LEFT ARM OVER
NEIL MANTHORP: It’s not a big league disaster but it is an expensive shambles
One needs only to look at the wreckage and human suffering left behind by the recent tornadoes and hurricanes in the Americas to gain a proper understanding of scale, cost and perspective, and sport does not feature among any of the important losses. So it is fundamentally wrong to label the collapse of the T20 Global League a "disaster". Nobody has died and although there is much frustration and many broken dreams, nobody has lost their house (although some may have missed out on buying one). But in its context of a national sport in Africa, it is one of the messiest, most expensive and embarrassing failures. Broken dreams can be mended if they involve scoring runs and taking wickets but broken contracts are different and there are hundreds of them, several in varying stages of completion. Start with the players. There were 144 of them confirmed at the draft six weeks ago — 18 per franchise with a salary cap of $900,000, not including the international "marquee players" whose fees ...
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