Cape Town - Having arguably the greatest fast bowler of all time in your corner will always be of benefit, especially at a potentially lucrative T20 auction.
That’s exactly what Sisanda Magala had in the form of the legendary Dale Steyn at the inaugural SA20 auction on Monday at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.
Steyn, who is the Sunrisers Eastern Cape bowling coach, was at the table along with assistant coach Baakier Abrahams, batting coach Hemang Bendani and the rest of the Sunrisers management team when Magala’s name went under the hammer.
With a relatively cheap base price of R175 000, it was expected that Magala would do well to be picked up for R500 000 - if at all - considering the likes of Proteas all-rounder Andile Phehlukwayo (R850 000 base price) had already gone unsold.
But, after a hugely-entertaining bidding war, which was ultimately won by the Sunrisers Eastern Cape, Magala pocketed a whopping R5.4-million to return to his home town.
It was a phenomenal pay day for a player that has been shunned by the Proteas for failing to meet the national team’s fitness requirements.
The Sunrisers’ commitment to Magala, however, stems from Steyn having played alongside the burly death-bowling specialist at the Cape Town Blitz in the Mzansi Super League.
It was during the inaugural MSL season particularly where Magala’s exploits at the back end of the innings in tandem with Steyn, propelled the Blitz to the showpiece final at Newlands.
“Lungi (Ngidi) went fairly cheap early on, but Magala is someone that has been on my radar for a long time,” Steyn told reporters.
“Since I’ve played with him, I’ve been pushing for him. We focused on the coastal players, if you look at our squad then you would have noticed that, we are very happy.”
The Sunrisers adopted a selection approach at the auction where homegrown players were prioritised in favour of putting together an expensive overseas contingent.
This was seen in their record purchase of local Eastern Cape prodigy Tristan Stubbs for R9.2m and fellow young all-rounder Marco Jansen for R6.1m. In addition, they had already signed Aiden Makram as the franchise’s captain prior to the auction.
This was in complete contrast to most other teams with the Sunrisers’ overseas wage bill amounting to just R3.05m from their R38m purse.
“We wanted to build our team around the South Africans. We’ve got Adrian Birrell as our head coach and he is over in England right now, and he put word down on what he called ‘clever picks’ in terms of players that he wanted to get over here,” Steyn said.
“We focused on the South Africans and we were happy to spend big on them. A guy like Tristan Stubbs is amazing, everyone is very excited about him, and the amount that he went for … we’re very happy to have paid that for him.”
IOL Sport