Star pacers Kagiso Rabada and Chris Morris pull out of CSA's ambitious 3TC match
Cricket South Africa's (CSA) ambitious, and quite bizarre, 3TC exhibition match and its success have been given a major dent as star bowlers Kagiso Rabada, Chris Morris and another player named Sisanda Magala have pulled their names from participating in the match.
Kagiso Rabada and Sisanda Magala have had to pull out of the exhibition match due to the death of immediate family members. However, the reason for Chris Morris's absence has not been provided as of yet.
Thando Ntini, son of former pacer Makhaya Ntini, Bjorn Fortuin and Gerald Coetzee have been named as the replacements of the players.
The fiery Kagiso Rabada was set to captain one of the teams and has now been replaced by wicket-keeper Henrich Klassen as the captain. AB de Villiers and Quinton de Kock will be leading the other two teams in the new 3TC format.
The 3TC match was originally scheduled to be held last month
The Solidarity Cup match was initially set to be played on the 27th of June at the SuperSport Park in Centurion. However, after failing to get the nod of the government agencies, the match was rescheduled to take place on 18th July--also celebrated as Nelson Mandela International Day.
The three teams for the match will be consisting of eight players each. The three teams will look to outscore each other in a single game while getting to bat a dozen overs each.
The team that scores the most runs wins Gold in the 3TC tournament. If 2 teams tie with the most runs, a super over decides who will win the Gold; if all 3 teams tie, all get Gold; and, in a tie for second, Silver is shared.
Cricket is already highly inundated with numbers, statistics and rules, and therefore, it needs to be seen if the audience is able to keep up with the pace of the game.
One glance at these rules and one can surely conclude that 3TC has replaced the ECB's "The Hundred" as the most complicated format of the game.