets is to ensure that the deals with the franchise owners are watertight.

“I’m extremely honoured to be entrusted with leading this exciting new venture,” Smith said. “I’m deeply committed to South African cricket and happy to serve the game as best I can. I’m excited by the opportunity to deliver the new league, which I believe will be an extremely competitive product, one that can bring the much-needed investment into the game and provide new opportunities for players around the world and more importantly to our SA home grown talent.

“The response from stakeholders has been very positive thus far and we’ve made great progress in the initial stages. We’re determined to deliver a valuable, sustainable and appealing tournament for South African cricket.” (ESPNcricinfo)