“Yes, it’s quiet. Probably because they have no more feet left to shoot.” – an insider on the silence that has descended on the game.
TELFORD VICE | Cape Town
AFTER weeks of loudly waged internecine struggle, something like silence reins in South Africa. There have been no new revelations of racism, no resignations, no shouty press releases, no hysterical talk shows, no announcements of sponsors ending their involvement, and no social media madness by anyone worth taking seriously. All you hear from cricket is crickets …
“Yes, it’s quiet,” an insider said. “Probably because they have no more feet left to shoot.”
There’s also no certainty on when, in the wake of the pandemic, South Africans might see the players on the field again. Theories that the domestic season will start on November 2 have not been confirmed. Neither has speculation that England will arrive, also in November, to play three internationals in each of the white-ball formats. Likewise a Test series against Sri Lanka in December and January. To be fair, there can be no confirmation of international fixtures when the country’s borders remain closed to teams from abroad.
But that’s not where the unknowing ends. The news that the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) had ordered CSA’s board and senior staff to stand down while a task team investigates the game’s myriad problems was broken by Cricbuzz on September 10. More than two weeks later the board is still in place and the task team is unnamed, ostensibly because CSA is refusing to give SASCOC unfettered access to a forensic report that has cost Thabang Moroe his job as CSA chief executive and may yet set more heads rolling.
Without the full report, SASCOC says, it can’t appoint the task team. CSA says it can’t make the unabridged document available because of legal considerations. It looks like a stand-off between opposing parties defending defendable positions. But it could also be a useful way to say you’re trying to do something about a bad situation when you are, in fact, doing what you actually want to do: nothing.
Are SASCOC and CSA as devious as they are dysfunctional? Who can tell. But consider that, for the second time in recent months, proposed amendments to SASCOC’s constitution that were circulated among board members before meetings have differed from the amendments they were supposed to vote on. And that the leader of the SASCOC board that took action against CSA, Aleck Skhosana, has been replaced as acting president by his predecessor, Barry Hendricks, who won 47 of 62 votes at a special meeting at the weekend.
What does that mean for SASCOC’s intervention into CSA’s affairs? Again, that is uncertain. But the change of leadership doesn’t suggest unity in a SASCOC board that sidelined Hendricks in April. Is it too cynical to wonder whether the price of CSA’s support for Hendricks’ return — if indeed he secured it — was that SASCOC would call off its task team?
Consider, too, that prominent figures on CSA’s members council who are not part of the board have softened their stance toward the crisis-prone board. Remember that the members council is the only body in cricket that can take direct action against the board.
Neither should it be forgotten that Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, the noisiest member of the board, is under investigation by CSA’s social and ethics committee for disparaging sponsor Momentum on Twitter on September 15 after the financial services company said it was pulling most of the USD1.2-million it pumps into cricket each year because it was “not satisfied with the current state of affairs at CSA regarding governance and other reputational issues”.
Kula-Ameyaw deleted the offending posts but by Friday afternoon she had tweeted, or retweeted, a dozen more times — not once about cricket. CSA were asked on Friday what the social and ethics committee had done to address the issue, and what specific action could be taken against Kula-Ameyaw if she was found to be in breach of the directors charter. No meaningful response has yet been received.
Similarly, a question to a reputation management firm about why one of their directors was logged on for an online press conference given jointly by SASCOC and CSA on September 17 has been met with silence. On its website, the firm sells itself by saying: “Seemingly innocent remarks, ill-advised actions, or simply misunderstanding your target audience … can be blown so far out of proportion that it causes terminal damage to a reputation and could irreparably harm political aspirations and business prospects.”
CSA could do worse than heed those words. Maybe it’s too late. And, therefore, too quiet.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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