SA20 chief Smith says tournament's semi-final structure won't change for integrity purposes

SA20 League commissioner Graeme Smith said the current semi-final structure of the tournament was kept intact so that it keeps its integrity, even though the top two sides will play their semi-finals at 'away' venues.

The Pretoria Capitals will play their semi-final at the Wanderers on Wednesday, while the Joburg Super Kings will play their semi-final at SuperSport Park in Centurion on Thursday.

The Pretoria Capitals closed out the round-robin stage against the Paarl Royals on Tuesday and were uncatchable at the top of the league table, guaranteeing them a play-off slot.

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Smith said the league not only took over the semi-finals but was assured by the teams that they were happy with how the play-off scenarios panned out.

The venues for the play-offs were announced early, with the Newlands, Boland Park and St George's Park being unavailable because of the Women's T20 World Cup that starts on Friday. 

"The league takes over the running of the knockout fixtures, even though the franchises run the round-robin games," Smith said.

"The league takes over to protect the integrity of the knockout games to manage biases and pitch doctoring.

"Ours is to ensure the standard of the knockouts is delivered to a high level, and you'll see that the branding becomes about the finals.

"Also, we don't have access to three of the venues because of the T20 Women's World Cup, which is why the league played the bulk of the early game at the coast and finished up in highveld.

"We don't have that constraint next year, but this year, we needed to be fair to all teams and stick to the decision that we made.

"If we changed it now, it would be an unnecessary bias