Ram Hand-to-Hand Couriers managing director Graeme Lazarus says Cricket South Africa's (CSA) efficiency in dealing with the 2015/16 match fixing scandal informed their decision to re-join as tournament sponsors for the CSA Franchise T20 Challenge.
Ram were the title sponsors between the 2012/13 and 2015/16 seasons‚ with the latter one being infamous for the match-fixing scandal that involved a number of high profile cricketers.
Former Proteas representatives Alviro Petersen‚ Gulam Bodi‚ Lonwabo Tsotsobe and Thami Tsolekile all received varying bans for their involvement in the scandal.
Ram amicably terminated their sponsorship in September last year and while Lazarus admitted there was baggage in relation to the matter‚ he said CSA had paved a decent path for them to return.
Ram will sponsor the tournament for this season.
“There's always baggage but Cricket South Africa dealt with it correctly‚" Lazarus said.
"They took the people out as quickly as they could.
"Unfortunately we were part of it and that came in with the game.
"Hopefully we believe it's not going to happen in the future.
“It's always a concern because you're always going to be brought down but that was then and it's not now but CSA dealt with it and it's important that they dealt with it correctly.
"Hopefully we won't go down that garden path again.”
CSA's acting chief executive Thabang Moroe said Ram was their first option as a sponsor because of their previous four-year sponsorship deal.
The tournament starts on Friday with the Warriors hosting the Knights in Port Elizabeth while the other four franchises will be in action over the course of the weekend.
“Ram has always been part of the family and we thought from a marketing and branding point of view‚ it was the simplest and easiest thing to do in terms of going back to them to say how about we rekindle our relationship and start all over again‚” Moroe said.
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