The third attempt
South Africa had tried this twice before. The T20 Global League was announced in 2017, sold to overseas owners, then deferred for want of a broadcast deal and a title sponsor, and finally abandoned. Its replacement, the Mzansi Super League, put six Cricket South Africa-owned teams on free-to-air television for two seasons and lost money on both. By 2022 the board had run out of appetite for owning teams itself.
The SA20 was structured to remove that problem. Cricket South Africa set up a separate company, Africa Cricket Development, holding half of it, with the broadcaster SuperSport taking 30 per cent and the former Indian Premier League chief operating officer Sundar Raman the remaining fifth. All six franchises were then sold to owners of IPL clubs: Reliance took Cape Town, the Chennai Super Kings company took Johannesburg, the RPSG Group took Durban, the Sun Group took the Eastern Cape, JSW Sports took Pretoria and Manoj Badale's Rajasthan Royals ownership took Paarl. Graeme Smith was appointed commissioner. Players were bought at auction rather than drafted, the third league in the world to do so.
Pretoria's season, Gqeberha's month
On the field the league belonged to Pretoria Capitals, who won seven of their ten matches and collected four bonus points, more than anybody. They beat Sunrisers Eastern Cape twice inside the first week, bowled Durban's Super Giants out for 80 at Kingsmead, and closed the group stage by putting 226/5 on the board against Paarl Royals.
Sunrisers Eastern Cape had a far less convincing season. They lost their first two matches, won four of their remaining eight completed games, and qualified third on net run rate ahead of two teams level with them on points. What they had was a knockout side. Aiden Markram, their captain, made 100 from 58 balls in the semi-final at Centurion as Joburg Super Kings were beaten by 14 runs. In the final, on a Wanderers pitch that had already been rained on once, Sunrisers put Pretoria in and took them apart: Roelof van der Merwe, the 38-year-old left-arm spinner, took 4/31, and Pretoria were out for 135 in 19.3 overs. Adam Rossington's 57 from 30 balls settled the chase with 22 balls to spare.
What the season proved
The competition drew crowds the Mzansi Super League never had - 22,010 for the final, and full houses at Newlands and Boland Park - and it took place in a January window that South Africa's international schedule had been cleared to accommodate. Jos Buttler, Faf du Plessis, Rashid Khan and Quinton de Kock all played. The financial model, in which South African cricket rents out its summer to Indian capital, drew criticism almost immediately, and within a year the board would send a second-string Test side to New Zealand rather than interrupt the league. As a competition, though, it worked at the first attempt, which neither of its predecessors had managed.