The SA20 Auction
What did we learn?
Earlier this week, the SA20 auction took place and discussion of the event was hot property on social media - my timeline was full of chat about it. That neatly leads me on to the subject of this Substack article, with my six personal take-aways from the auction.
Live auctions pick up a lot of social media attention from fans around the world. Many people like to follow the auctions live, and want auction analysis content. This should be a lesson to those leagues which do non-live drafts with no video - they’re missing out hugely on marketing their product and creating talking points.
Despite all the teams being purchased by IPL teams, some of the auction decisions from teams appeared to be pretty naive. There were a number of players who were initially unsold, but were then subjects of bidding wars when they were brought back into the accelerated auction. This highlights the questionable strategy, preparation and talent ID for teams, with this dynamic pretty much never happening in the IPL Auction - if all teams passed up a player for 175k Rand initially, and then the player was bid up to around 2m Rand when brought back later on in the auction, teams made a mistake somewhere along the line.
Some direct signings looked to be great value compared to in the auction. For example, based on media reports, world class domestic pacer Kagiso Rabada appears to have a similar salary when brought via direct purchase prior to the auction to Sisanda Magala in the auction. Players (and their agents) aren’t stupid, so expect this dynamic to change, with players becoming happier to take their chances in the auction (we already saw this to a greater extent in the IPL mega auction this year as well).
Hitters were in huge demand. Stubbs and Ferreira picked up the headlines, showing how ultra-attacking batters are becoming more and more valued by teams as they begin to understand quite how much value there is to be gained via being able to hit more boundaries than the opposition. Even several years ago, this dynamic was far less prevalent, with ‘anchor’ types still being hugely overvalued by teams. Very slowly, markets are getting slightly more efficient.
Some rationale for strange overseas picks. At first glance, the list of overseas players recruited might have raised a few eyebrows - however, the quality of players in the auction list dropped off very quickly and illustrated how thinly spread talent is likely to be this winter with various short-format leagues competing against each other. In some cases, what seemed like some rogue pieces of recruitment actually made sense based on the remaining players available with a similar skill-set. Having said this, though, Durban Supergiants and Sunrisers Eastern Cape appear to have acquired a bizarre mix of overseas players, suggesting that their overseas scouting could do with some work moving forward.
Base/Reserve pricing mechanism needs some work. There was a big gap between 850k and 175k Rand base/reserve prices for domestic players, with several brackets in the middle ground probably a good idea in the future. On the subject of reserve pricing, unless you’re a world-class player travelling halfway around the world to play in the tournament, it’s probably not a smart idea to put a high reserve price on yourself. This reserve pricing mistake caught out national captain Temba Bavuma, who picked up no takers at his high reserve price of 850k Rand, as well as Andile Phehlukwayo who was in a similar position. Interestingly, a similar dynamic existed in the opening draft of The Hundred, with several players such as Samit Patel and Olly Stone failing to be recruited after setting fairly high reserve prices. I’m pretty sure Bavuma and Phehlukwayo would have had bidders if their reserve was the low 175k mark, and could have potentially earned more than 850k if several teams became invested into bidding - so my advice to players around the world is to put yourself into auctions and drafts with as low a base/reserve price as possible.