This is not a review, and while I do believe news like this should be often, I do also hope that there is a future in Cricket South Africa’s marketing and media relations department where long-term or short-term partnerships are secured and announced weeks before a tournament. With this mornings announcement, Cricket South Africa’s shared their new partnership with Crunchyroll, the global leader in anime, as the Associate Team Sponsor for the Proteas Men’s series in India. 

We enjoy such collaborations or partnerships because they feel like a long-overdue cultural crossover. For a sport often wrapped in tradition and guarded by its rigidity, this partnership introduces something fresh, global, and youth-driven into South Africa’s cricketing landscape.

From 14 November to 19 December, the Proteas Men will take to the field with Crunchyroll’s logo emblazoned on their backs, across all formats : Tests, ODIs, and T20s. A branding deal that presents itself as moment of alignment between two global fandoms that thrive on passion, storytelling, and community.

CSA’s CEO Pholetsi Moseki called it “a celebration of shared values and a drive to connect with global audiences,” and rightly so. With anime viewership always in the rise toward a billion-strong global audiences, this collaboration repositions cricket, even if momentarily, within a much larger entertainment ecosystem.

And that’s the key word here: entertainment.

In a world where sport increasingly competes with streaming platforms, social media, and pop culture for attention, cricket no longer affords to sit outside the cultural conversation. Partnerships like this one reflect an the possibility of an understanding that sport is culture and that cultural relevance translates directly into marketability.

Now, if you’ve been following Tinar, you’ll remember we once described the new Western Province Cricket Association CEO as “collecting sponsors like Thanos collecting infinity stones.” (And yes, to those senior cricket enthusiasts who may have missed the pop-culture reference, Thanos is the Marvel villain who gathers powerful gems to reshape the universe)

It was a tongue-in-cheek metaphor, but it captured something real: the future of cricket administration depends on leaders who have the vision to understand brand synergy, who see value in bringing anime, fashion, music, gaming, and youth culture into the cricket space.

If this Crunchyroll x CSA partnership is a small glimpse of that future. It’s bold, imaginative, and dare, we say, overdue. Because when a sport starts to see itself not only as a game but as part of a larger creative economy, that’s when it starts speaking the language of the next generation.

With our belief in intuitive marketing, cricket needs its own universe-building, much like Marvel’s or Crunchyroll’s, where stories, symbols, and identities collide to create something bigger than the scoreboard.

But for now, in this multiverse of markets, brand storytelling might just be the new boundary line to explore.