“These discussions have taken place in light of the current cricketing landscape globally and in South Africa.” – Craig Bowen, New Balance’s South Africa representative, confirms the company is reconsidering its deal with CSA.
TELFORD VICE | Cape Town
TUESDAY looms as a watershed for South African cricket. Not because CSA will be back in parliament to explain itself to the same committee that shouted it down last week. Neither because cricket’s suits are due to meet with the head suit himself, the sports minister.
What means more is that Tuesday marks 220 days since the national men’s team were in action, their longest period of idleness since readmission in 1991. If not enough cricket of the kind that brings in revenue is played in South Africa the game will become a weekend hobby for committed amateurs — a scenario the pandemic has made exponentially more real, especially in an economy that was struggling before an invisible pathogen changed life and death as we know it.
But this truth has gone almost unnoticed by those who should be concerned with the good of the game. Instead they are more intent on making themselves heard to the people they need to impress, who themselves seem determined to make more noise than sense. While the game in the wider world has been confronting its frailties as an industry, South African cricket has been chasing its tail about chronic, deep-seated and relevant issues of governance, transformation and racism.
CSA’s presentation to the parliamentary portfolio committee on sport, which it planned to deliver last Tuesday, is a case in point. Seen by Cricbuzz, it amounts to 52 pages in which the virus features a grand total of once, and even then well down the priority list in a bullet point on page 41: “Player and staff salaries not cut or impacted by Covid-19.” Not that Marius Schoeman, the CSA board member entrusted with presenting the document to the committee, got anywhere close to page 41. He had barely begun when he was interrupted by MPs who wanted to know why CSA hadn’t released the full report of the Fundudzi forensic investigation into cricket’s litany of catastrophe. Allowed to resume after almost half-an-hour of self-serving bombast, Schoeman was soon derailed again.
If the committee had been more inclined to listen to voices other than its own, it might have learnt that CSA plans — the presentation paper says — to make “part of the membership requirements that the executive management teams of unions and the boards become predominantly black with a heavy focus on black female members in these critical positions. The intention is to identify at least 10 black female candidates. The onus will be placed on [provincial] affiliates to address the current status of non-transformed positions especially in CEO and executive positions. Failure by the unions to do this will result in financial penalties.” The process will start in December.
Considering only 58 of the 145 country’s current provincial board members are black, and that just 20 of the total are women, the importance of this goal is obvious. But where is cricket going to find, in a matter of weeks, as many as 10 black women who have the required skills and experience in a system that has historically been unwelcoming to women, and far more so to black women? The proposal seems less about remedying the situation than telling politicians what they want to hear.
There is similar concern in the presentation about the fact that “the number of selections for whites’ dwarfs the numbers for any of the black demographic”. Whites comprised 54% of South Africa’s players last season — more than double the 22% of blacks selected, and the 24% of brown players. Whether that will mean a revision of the race-based targets — at least six black or brown players in every South Africa XI, two of them black — or a greater say by the board in selection matters is unclear.
If last Tuesday’s meeting achieved anything it was CSA’s agreement that the complete Fundudzi report would be delivered to parliament by last Friday. That happened, but we should be braced for another bunfight on Tuesday if reports that names have been redacted are accurate.
Already the main purpose of the investigation appears to have been to enable CSA to rid itself of Thabang Moroe, who was sacked as chief executive in August on charges of “serious misconduct”. Indeed, the presentation that has yet to see the light of the committee room admits that, on July 2, some four months after the probe started, “The terms of reference of the forensic investigation were amended to permit the forensic investigator to provide the board with certain information/report chapters related to the conduct of certain members of the CSA management team, but excluding any information related to the investigation of the conduct of the board and the members council.” Why? “This was done to expedite the matter of the suspended CEO who had been under precautionary suspension for eight months.” So, not to spare others scrutiny that might show they acted in concert with Moroe, or aided and abetted him, or failed in their duty to subject his performance to the required oversight? “The terms of reference were not amended to absolve the board from being investigated.” Really? It’s difficult to accept the say-so of an organisation that has a track record of doing the wrong thing.
As bad as all of the above is, none of it is as urgent an existential threat as the coronavirus. But not, it seems, in the estimation of CSA, which would be better served taking its cue on how seriously to regard this threat to its core business from its dwindling number of commercial partners.
“There is no doubt that the coronavirus has impacted the game around the world,” Craig Bowen, the South African representative for New Balance, the national teams’ kit supplier, told Cricbuzz. “Every person and entity vested in the game has been affected and we are all working to mitigate this impact in the most constructive way possible.”
Asked about information from sources who say the company is considering ending its relationship with CSA, Bowen said: “I can confirm that New Balance is currently in discussions with CSA regarding the future of our partnership. These discussions have taken place in light of the current cricketing landscape globally and in South Africa in order to review the strategic imperatives of this partnership with the aim of determining the most beneficial route forward for both our brand, CSA and the cricketing public at large.”
Whether South Africa’s players are in danger of losing the shirts off their backs because of Covid-19 or that other virus in their midst, CSA itself — or both — is moot. But it’s not difficult to grasp why a kit supplier doesn’t see the point of handing out playing gear to teams that haven’t been able to get its logo onto screens for 220 straight days. And counting.
CSA will want to use its meeting with Nathi Mthethwa, the sports minister, to end that drought. Although lockdown regulations have been eased enough to allow teams to travel to South Africa, those from countries that have high rates of infection will not be allowed in. That includes England, who CSA are hoping to lure for a white-ball visit in the coming months that could earn more than USD4-million. The venture is not necessarily doomed because, as per government guidance, “any person from a country listed as having a high Covid-19 infection and transmission rate who wishes to undertake business travel into South Africa may, in writing, apply to the minister of home affairs and demonstrate reasons” why an exception should be made.
What will CSA promise Mthethwa to earn his blessing for England’s presence in the country? Better question: what won’t it be prepared to promise? South Africans who yearn to see their team play again had better be careful what they wish for. They may just get it.
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 