Johannesburg — Kagiso Rabada and Dewald Brevis will represent the Cape Town franchise in Cricket SA’s new T20 League next season.
Rabada and Brevis will be joined by Afghanistan’s potent leg-spinner, Rashid Khan, along with English pair, Liam Livingstone and Sam Curran. Cricket SA announced earlier this week that 30 “marquee” International players had signed up for the six-team league that will take place in January next year.
Despite Brevis hailing from Tshwane and having represented the Northerns Titans, his attachment to the Cape Town franchise was a given following his signing with the Mumbai Indians in the IPL earlier this year. Brevis has been on tour in England with a Mumbai development side in the last few weeks.
Rabada, who played for the Punjab Kings this year, will also be taking his talents to Newlands, breaking the bond with his home team the Lions, in Gauteng.
The Cape Town franchise was bought by Reliance Industries, which owns the Mumbai Indians, the IPL’s most popular and successful team. Earlier this week, the team released a video, which apparently hinted at the new name for the team, ‘MI Cape Town’. “I'm excited as we begin our journey in building ‘MI Cape Town’,” said Akash Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Jio. “With our direct player signings, we have taken the first step towards building the MI philosophy - having a strong core around which the team will be planned. I am glad to welcome Rashid, Kagiso, Liam, Sam, to the ‘#OneFamily’ and happy to have Dewald continue with us on this new journey.”
Livingstone, the big hitting right hander from Lancashire, will be the highest paid player in the Cape Town team with a salary of $500 000 (R8.1-million) while Rabada will earn $300 000 (R4.9m).
“We are certain that MI Cape Town, like the two other teams, will play the brand of cricket MI is synonymous with - playing fearless cricket, and the same will resonate with the passionate cricket fans of South Africa and across the world,” Ambani added.
The new competition, Cricket SA’s third attempt at starting a T20 League, is being viewed as the saviour for the sport in the country. The seriousness with which CSA views the new tournament, was seen by the fact that they withdrew the national men’s team’s participation from a three-match One-Day International series in Australia, putting the Proteas’s chances of qualifying for the 2023 World Cup in jeopardy. Cricket SA stated that it needed the nationally contracted Proteas to participate in the new competition given the level of investment that has already been made.
Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali and West Indies captain Jason Holder are some of the star names who’ve already signed up to participate in the tournament.
Each franchise can sign five players and then a player auction to fill up the full 17-player rosters for each of the six teams will take place in the next few weeks. Each team will have 10 South African players and seven overseas players.
IOL Sport