Courier service Ram has agreed a deal with Cricket South Africa to become the title sponsor of the body’s T20 Challenge competition.
The 2017 Ram Slam T20 Challenge will get underway this Friday when the Warriors take on the VKB Knights at St. George’s Park in Port Elizabeth.
As part of the agreement, the tournament’s Catch a Million competition will become Catch Two Million, giving fans who make a clean one-handed catch the chance to win a share of R2m (€122,000/$141,000).
Ram ended its backing of the tournament following a 2015 edition which was marred by a match-fixing scandal.
This year’s Ram Slam T20 Challenge will go ahead in place of CSA’s T20 Global League, which had been due to debut last week. The tournament will now launch in November 2018. The postponement, which was announced last month, was reportedly due to CSA’s inability to find a media-rights deal and main sponsor for the competition.
Ram’s executive chairman David Lazarus said: “When we received the call from CSA regarding the opportunity the answer was an unequivocal yes as everything spoke directly to what we are about. We are excited to revive the Ram Slam and we challenge all South Africans to come and support their team and stand a chance to win their share of R2m.”
CSA acting chief executive Thabang Moroe added: “It is great news for our cricket to welcome Ram Hand to Hand Couriers back as one of our naming rights sponsors. We are particularly grateful to them for coming aboard at unavoidably short notice. This season’s competition, which will feature all our Standard Bank Proteas, will probably be the most significant since we launched the franchise concept in this format back in 2004.”
The final of this year’s Ram Slam T20 Challenge is due to be held on December 16.