T20 has succeeded spectacularly in fixing some of what was broken about the rest of cricket: the tedium of the belly of a 50-over innings, the dreaded drumbeat of dull draws in the first-class stalemates.

Better yet, it has sparked the invention of an array of batting strokes, reinvented spin bowling, and taught seamers to bowl in different areas at different speeds to achieve different results.

The format is the jolt of life cricket sorely needed. It has attracted an entirely fresh audience and allowed the game's economy to boom. The SA20 is a prime example of exactly those good things.

So much so that even as uncertainty about the league's ownership in the coming years grows - SuperSport and Sundar Raman, who between them hold 50% of the shares, are reportedly considering selling - thoughts have turned to expanding the number of franchises.

That would be a mistake, because six is the magic number. As is four points for a win, with the possibility of a fifth bonus point. You only have to look at the standings after Tuesday's match between Durban's Super Giants and Paarl Royals at Boland Park to prove the wisdom of all that to yourself.

After 23 of the 30 round robin games - more than three quarters - no team is out of contention for the playoffs. Even dear old Durban, who have lost four of their nine matches and had three washed out, are just three points away from the top four who will reach the knockout rounds. And they aren't even the bottom side.

That dubious distinction belongs to Mumbai Indians Cape Town, who won the tournament in 2025 after finishing last in the first two years. Cape Town have lost five of eight with one no-result. But they remain in contention and could sneak into the knockouts if they beat Sunrisers Eastern Cape at Newlands on Friday and again at St George's Park on Sunday.

If commissioner Graeme Smith is in search of a new slogan for his tournament, he can have this middling at best effort for free: "The SA20, making the impossible possible." All that said, reasons for fiddling with this perfect structure are being aired in influential places.

One is that additional franchises translate into an improved commercial outlook. And who's to say that won't happen? If six teams that didn't exist less than five years ago can be roaring successes, why not eight? The experience and expertise that comes with IPL ownership helps, of course. But the proof of this pudding is in the doing, and the SA20 has done things exceedingly well.

It will soon face competition for owners from the BBL, chunks of which will be for sale this year. Thing is, you can get stuff done as well or better in South Africa compared to in Australia, and for a fraction of the price and the bureaucracy.

More franchises would mean more matches and more opportunities for more players to be exposed to more high quality cricket. This would be tricky, because the tournament's window is unlikely to stretch. Unless CSA rearranges the summer like it did this time, with no international cricket being played in South Africa - by men or women - from mid-December last year to the last week of January this year. That's 38 days of prime international cricket time without any of the precious commodity.

This was done as a one-off to enable South Africa's major grounds to ready themselves for the 2027 men's World Cup, which will be played in the country as well as in Zimbabwe and Namibia. That's a good reason to clear the decks, but the complaints flowed. Until, that is, the SA20 started on Boxing Day.

We haven't heard from the moaners for weeks. Could it be that it's more important to them to have cricket to watch during this period than it is to watch South Africa's teams in particular? Especially when they're able to see their country's finest players as well as those from others? If that is the case, why would CSA not plan future schedules around a longer SA20?

And then there's Bloemfontein. It has an excellent ground. It has dedicated people who run the game there exceptionally well. But it doesn't have a team in the SA20. Neither does any other centre in South Africa's vast central region - two of the current six are based on the Highveld, another two in the Cape, and the remaining two on the east coast. That has to change, and Bloem is the place to make that happen.

But quite where an eighth franchise might be based isn't clear. Too many of CSA's provincial affiliates are mired in scandal, which is often the result of them being in the control of smallminded career suits who give little but take much.

So the SA20 faces pros and cons as it emerges from its original novelty value into the light that shines on it as a valuable, in every sense, part of the game. Whisper it for now, but it already has claims on being considered the centrepiece of the South African summer. There's another slogan you might consider, Graeme.

As tempting as it will be for the bean-counters and their bloodless allies to grow the tournament, others will argue in the opposite direction: don't you dare try to fix what ain't broke. And the SA20 is very fixed. In a good way.