Cape Town, Jan 8 (PTI) The SA20 has helped bridge the gap between domestic and international cricket in South Africa and it aims to produce a rich talent pool for the Proteas like the IPL has done for India, says league commissioner Graeme Smith.

With the third edition of SA20 set to get underway on Thursday, Smith believes the competition will continue contributing to South Africa's success story.

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"I said it from the start (that) we wanted to be able to contribute to developing players for the South African cricket team, bringing quality through,” the former South Africa captain told PTI in an exclusive interaction.

“Unfortunately, the gap between domestic cricket and international cricket got very big and I think what SA20 does (that) it bridges that gap (by) exposing our players to the best players in the world, the franchises bring excellent coaches, excellent physios,” he said.

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Smith said SA20 has not only introduced cricket to new fans in South Africa but has also made the domestic cricket experience how the game is at international level.

“If you just think about the crowds and the television production, a lot of our domestic players would have never, ever seen that before SA20 unless you played for South Africa,” he said.

“The exposure to pressure and hopefully what will start to happen is it'll start to develop 30, 40 (or) 50 players like India has, that are really quality players and pushing for places to play for their country,” Smith added.

With South Africa qualifying for the finals of two ICC events in a row — the 2024 T20 World Cup and final of the World Test Championship — Smith said he is pleased with the progression of cricket in the country.

“I'm so happy to see (the) progression in the right direction. South African cricket, three-four years ago, was troubled, that (had) lots of problems,” he said.

“So to see the team doing well over the last year and a bit, see players coming through and performing well… batters' skills improving. South African cricket has always had the knack of producing high quality fast bowlers.”

“It's in a solid place and the next six months, it's a huge opportunity for South Africa cricket. You have got SA20, you have got the Champions Trophy and the World Test Championship final. That is like six months to look forward to,” he said.

Smith said at the moment there is no need for SA20 to bring in new rules which may add more layers to the current format.

“We're quite happy with where we are. On average, I think every score last season was 175. that offers a really exciting product,” he said.

“South African cricket is in the process of trying to develop all around us. We are still in a new league, (the) IPL is 15-16 years old.

“We're introducing a lot of new fans to the game of cricket inside South Africa so we also don't want to overcomplicate things that make it confusing. For us, it's a balancing act of really building up the league.

"Once those fans become really more established, then you can start thinking about the next phase,” he said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)