'We've attracted a completely new market'

Are you happy with how the tournament has gone and with the kind of crowds that have come in?
I'm very happy with attendances. You're always going to battle to get a full house during the week. On Monday night during the Johannesburg game [between Pakistan and Sri Lanka] from 6pm to 9pm there were 12,000 people at the stadium, which is terrific. There were 10,000 watching the Bangladesh-Pakistan game in Cape Town, watching two teams that are not even in the same group as South Africa. I went down this afternoon to try and find some tickets for South Africa versus India and couldn't.

This is the first time a World Twenty20 tournament has been organised. How did you go about putting it together?
We started with the policy committee, which was appointed to oversee the hosting of the event from the South African perspective. It had a number of CSA board members on it. The committee comprised 10-12 people, and included members of government, local independent members, local businessmen, CSA management committee members, and Sports and Recreation SA, so there was a good mix of people who understood the sport and the entertainment business. From the ICC there was one representative - Campbell Jameson, the commercial manager.

There was no blueprint for it, so from the CSA perspective we had to conceptualise the format, decide how it was going to be positioned, what our target market was going to be, and then basically come up with this format, which hopefully will run for the next eight years, through the Future Tours Program.

Twenty20 is obviously very different from other forms of cricket, in that it is as much about entertainment as it is about cricket. How did you go about positioning this event, and what was the target age group?
It's a very youthful product, and we've targeted the 16-24 age group. In South Africa we all use this word, "sportainment": any weekend you can watch rugby, football, cricket, tennis, golf. Or you can go to the shopping mall, movies, the beach.

You've got to package it [the Twenty20 cricket] as young entertainment. You come for three hours, and you get this action-packed high-energy entertainment, and then you can still carry on and do other stuff afterwards. It doesn't take the whole day, it doesn't take five days.

The ticket prices are incredibly cheap. Was that a conscious decision, keeping in mind how much criticism the ICC received for the exorbitant ticket prices during the World Cup in the Caribbean?
We discussed the ticket pricing and we took into account the prices that the South African public are used to from a domestic perspective. Our domestic Twenty20 prices are relatively cheap, 20 to 40 R [US$ 3-6 approx], but the international prices are 170-200 R [$24-28]. So we've taken a blend across the whole of our SA tournament.

Considering the time of year, the actual tournament was always going to be a South Africa-supported event. From the time we were appointed to the time we started the tournament, there was never going to be a massive influx of overseas tourists, because there's the rugby World Cup on. Also, the tournament was organised at very short notice - we were appointed toward the end of 2006, but we couldn't do anything till the end of the World Cup in the Caribbean. We had basically from April to September 2007 to get this event up and running. So we always pegged this as a South Africa event and we had to price it accordingly.

For the round-robin games a ticket cost 20 R for grass [the grass embankments and the stands directly above them] and 40 R for grandstand - for the double header there was a 50% premium; for the Super Eights it was 40 R for grass and 80 R [$12] for grandstand; the opening match, semi-finals and final were all priced at 100 R [$14] for the grass and 160 R [$23] for the grandstand. [To put that in perspective: the big flags were selling at 80 R each during the South Africa-India Super Eights game.]

The success has shown in terms of the support we've had. The support has been phenomenal from the South African point of view. We wanted people to come to the ground, because for Twenty20 cricket to flourish it's vital the spectators provide the energy in the ground.

There are obvious advantages of pricing the tickets so low. Are there any disadvantages?
One of the major disadvantages is to adjust the prices of the things you are selling in the stadium. Anything you sell in the stadium is very hard to price over and above what the ticket price is. How can you charge more than 20 R for the souvenir program, when the ticket price is 20 R? The other con is from a hospitality perspective, which is the hosts' right. When ticket prices are low it affects hospitality, which affects income.

The advantage is obviously the number of people you can attract to the ground. That's how we have balanced it in terms of the pricing structure. It's ended up being a good blend, but from a CSA point of view we've attracted a completely new market and that's the key. We've got new cricket supporters who're going to come in the next seasons to support cricket.

Have you got any information on the profile and the interests of these new supporters?
We've got a whole lot of research going on around the tournament. We'll wait and see what the results bring up. There'll be answers to questions like: Have you visited cricket for the first time? Have you been here more than once? Have you watched domestic cricket?

Twenty20 cricket is also about a lot of other elements, apart from the cricket. Do you think that some of those extraneous elements detract from the cricket? Also, how did you decide on which of these entertainment bits you wanted and which you didn't?
We don't want these elements to detract from the cricket. They are good and they're fun and entertaining, but the cricket is the main hook. And that's what you want to keep it at. You don't want everything around it to seem like that's the hook and not the cricket. So you want a couple of elements that are done well, and all relating back to the cricket. The dancers dance when there're fours or sixes or wickets. The hard hats are there for a specific reason: there're so many sixes that you need a hard hat to protect yourself. The DJ boxes are there because it's all about the music. The dugouts are there because it's a quick-transition game.

In domestic games we have other things too, including dunk tanks. But you can't have it all in international matches because you'll have huge, sell-out crowds as well. The domestic sides you can manage it a little better, because you have space for all the extras. There're also budgetary constraints, so we can't do everything.

Twenty20 cricket has got off to a great start in terms of popularity. Is it on its way to replacing ODIs?
I don't think so. If it's positioned correctly Twenty20 cricket can be a great concept, but I think they've all got a position [Tests, ODIs and Twenty20].

The thing is, you've got to evolve with the game. A lot of the batsmen have evolved; some of the bowlers are still learning. You've got to be able to bowl slower balls, bouncers, yorkers, and you've got to be able to do it at will. Let me tell you, they've learnt in this tournament. You've seen them learn from match to match; you can watch how they've analysed the game. They look at the footage, analyse it, and come back and they're better bowlers the next day. I think it can only do wonders for the game.

The change is going to impact all of cricket. People are suddenly going to say, "Well, in 20 overs we're going at at least eight an over, so in the 50-over game we should go at at least six. So 300 in a 50-over game should be a par score. Last year we broke 400 four times in 50-over games. And I think the knock-on on Test cricket is going to be just as profound. People will be much more positive when they go out to bat. They'll say, "If we bowl out the opposition and need 200 in the last hour it's still on because in 20-over cricket we're scoring 200."