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Cape Town - Thabang Moroe, in his first press conference as the officially-appointed CEO of Cricket South Africa (CSA), has committed to staging the T20 Global League this year.
The tournament will not have that name, of course, after the decision was taken to scrap ties with former CEO Haroon Lorgat's brainchild late last year.
The T20 Global League was due to have its first edition in December 2017, but the CSA board pulled the plug on the product because of a reported lack of a broadcast sponsor.
After Lorgat lost his job as a result, CSA under Moroe this year has partnered with SuperSport to resuscitate the tournament and it was announced last month that it was all systems go for the new-look product to be launched at the end of 2018.
SuperSport, as an investor in the tournament, will also be the broadcaster.
"It's been hard work behind the scenes to try and revive the postponed T20 League, which we are changing," Moroe told journalists in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
"Although we have revived it, we are changing.
"We are going in as an equity model with SuperSport, and as an equity model we have also sold the broadcast rights to SuperSport.
"Hopefully in the next weeks or days, we can announce the other commercial details that we have secured."
One of Moroe's headaches at the moment is that the original owners of the failed T20 League do not know where they stand with the new product.
"It's been very difficult. The task that I was given was to revive Global T20 and I tried to revive it in its purist form in terms of how it was presented to us last year," Moroe explained.
"That proved to be very difficult. I then went back to the board together with the members and asked permission to start working on different models that I think could work. We were given the permission to start exploring other models and we did.
"We've sent communication to the owners in writing to try and get a date where we can all sit. They are based all around the world, so we are struggling as far as meeting dates are concerned. I would like to say that in the next two weeks we will meet with some of the owners."
Moroe expects Expressions of Interest to be sent to players by July 30.
"From a management point of view, we are sticking to our timelines," he said.
"We are going ahead until the powers that be tell us otherwise. We want to launch this thing this year."
