T20 leagues have gripped the entire cricket fraternity and have taken the world by a storm.
With billions of money being involved, franchise owners and cricket boards have generated huge interest amongst the fans. Much of credit should be given to the IPL, which started in 2008 and has been a revolution for cricket.
Countries like, Australia, England, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Caribbean have their T20 leagues which have attracted leading cricketers from around the globe to come and join them. Another addition to this T20 circuit is the T20 league in South Africa which is scheduled from 3rd November to December 16th.
This league has attracted some franchise owners from the IPL. With likes of Bollywood actor, Shah Rukh Khan, who owns KKR and the GMR group which owns Delhi Daredevils already entered the South African league. Preity Zinta who owns Kings XI Punjab has also bought a team in the league. Zinta is now an owner of the Stellenbosch Kings which will represent the city of Paarl.
Zinta believes T20 leagues are the future of cricket and will surpass international shortly. She said,
“The way the format is and the way the leagues are structured, I think in the near future you are going to see league cricket take over, If you look at other sports like football, of course, the country sport is there, and it is very important, but then it is the league sport that takes over at some point.”
She believes the T20 has gained popularity amongst non-traditional cricket fans. She said,
“The T20 format is a very adaptable format for the world. My husband is American and is a baseball fan, but after five years of IPL, he is now a cricket fan also. It is a format that is very easily adaptable to different cultures. When the IPL was starting in India, a lot of people said, ‘why are you getting into it; it is already the number one sport in the country. It is so saturated, there is no growth, what is going to be different. But I said, ‘it’s the number one (sport), but I don’t watch it, many women don’t watch it, families don’t watch it. Just the hard-core cricket fans watch it’. We wanted one event that could have everything in it, and everybody could watch.”
“Content has become handheld. People have the appetite to watch a T20 game because it is three hours, it’s a lot of action, and it’s very athletic. It has evolved into cricket with a lot of entertainment value and speed.”
“But there are still a lot more fans we can capture. It is an experience (to be at a game). It is definitely going to catch on more and more, and it has definitely not yet reached where it should be.”