Last Updated:
SA20 league commission Graeme Smith talks about the upcoming players auction and why not a single Indian cricketer features in the final list.
Graeme Smith is looking forward to the interest levels fast bowlers will invite during SA20 auction. (Picture Credit: Sportzpics)
For the upcoming SA20 players auction, over 800 cricketers from around the world registered their names. Among these, were 13 Indian players including world cup winner Piyush Chawla, Siddarth Kaul, Ankit Rajpoot, Sarul Kanwar, Anureet Singh, Ansari Marouf, Mahesh Ahir, Nikhil Jaga, Mohamed Faidh, KS Naveen, Imran Khan, Venkatesh Galipelly and Atul Yadav.
However, in the final 549-player list, not one Indian made the cut.
When asked about the absence of Indian talent, SA20 league commissioner cited the current BCCI guidelines and preferences of franchises as the major reasons behind no Indian flavour this time around.
Last year, Dinesh Karthik became the first ever India cricketer to play in SA20.
“I think it was like 13 or 14 Indian players in the auction but what we do is we send the auction list, which was over 800 names, to the franchises they then send us their shortlist back and then we collate a shortened list that then starts to go to the auction,” Smith said while responding to a query from News18 CricketNext.
Smith has in the past expressed hope of developing SA20 into the biggest T20 cricket league in the world after the Indian Premier League.
And as part of that goal, SA20 have increased the salary cap for each team to R41 million which makes it the highest after IPL.
Additionally, they have replaced the Rookie Draft with a mandatory signing of at least two Under-23 South African players by each franchise for the season ahead.
“For us this year, it was a big stepping stone. It was also after three years of tournament we felt that it was a time to kind of reset the regulations. So, we really did force the team ‘s hands in terms of getting them to strategise of who was going to be retained, who was going to be the pre-signed internationals and so on. And then with a very big auction coming up, how they would approach that,” Smith said during the interaction facilitated by SA20.
“So, I think for us it was important time to, with there years of growth and progression and sign players like Brevis over the last 3 years progressed that, we needed to create market value for players and allow our franchises to refresh because they’ve had 3 years of learning about South African players, franchise cricket outside India and, and global growth,” he added.
Dewald Brevis, Aiden Markram are among the high-profile players who will go under the hammer on September 9 in Johannesburg. However, Smith is looking forward to seeing how the fast bowlers and local South African talent fare at the auction.
“I think everyone’s going to be talking about the marquee list. But it’s been interesting to see one thing I admire about the IPL franchises, some of the talent that they asked to be in the auction from a local perspective, they’re scouting is always interesting to me,” Smith said.
“So, there’s some real youngsters that have been from the auction list this year, some still at school and it will be interesting to see if some of those youngsters get picked up because that’ll be great for our schools program as well. We’re really investing in the grassroots as well,” he added.
“But I think for me, it’s interesting to see we’ve got a lot of bowlers as well that are on a similar level like Gerald Coetzee, Nandre burger, Lizaard Williams and so on. They are just kind of all the same level. And we’ve seen Kwena Maphaka might as well – we’ve seen him have a bit of success now in Australia. So I’m, I’m interested to see, the strategy around some of those fast bowlers coming through and how the teams look at them.
“And then, some of the allrounders lists as well – it’s going to be interesting because we haven’t gone for the impact rule because we feel that South Africa needed to grow their allrounder base again and some of those next tiers of allrounders behind a (Marco) Jansen and so on. I’m very interested to see how some of them go,” he added.
A team of reporters, writers and editors brings you news, analyses, features, live scores, results, stats and everything that’s cricket from all over the globe. Follow @cricketnext
A team of reporters, writers and editors brings you news, analyses, features, live scores, results, stats and everything that’s cricket from all over the globe. Follow @cricketnext
September 05, 2025, 17:11 IST
Read More
