“Those who think they can still stand against this process must think again. This was about the life and death of cricket in South Africa.” – Nathi Mthethwa tells SASCOC to stay in its lane. While it has a lane …
Telford Vice | Cape Town
THE emperors of CSA’s members council have recognised their nakedness. But dragging them in front of a mirror to countenance that truth meant threatening the professional game in the country with implosion.
Until this week the council — which is comprised of the presidents of CSA’s 14 provincial affiliates and associates — was South African cricket’s highest authority. It also held seven of the 12 seats on the board, a recipe for governance nightmares that came true umpteen times. Now the council has been cut down to size: it will stick strictly to the flannelled fooldom of cricket itself and leave the real world of business to the board and the executives.
The gist of CSA’s new memorandum of incorporation (MOI) was unveiled at a press conference in Johannesburg and online on Friday. For the next three years the board will be made up of eight independent members, five others drawn from the ranks of the council, and CSA’s chief executive and chief financial officer. After three years the board will be trimmed from 15 to 13 members.
Aspirant independent directors have until midnight on May 10 to throw their names into the hat. A panel drawn from corporate structures and cricket will assess the applications and recommend eight names to be put forward for appointment at CSA’s annual meeting, which will be held not later than June 12.
In another departure from the current messy arrangement the board will be chaired by an independent. The members council will still provide CSA’s president, but it will be up to the board — not the council — to nominate CSA’s representatives at the ICC.
CSA is looking to flex its newly toned muscles by bidding to host several international events. It has its eye on the 2027 men’s World Cup in particular. A successful bid would be a convincing endorsement of the work done by an interim board that has been in office since November. Its establishment was opposed and obstructed by the members council, which has tried hard to stymie to adoption of the new MOI. Bidding for the next batch of ICC events opens in October. Should CSA land any of the available tournaments, no credit should go to the members council.
“Remember the date April 30, 2021,” Stavros Nicolaou, the chair of CSA’s interim board, told the gathered press. “It is a seminal date in the history and evolution of cricket in our country. Cricket will be placed on a different, solid, sound governance pathway. One which makes as proud as an organisation, one which the rest of our country can take pride in, and, more particularly, one that we can showcase … to the rest of the world as best practice and top of class. As with all history it comes with struggle. It’s never handed on a platter.”
To make the members council back down, government triggered legislation that would have “defunded and derecognised” CSA — which would have had the privilege of calling its teams national representatives revoked. That was, in fact, the state of play when the government gazette was published on Thursday. But, on Wednesday, the members council had voted unanimously in favour of the new MOI, and the legislation was rescinded. Had it remained in place CSA would undoubtedly have lost sponsors and broadcast deals, their prime sources of revenue, and the status of cricket in South Africa would have crashed to that of croquet.
“We were at the edge of the cliff,” Nicolaou said. “We were millimetres — not centimetres — away from going over the edge. The cliff is very steep, and not one you can easily climb back up. We were facing an almost apocalyptic scenario. In a few months we’ll be bidding for the World Cup, but none of these things would have been possible if we were off the cliff.
“When you’re at the edge of the cliff your sponsors get nervous, your staff get nervous, and the country at large gets nervous. We had to do something to pull back from the brink of the cliff. So we got together with the members council … and said in the interests of the game and the nation, let’s try and work through these issues. We need certainty and predictability. That’s what sponsors, players and everybody else wants.”
Nathi Mthethwa, the sports minister whose sustained intervention has been key to CSA reaching this point, was in full celebratory voice: “This is victory. The victors are the players, cricket itself and sport in general. The victors are cricket’s staff members, and those mothers and fathers who have written to me over a period of time asking that government saves cricket from itself. I’ve shared some of those letters with the members council. The victors are those administrators we have consulted with from the beginning. The victors are those who want to see this country going forward, not backward; those who are not going to be apologetic to forge ahead with transformation. It’s victory for the 60-million people of South Africa.”
Nicolaou concurred: “We recognise that cricket is not just about a sporting code. Arts, culture and sport [Mthethwa’s full portfolio] doesn’t just speak to a sporting code. It speaks to social cohesion in a country and uniting a nation. It affects just about every social aspect in our society. Once can never talk about cricket as affecting a narrow constituency. It’s about 60-million South Africans. That’s something the interim board understood: we had to deliver for 60-million South Africans, not for a narrowly based constituency. We had to be clear that if we let down people we would be letting down 60-million people. You’re letting down the country in terms of its global positioning. We should never under-estimate the role sport plays, domestically and internationally, in positioning our country; it’s reputation, it’s image.”
The members council first agreed to most of the now implemented reforms in 2012. It has spent the ensuing nine years finding ways to go back on its word, chiefly by hiding behind the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) — a powerful but terminally flawed organisation that has the power to suspend CSA and has itself fallen prey to much of what has seriously damaged cricket.
Earlier on Friday, SASCOC went to parliament to complain about CSA’s actions. “On being notified that the members council would adopt the MOI we corrected the situation by informing our member [CSA] … that any member’s constitution needs to be reviewed and sanctioned by SASCOC,” Barry Hendricks, SASCOC’s president, told a portfolio committee.
Mthethwa took a dim view of that stance: “Those who think they can still stand against this process must think again. This was about the life and death of cricket in South Africa.” He reminded SASCOC that it not fixed CSA’s problems, as he had asked it to do in September: “As government we are reluctant to get into the fray. We believe that CSA should be able to resolve their issues. But when they failed to do so — in fact they made things worse and cricket was going down the drain in front of our very eyes — we followed the law. There were calls that government must intervene. We said no, wait: [SASCOC] is there. And SASCOC could not resolve this matter. They failed, and they took it back to the minister.”
One of the members council’s naked emperors, acting president Rihan Richards, sounded like someone trying frantically to wrap a towel around themselves. “We are still a member in good standing with SASCOC; we have submitted our revised MOI,” he told the press conference. “The process is that, in terms of their constitution, they should approve. But we could not hold back; we needed to forge our way forward. Which might bring us into conflict with SASCOC, but it’s a matter we will deal with at that stage.”
Too late. We’ve seen it all. And it’s not pretty. Here’s to a better dress code, for cricket’s sake.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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