Smith: Exciting to have Sourav Ganguly as a coach in SA20

There will be no Indian players in the mix when the SA20 auction gets underway in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

Despite some of India’s former cricketers, including Piyush Chawla, Siddharth Kaul, Ankit Rajpoot, registering for the auction, they haven’t been shortlisted among the 241 overseas players who would go under the gavel, along with 300 South African players.

The league’s commissioner Graeme Smith, however, made it clear that the onus was on the six franchises to shortlist the players for the auction.

“With the Indian players, it is always a fluid situation, depending on the schedule, and also who’s retiring and who’s not retiring or who would be available. I think there were 13 or 14 Indian players in the auction [list]. We sent the auction lists, which had over 800 names, to the franchises. They then sent us their shortlists back and then we collated a shortened list that starts to go to the auction,” Smith said during an interaction facilitated by SA20.

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Ahead of its fourth season, the league introduced some changes in its auction strategy. As a result, franchises have been permitted no more than six retentions or pre-signed players, the least in the tournament’s short history.

“For us, this year was a big stepping stone. After three editions, we felt that it was time to reset the regulations. So, we really did force the teams’ hands in terms of getting them to strategise who was going to be retained, who was going to be the pre-signed internationals, and so on,” Smith said.

Over the last few years, the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises have been the major investors across the leagues around the world. While all six teams in the SA20 are owned by IPL franchises, quite a few franchises have their investments in The Hundred, CPL and a few other leagues. Smith believes that the presence of the IPL franchises have benefitted the South African tournament.

“When we went to market to attract franchise investment, I don’t think we set out thinking that we wanted six IPL teams. But one thing that I can say is that I think it’s been an asset for us to have six IPL teams because you want to build a league where each franchise has the standard and the strength to be able to do that well,” the former South Africa captain added.

“The IPL owners now are some of the most experienced in the world in terms of managing franchises and developing teams. So, one of the strengths is that they’re also equally competitive. They all want to win. They’re happy to attract the best players and invest in them.  And that’s great for the growth of the league. Six of them are really sustainable. They know how to build businesses, how to grow fans…”

Though there won’t be any Indian players in the league, the upcoming edition of SA20 will see former India captain Sourav Ganguly making his debut as the head coach of the Pretoria Capitals. “For us, it’s exciting to have the quality of Dada [Ganguly] as a coach. I think our quality of coaches across the board actually is exciting for us as an exposure for our players to great minds in the game. Dada is going to come and do it his own way. The Capitals didn’t have the best year last season, but I’m sure he will be motivated at the auction to get a quality group of players together that he can then take forward to the season…” Smith said.

Published on Sep 05, 2025