Cricket SA bets on a strategy that may lead to a women’s SA20 competition

Cricket SA hopes that its partnership with sports betting giant Hollywoodbets will accelerate the process for the establishment of a women’s SA20 competition and a domestic three-day tournament. 

The women's domestic professional leagues, created last year with backing from the government, will henceforth be known as the Hollywoodbets Pro Series, encompassing both T20 and 50-over competitions. 

CSA sees it as part of a wider expansion strategy for the women’s game which internationally has seen exponential growth in the past five years. Besides stand-alone world cups in both T20 and 50-overs formats, the popularity of franchise leagues in Australia, England and most recently India has accelerated the evolution of the sport. 

“This will assist us to implement an SA20 for women,” said CSA CEO Pholetsi Moseki. “We’d given ourselves three years before looking at creating a SA20 women’s league, but hopefully by 2026 we can launch.

“We have to create a big enough pool of players locally for that to occur. We don’t want 90% of the players for that tournament coming from outside the country.”

That process will be challenging. In the wake of the national team’s runners-up finish at the latest T20 World Cup, a number of players, including then captain Sune Luus, said a logical step was to have a similar competition for women. 

The problem CSA had was not enough local players of sufficient quality to carry a league.

“We need to discuss it with SA20 itself and then we need to talk to the ‘pipeline’ managers, and ask: ‘do you think we have players who are ready?’ We don’t want to just launch an SA20 for the sake of it, we want it to be of the same standard as the men. We hope, by allowing (the Pro Series) tournament to become embedded, that after three years we are ready to launch an SA20.”

In a similar vein, the creation of a first-class competition will also have to wait. The increasing number of one-off Tests being played by the Proteas has led to calls from the players, including the current Proteas captain, Laura Wolvaardt, for a domestic three-day competition.

“We know from the Proteas, especially when they’ve just played a one-off Test, that they need a three-day competition to help them be better prepared for Test cricket. We will if it is something we can implement, maybe after year two. We need to ensure that these two formats get traction,” Moseki reiterated. 

Hollywoodbets has already given backing to local women’s football and hopes to see the standards of women’s cricket improve in the same way that football has.

“We’ve seen tremendous success in women’s football through our sponsorship of the Hollywoodbets Super League, and now we look forward to making a lasting impact on women’s cricket with the Hollywoodbets Pro Series. Our country has incredible talent waiting to be unearthed, and with this enhanced platform we can discover the next Nonkululeko Mlaba or Chloe Tryon,” said Devin Heffer, Hollywoodbets brand and communications manager.

“Having a partner like Hollywoodbets is great, because it shows that corporates see value in women's sports,” Moseki explained. “There is normally a lot of talk from corporates about supporting women's sports, but then it just stays talk, there’s not a lot of action. So having an organisation like Hollywoodbets coming to the party and joining us on this journey is amazing.”