Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) T20 tournament dream took a leap towards becoming reality on Friday when they announced a broadcast deal.

The lack of a broadcaster and major sponsors derailed original attempts to launch the event in November.

A release on Friday said one of those hurdles had been cleared: “CSA and SuperSport are teaming up to deliver a world-class T20 competition to a South African and global audience.”

They plan to do so by forming a company‚ Newco‚ in which CSA will be the majority shareholder and SuperSport “will broadcast the competition throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the adjacent islands and provide a broadcast feed to international broadcasters”.

The tournament “will be played during November and December 2018”.

“We have put the problems we experienced with the proposed Global T20 League [sic] behind us and look forward to hosting the new competition‚” CSA’s acting chief executive‚ Thabang Moroe‚ was quoted as saying in the release.

Neither the name of the new tournament nor the amounts of money involved were revealed‚ but the release quoted Moroe as saying the deal was “the biggest in the history of South African domestic cricket‚ which will ensure the welfare of the game in South Africa”.

Plans to establish what was called the T20 Global League (T20GL) collapsed in October‚ when CSA said it would suffer a net loss of US$25-million — R328-million at Friday’s exchange rate — if the venture went ahead. Insiders put the figure closer to R180-million.

Haroon Lorgat‚ CSA’s then chief executive‚ was blamed for key elements in the failure to get the tournament off the ground — the board said he had not kept them properly informed — which led to his leaving the organisation in September.

Lorgat‚ it seemed‚ had hoped to attract broadcasters and sponsors by first naming franchises and their owners and playing squads.

The conventional model for T20 tournaments is to secure broadcasters and sponsors initially to lure franchise owners.

But‚ given South Africa’s soft currency and the scale of Lorgat’s ambition for the project‚ that was always going to be a tough challenge.

A major factor in the stalling of the plan was the inability of CSA and SuperSport to reach agreement on the broadcast rights.

As existing rights-holders‚ SuperSport believed they shouldn’t have to pay more to air the T20GL.

CSA argued that the tournament constituted new business and was thus not covered by the current deal.

Sources say the network‚ which sits on several boards across a range of sporting codes in South Africa‚ had wanted to own a franchise in the T20GL‚ and that a written proposal put to CSA sketched a structure in which the broadcaster and an Indian businessman would buy the entire league.

Those obstacles would seem to have been successfully negotiated‚ and TMG Digital understands that the original eight franchise owners have been reimbursed the US$250 000 they each paid.

“This agreement sees our relationship taken to the next level‚ where we will pool our mutual resources in a partnership which will create high-quality cricket and provide entertaining content for cricket fans locally and broadcast viewers both domestically and globally‚” the release quoted SuperSport chief executive Gideon Khobane as saying.