“After the trauma we went through it was in all our interests to align and reset. Cricket is all of our livelihoods.” – Pholetsi Moseki, CSA’s chief executive, on the improved relationship between players and administrators.
Telford Vice / Cape Town
ENOCH Nkwe’s WhatsApp profile picture is a stylised eight-ball, as used in the game of pool. To be “behind the eight-ball” is to be under pressure. Does Nkwe consider himself behind the eight-ball?
“I never looked at it that way,” Nkwe told Cricbuzz. “It’s just that eight was my number as a player; I liked the icon. But I like that idea.” As CSA’s director of cricket Nkwe is indeed under pressure. The buck for so much that happens in the game in South Africa stops with him, although he knows the public doesn’t see things that way: “Some people think I’m director of Proteas.”
That would be the men’s national team, who were hammered by an innings in the Boxing Day Test and in two days at the Gabba last month, which followed a meltdown at the T20 World Cup in Australia, lost ODI and T20 series in India, and twice being beaten in three days in England.
However unfairly, whatever any other team or individual in South African cricket might accomplish, how the men’s side fares is a barometer for the state of the game. When they lose, especially in the abject way they have gone in recent months, Nkwe isn’t alone in suddenly seeing the eight-ball up close and personal.
The skewed focus isn’t only about sentiment, misogyny and misplaced patriotism. The broadcast rights fees attracted by South Africa’s men’s team represent 53% of the revenue CSA earned in 2022, according to the organisation’s annual report. Maybe the money, as it does in other major cricket-playing countries, follows all that sentiment, misogyny and misplaced patriotism.
What’s not in doubt is that CSA need money. The inaugural edition of the SA20, which starts next Tuesday, is expected to clear around USD16.2-million in profit. CSA are 50% shareholders in the tournament, so their slice of the windfall would go a long way to erasing the USD11.65-million loss they declared in November. But that won’t take the game out of the red, especially with earnings having dwindled in other areas.
CSA were paid the equivalent of USD2.95-million in sponsorship revenue in the 2021-22 financial year, USD1.53-million less than the previous year. The downward trend started in December 2019, when title sponsors Standard Bank announced they would end their relationship with CSA — which had lasted 21 years and was reportedly worth USD27.3-million over four years at the time — in April 2020 because of, the bank said then, “a culmination of long-standing problems which have damaged Standard Bank’s reputation”. CSA have yet to replace them.
Under Chris Nenzani and Thabang Moroe, CSA’s president and chief executive, cricket in South Africa lurched from one governance crisis to the next. They, along with the board then in office, are no longer around and the game is exponentially better off without them. A new board, chaired by Lawson Naidoo, has been in office since June 2020. Pholetsi Moseki, who served as acting chief executive from December 2020, was appointed to the position permanently in March. In June, Nkwe succeeded Graeme Smith, who became the SA20 commissioner in July.
The flood of negativity about cricket’s administration in South Africa that had dominated the media for years has slowed to a trickle, the crazier confines of social media aside. Whether CSA have repaired the trust they broke is difficult to know, and the pandemic, which dealt South Africa’s already struggling economy and crumbling infrastructure serious blows, has hampered attempts to secure new corporate partnerships. But could it be that, after so much chaos, something like cohesion has been established?
Like other cricketminded South Africans, Dean Elgar will hope that is the case. Unlike most of his compatriots, his opinion is informed. “For the first time in a couple of years it’s at its most stable,” he said during the first press conference of South Africa’s Australian tour. “We’ve had a lot of changes with regards to administrators in CSA. As players, those things can’t hinder us from performing. We’ve almost gotten used to those kinds of bad headlines. But for now it’s stabilising quite nicely.
“We’ve got a new CEO, we’ve had a new board come in and make good cricketing decisions, and we have a new director of cricket who’s really focusing hard on our Proteas brand. Those are things we can’t focus on. It’s totally out of our control as players. We need to do what we can do to try and get results on the board. That’s our currency as players.”
Nkwe believes a board engagement with the players before they left for England in July “was a turning point” in narrowing the rift: “That was needed to try and bring CSA and the players closer together, and create a platform where everybody can have a voice; in particular so the board can listen to the players’ frustrations to see how we build a better relationship.”
Nkwe serves as a bridge between the players and other elements of the game, and he likes what he has been seeing: “I’m excited about the new, better relationship between the players, CSA, SACA [the South African Cricketers’ Association], all of us. We all care about the game; we all want cricket to succeed in South Africa. Yes, we might have had different perspectives. But that engagement went a long way, for the players and the board. How do we re-align, how do we support you, how do the players try to understand what’s been happening?”
Speaking to Cricbuzz, Moseki concurred and also gave SACA credit: “It’s definitely better but there’s still a lot of work to be done. Players and administrators will always have their issues but all parties are trying to improve relations. After the trauma we went through it was in all our interests to align and reset. Cricket is all of our livelihoods.”
Even so, the distrust sown by the recklessness of their previous administration remains a hurdle to be cleared. “Standard Bank’s sponsorship ended during that meltdown, and for two years after that it was difficult to get people to even want to speak to CSA,” Moseki said. “That has really changed, especially after the new board was appointed and the changes to the memorandum of incorporation and the new governance structures. Since June last year we’ve been speaking to far more people. A lot of them have been keen to engage with us, even our current sponsors. The mood has definitely changed but it’s still a work in progress. It’s far more positive than it was 18 months ago, when I don’t think anyone wanted to speak to us.”
Andrew Breetzke, SACA’s chief executive, offered a similarly hopeful view: “The relationship between CSA and SACA and the players has improved significantly in the past 18 months, coming from total breakdown. But it’s imperative that we keep open lines of communication and synergy on issues that affect players careers.”
That doesn’t always happen. There is unhappiness at slow and inadequate dissemination of crucial information to players and the press alike. For instance, CSA bungled the explanation for Ryan Rickelton’s omission from the Test squad in Australia. Rickelton has chosen to keep playing for his province despite carrying an ankle injury that requires surgery. CSA say — or should have said — that they can’t pick a player who might break down on tour.
The public invariably take the players’ side. Given what they know about CSA, that’s hardly surprising. If the suits don’t do their jobs, the players are left to twist in the wind. But the converse applies. Keep losing Tests in two or three days and bombing out of tournaments and potential sponsors will be reluctant to seal the deal. Nobody wants their logo on damaged goods.
“We want to give the team as much support as possible, but they’ve got to understand certain challenges,” Nkwe said. “If teams, coaches and players don’t really understand the outside world that you’re operating in, you’re going to struggle. Have 10% of understanding but have 90% of knowing that the organisation is behind you with a high level of support and alignment.”
How far were CSA from putting signatures on the dotted lines of contracts to fill empty spaces on playing shirts? “We’re hoping to sign someone before the end of this season so we can start the next financial year [in May] with a sponsor,” Moseki said. “The South African economy has changed drastically over the last two or three years, and the biggest challenge we’re facing is that the values have drastically dropped. Research says they will start going up again but there’s a big difference in what we were getting from Standard Bank compared to the offers we are getting locally now.
“We don’t want to dilute the value of our product. So we decided to broaden the parties we speak to, not just to South African companies. We see ourselves as a global presence: the Proteas play outside the country for half the year, so we felt it was good to also look at companies that operate in major cricket-playing countries.”
Did that mean South Africans should ready themselves for, say, the Cycle Pure Agarbatti Proteas? “We won’t be going that route anymore,” Moseki said, and made his point using the example of South Africa’s rugby union team: “The Springboks are the Springboks. They’re not the [mobile phone service providers] MTN Springboks. Whoever we sign will have their names on the front of the playing shirt, but we won’t name the team after them.”
Rugby, which also suffers from administrative problems, doesn’t struggle to attract sponsors — not least because the Springboks have won the World Cup three times. The Proteas, infamously fragile under pressure, have yet to reach a final.
That could change this year. Should South Africa win the Sydney Test, which starts on Wednesday, as well as both matches against West Indies at home in February and March, Elgar’s team could stay in the running for a place in the WTC final at the Oval in June. On current form, that seems unlikely: they have lost four consecutive Tests. If they don’t make the final, the relevance of teams like South Africa in a Test arena increasingly bent to the will and wealth of India, England and Australia will diminish all but unnoticed. If the South Africans do make it to the Oval in June, they will be more difficult to ignore.
South Africa’s suits have done their bit to make that happen. It’s up to the players to bring their end of the bargain. They need to see past the eight-ball.
Cricbuzz
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