The SA20 league's inaugural season will have the largest prize pool in South African franchise cricket history, totaling Rand 70 million (about Rs 33.5 crore).
From January 10—when MI Cape Town and Paarl Royals square off at Newlands in Cape Town for the opening matches—through February 11—when the final will be played at the Wanderers in Johannesburg, the franchise-based tournament will be played.
In just over a month, 33 games — including two round-robin leagues, two semifinals, and the championship match — will be contested around South Africa.
"We have worked hard to offer a rewarding and unprecedented incentive in the first season of Betway SA20. This is a first for South African cricket, we have never had this type of competitive incentive in our domestic cricket and it is a further indication of SA20's ambitions to positively impact South African cricket," said Graeme Smith, the SA20 commissioner was quoted saying in a release on Tuesday.
All six of the competing clubs are owned by organisations that already have IPL franchises: MI Johannesburg Super Kings (Chennai Super Kings), Pretoria Capitals (Delhi Capitals), Durban's Super Giants (Lucknow Super Giants), and Sunrisers Eastern Cape are the other teams that Cape Town and Paarl Royals share owners with, respectively (Sunrisers Hyderabad).
Rashid Khan, the star of Afghanistan, Jos Buttler, the captain of England who won the T20 World Cup, Kagiso Rabada, and David Miller will all play in the tournament's opening game between MI Cape Town and Paarl Royals on January 10.