Quinton de Kock, Jason Holder, Kyle Mayers, Reece Topley and uncapped Prenelan Subrayen are the five players signed by the Durban franchise in the CSA T20 League. The team is owned by RPSG Group, that owns Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL.
Tournament rules stipulate that a team can sign a maximum of one capped South African, three overseas players and an uncapped player ahead of the players auction. The Durban-based franchise is the second to announce their picks after MI Cape Town.
"I welcome all the players to the RPSG Durban family," Dr Sanjiv Goenka, Chairman of RPSG Group, said. "It's a new beginning, full of hope and promise. We are confident that the talented players will add to the foundation of the team and will uphold our core philosophy of performance."
De Kock, Holder and Mayers were part of the Super Giants team that made its debut in IPL 2022 and went all the way through to the knockout stages of the tournament.
De Kock, a star attraction in the South African limited-overs set up, played all 15 of their games and scored 508 runs opening the batting. Holder, the former West Indies captain and T20 World Cup winner, returned 14 wickets in 12 appearances. Mayers wasn't picked to play a game in the IPL but has since come into his own as a hard-hitting top-order batter.
The uncapped Subrayen has been an ever-present in the South African domestic scene. He was Player of the Match when the Dolphins won the four-day cricket title earlier this year. And he was their captain when they made the semi-finals of the CSA T20 Challenge, returning seven wickets in seven innings with his offbreaks. He has 69 wickets in 79 T20s and strikes at 121.27 with the bat.
Topley, the 6'7" left-arm fast bowler from England, has also been around a while. Injuries had kept him down but last month, on the third anniversary of his country winning the 50-over World Cup, he produced a show of such skill that he broke the record for the best bowling figures for England in ODIs, picking up 6 for 24 against India. In T20s, he has 157 wickets from 122 games at an economy rate of 8.21.
A CSA release on Wednesday also said the player auction would take place "in the next few weeks" before the league begins in January 2023. All six franchises have been bought by groups that own teams in the IPL and the league is likely to allow four overseas players in the match day XI with no requirements for transformation as of now.