Dubai: The postponement of the inaugural season of Cricket South Africa’s T20 Global League, originally scheduled to begin next month to November 2018, left South Africa’s cricket fans angry as well as sad.
Speaking to Gulf News, Ajay Sethi, the Dubai-based owner of the Nelson Mandela Bay Stars team said: “It is unfortunate and we are all sad about it as we all as owners had worked very hard for it. The TV deal which was agreed upon earlier fell through and we all did not give in for a low deal.”
Sethi, who along with five other team owners, had attended the owners’ meet in Johannesburg went on to say: “Cricket South Africa (CSA) called the owners to Johannesburg for a joint decision. At the end of the day, this league is not a one-off tournament and we should not kill the value of the tournament.”
The incidents following the exit of Haroon Lorgat, according to Sethi, led to the present crisis. “When an organisation has an internal trouble, people do take advantage. If we go in for a low deal, it will kill our value. Look at the Indian Premier League’s value today. The IPL value is the result of 10 years of hard work.
“When we went to buy the team, we were given that the TV deal is done. The number we saw for the TV deals were very good for us. It is because the TV deal was good that we all invested, Shahrukh Khan’s and GMR are all big companies and they understand business and are more experienced in this business. When the CSA internal issues surfaced, everybody started taking advantage of the situation and somehow the agreed deal was not signed.”
When asked what was the first response of the owners, Sethi said: “We agreed that we need not do this deal at this price but wait. We all know there will be some negative publicity but we all know that since the product is good, there is no problem. All that we were worried about is about the players who will not be able to play. We are telling the CSA to look after the players, we don’t want any damages.”
Sethi wants the coaches and ambassadors also to be compensated. “Coaches and ambassadors [of teams] should be compensated because they have left their other commitments. They are still there and will be available next year. As owners, we decided that if we take the deal at a lower number, we will be stuck forever. We took this business decision as we all know we are going to make loses in the first year but not with a very low TV deal.”
Sethi revealed that the owners also wanted to send out a strong message. “Now, the TV people will also know we are not going to give in. CSA is partner with the SuperSport for so many years and there is no competition there. Indian Premier League could sign a $2.5-billion deal because of the competition with six players bidding for it. We have decided to wait for a year as next November we will have the same window,” said Sethi, who revealed that all owners are behind CSA.
