Cricket South Africa (CSA) have moved ahead with their vision of growing the sport more in the regional provinces and outside South Africa in the African region, as they announce the expanded 20-Team Africa T20 Cup, to be played in Sep 2018.
This will be the first time that 5 African members nations will take part in the tournament. Along with the regular entrants in Zimbabwe, Kenya and Namibia, the 2018 edition will also see Nigeria and Uganda take part for the first time, which signifies the vision of CSA of growing the sport more in African region and to make the tournament a successful brand to attract more investors in the future for a sustainable period of time and involve more countries as it moves ahead.
Uganda replace the earlier announced team of Ghana, who have declined the invitation to participate in the tournament and hence, Cricket Uganda have been invited to take part in their place. Cricket South Africa announced the changes and SuperSport confirmed the same on their twitter timeline.
Cricket South Africa announced that Uganda will replace Ghana with the latter declining the invitation in the expanded 2018/19 Africa T20 Cup #SSCricket
— SuperSport Blitz (@SuperSportBlitz) August 28, 2018
The 20 teams have been divided in four groups of 5 each, with the group phase to take place from Sep 14th – 16th and the semi-finals and final to be played on Sep 23rd – 24th, 2018 respectively. The top team from each group will advance to the semi-final stage.
Uganda will replace Ghana in Pool A, which comprises of the defending Champions, Kwazulu-Natal Inland, Kwazulu-Natal Coastal, Western Province and Easterns. All matches will be hosted by Kwazulu-Natal Inland province at Pietermaritzburg.
Kenya and Namibia are placed in Pool C along with Border, Eastern Province and Mpumalanga. All matches will be hosted by Border province at East London.
Nigeria are placed in Pool B along with Northern Cape, Boland, North West and Limpopo. All matches will be hosted by Boland province at Paarl.
The schedule of group phase matches from Sep 14th – 16th will be announced soon.
