Graeme Smith wants SA20 to be world's second-best T20 league

Debutants Gujarat Titans beat Rajasthan Royals, whose owners have bought the SA20 franchise in Paarl, in this year's Indian Premier League final

Former South Africa captain Graeme Smith hopes the new SA20 competition will become "the second-best Twenty20 league" in the world.

The 41-year-old is the new commissioner of a tournament which will have six franchise teams and get under way on 23 January next year.

The new sides have all been bought by owners of clubs in the Indian Premier League (IPL), which is the world's dominant domestic T20 league.

"I think It's very difficult to knock the IPL off their perch, but our goal is to be right behind them," Smith told the BBC World Service's Stumped podcast.

"The IPL has extracted serious value and done wonders for Indian cricket.

"South African cricket really needed to build a product that it owned and could develop itself. We've seen all the other nations do that successfully.

"I think we finally got the model right. This opportunity here is to really lift and elevate the standard of the game."

England internationals Moeen Ali, Jos Buttler, Sam Curran and Liam Livingstone have already been signed for the SA20, along with West Indians Jason Holder and Kyle Mayers and Afghanistan spinner Rashid Khan.

A player auction to finalise the squads will be held on 19 September.

Opportunity 'to grow player base'

Graeme Smith played 117 Tests, 197 ODIs and 33 T20s for South Africa

The tie-in with IPL owners is far-reaching, with several South African sides sharing names with their Indian counterparts.

The Johannesburg side, owned by the parent company of the Chennai Super Kings, will be the Joburg Super Kings, with Sunrisers Eastern Cape and MI Cape Town - after Sunrisers Hyderabad and Mumbai Indians - also continuing franchise names.

However, Smith is adamant that the SA20 will improve the quality of South African cricket itself.

"It's no secret that the the IPL owners are looking to expand and have done that, a little bit into the United Arab Emirates but extensively into South Africa now," Smith said.

"We are going be focusing and building 60, 70, potentially 80 household South African names every year and improving the standard of those guys, putting them on a global platform.

"We feel like this is a real opportunity to grow that player base to strengthen it, and to create more competition in our set-up across the board.

"They (IPL franchise owners) have also taken on a huge grassroots investment, as well as the development of the game in South Africa. All these team owners are going to be investing capital and experience into various levels of our grassroots programmes and development programmes."

This will be the third attempt at launching a successful T20 league in South Africa, after the aborted Global League T20 in 2017 and the watered-down Mzansi Super League the following two years.

"I think the biggest challenge up front was overcoming some of the legacy issues - trying to build confidence into the marketplace, from a player and ownership perspective," Smith said.

"You can't hide away from the things that have gone wrong in South African cricket, but we were able to work through them. We were able to build some confidence in the player group and pre-signed a number of outstanding players."

Impact on Proteas while women wait

South Africa are outside of the automatic qualification places for the 2023 Cricket World Cup

Smith says the SA20 will take precedence over Australia's Big Bash League when it comes to player availability, but the new competition has already had a knock-on effect for South Africa's national side.

The Proteas' three-match One-Day International series against Australia, which was scheduled to be played from 12-17 January following a Test series, has been cancelled to allow the SA20 to go ahead.

That decision will impact South Africa's chances of qualifying for the next 50-over Cricket World Cup in India next year.

"Cricket South Africa (CSA) engaged tirelessly with Cricket Australia to find a solution for this window," Smith said.

"Cricket Australia were very protective over certain periods of the Big Bash as well. If you look at it from a South African perspective, financially, to be out of their country at this time of the year is a no-go.

"I think CSA is doing an amazing thing for the world game - it is giving up its home revenue over a key part of the year to spend it in [Australia] for the sake of cricket.

"CSA have created this window to invest in their own product, There was no solution to be found. So ultimately, they had to make a tough decision."

There will be no women's SA20 competition launched alongside the men's tournament, with Smith pointing to the Women's T20 World Cup starting on 9 February in South Africa as one of the factors in CSA's decision.

"We debated it upfront, but one of the key issues that we had was the Women's World Cup starting just around the corner," Smith said.

"The ability to access the type of talent that was required to pull it off at the same level was going to be a challenge in year one.

"It's definitely in our key focus for year two or three, to get something at that level that [has been] achieved in England [with The Hundred]."