Mzansi Super League 2021 canceled due to Covid-19 concerns
The 2021 edition of the Mzansi Super League (MSL), which was due to take place in February 2022, has been canceled due to Covid-19 concerns in South Africa. A CSA statement said the discovery of the new Omicron variant of Covid-19 “made it difficult to deliver on the brand promise of being the premium international T20 tournament due to the increased travel restrictions South Africa is imposing by many nations was to be maintained ”.
Pholetsi Moseki, acting CEO of CSA, confirmed that this slot will be playing the CSA T20 Challenge instead of the MSL in February.
"The decision to cancel the 2021 edition of MSL is intended to allow CSA and its strategic partners to revise and review the tournament after Covid-19 in order to regain its market and commercial position," said Moseki. "For its purposes, the MSL slot will again be replaced by a domestic CSA T20 Challenge involving the 8 (eight) Division 1 teams and this tournament will take place in February 2022."
The T20 league was played in 2018 and 2019, but was canceled in 2020 due to the logistical challenges posed by the pandemic. Starting this season, it has been converted into a national T20 competition, which is held between eight first-class teams.
Paarl Rocks are currently the MSL defending champions while Lions defeated Dolphins to become the T20 National Champions in the 2020-21 National Competition.
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On Sunday, the finals of the four-day franchise series games have been postponed and will be postponed to 2022.
Domestic cricket has not yet been played in bio-safe bubble environments this season, but ESPNcricinfo is aware that this would change for the One-Day and T20 competitions. Last summer, both white ball tournaments took place under bio-safe conditions.
South Africa is currently in a fourth wave of the pandemic that coincided with the discovery of the Omicron variant last month. The number of cases peaked at over 26,000 earlier in the week, but the number is now falling. The country remains on alert level one in five, however, with the least stringent restrictions since the pandemic began last year.