South Africa’s former captain and opening batter, Graeme Smith, will lead the CSA’s new T20 competition, which will begin in January and February of next year.
“Smith brings with him tremendous experience and understanding of the game, having worked in the sport as a player, captain, commentator, ambassador, consultant, and more recently as Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) Director of Cricket (DoC),” CSA said in a media release.
Smith, who successfully managed South Africa across all three forms for ten years before becoming the CSA’s director of cricket, will be in charge of all aspects of the league’s development. CSA, incidentally, chose to withdraw from their ODI portion of the Australia trip in July in order to make all of their players available for the new T20 competition.
“I’m extremely honored to be entrusted with leading this exciting new venture. I’m deeply committed to South African cricket and happy to serve the game as best I can,” Smith said about his new role.
“I’m excited by the opportunity to deliver the new league which I believe will be an extremely competitive product, one that can bring the much-needed investment into the game and provide new opportunities for players around the world and more importantly to our SA homegrown talent. The response from stakeholders has been very positive thus far and we’ve made great progress in the initial stages,” he added.
