T20 Global League ready to wow

Published Aug 20, 2017

Share

What’s in a name?

The Benoni Zalmi. Huh? The Durban Qalandars. Huh? The Stellenbosch Monarchs, The Bloem City Blazers (imagine making Bloemfontein try to sound cool by calling it “Bloem City”?), the Cape Town Knight Riders and the Johannesburg Giants.

Those are six of the eight teams that will be participating in the T20 Global League starting in November.

Port Elizabeth and Centurion don’t have any silly monikers for their teams, yet, and we certainly can’t wait for them to come up with some. Meanwhile, there’s still no broadcast deal for the tournament, so we’re not sure where you can watch it if you don’t go to the ground - but that’s another matter.

As for those names and logos - well the Cape Town version of the Knight Riders (there are Knight Riders in Kolkota and Trinidad and Tobago) will contain the colour magenta to “signify a local festive flavour.”

Okay. The logo looks exactly the same as the teams playing in the IPL and Caribbean Premier League (also with magenta). Meanwhile the ‘Joburg Giants’ - owned by the same group that owns the Delhi Daredevils - say their logo “embodies the exuberance, excitement and irresistible nature unique to the city.” 

The logo looks exactly the same as the Daredevils logo. “Unique” - what a load of k.

Love letters from Pitso

Mamelodi Sundowns coach Pitso Mosimane wasn’t going to fall for the same trick twice - or something. Asked about wanting to sign Cape Town City skipper Lebogang Manyama, Mosimane took the assembled football hacks on a journey about love letters and talking too much.

“The last time I spoke about Manyama, I received a letter,” Mosimane started. “The media asked me if I would like to have this player (Manyama) and I said who wouldn’t want to have this player. And then I received a long letter It was a long letter written to me to say I am poaching [players]. So I don’t want to talk about players from other teams. Here at home people write letters. They wrote a letter and I kept quiet.

“Even (Eric) Tinkler said a few things that I talk too much, and I kept quiet and I didn’t answer. You know I will [answer] in time, I’m waiting. The chairman of Maritzburg United (Farouk Kadodia) said we are telling the players to go AWOL. So I don’t want to talk about players who are in other teams, I will be in trouble because the letter was supposed to go to Fifa I still want to coach,” said Mosimane.

Over a double barrel

We get that it’s still early days in English Premier League, and that you can only write so much about Coutinho leaving Liverpool for Barcelona - it was £118 million when Injury Time last checked - but devoting an entire column to double-barreled surnames as was done in the Daily Mail this week was genuinely stretching it. A 794-word piece in the Mail came on the back of Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold starring in a Champions League qualifier in mid-week. “Double-barrelled names now proliferate in sport because of the changing patterns of domestic life in the general population,” went the column. Gosh.

Sorry seems to be...

“I’m sorry about that, if I missed it, sorry.” Wayne Barnes said to Australia captain Michael Hooper after the All Blacks had scored a try in the first half - we don’t remember which one it was, there were so many.

Apparently there was a player off-side before one of the New Zealand tries. It didn’t really matter. Australia, who had trained very well, we were told, just couldn’t play very well, which kind of defeats the point of training. Anyway, like Barnes, Australia owes the rugby watching world an apology for whatever it was they were playing for the first hour yesterday.

Serena speaks

We have nothing to add to this, so we’ll just let Serena Williams speak.

“I feel like people think I’m mean. Really tough and really mean and really street. I believe that the other girls in the locker room will say, ‘Serena’s really nice.’ But Maria Sharapova, who might not talk to anybody, might be perceived by the public as nicer. Why is that? Because I’m black and so I look mean? That’s the society we live in. That’s life. They say African Americans have to be twice as good, especially women. I’m perfectly OK with having to be twice as good.”

Serena Williams holds up Australian Open winners trophy after defeating sister, Venus, in the final. Photo: Aaron Favila/AP Photo

Weekend Argus

Like us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Related Topics: