Kirsten set for role as crisis unites disparate figures

“I’m always willing to help [South African cricket] in whatever way possible but only if it’s done through a proper and sustainable process and not just a as quick fix solution.” – Gary Kirsten

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

SOUTH African cricket could take another step backward to go forward by enlisting Gary Kirsten to put out some of the fires raging in the game. Kirsten, who won the 2011 men’s World Cup as India’s coach and took South Africa’s men’s team to the No. 1 Test ranking in 2012, seems set to be brought in as a mentor to Enoch Nkwe, who suffered a 3-0 thrashing in India in October in his first Test series as interim team director.

Nkwe looks likely to stay in the role for the rubber against England starting in Centurion on December 26, and it seems he will have Kirsten’s help. A proposal compiled by some of the game’s elders, and seen by Cricbuzz, calls, among other measures, for Kirsten to be appointed in a mentorship role. Some of the plan’s authors and supporters are Norman Arendse, Ali Bacher — the former president and managing director of South Africa’s board — the South African Cricketers’ Association, Graeme Smith, and Kirsten. The blueprint was discussed extensively on Friday and finalised in time to be presented to the members council — Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) highest authority, which comprises the presidents of the 14 provincial unions and affiliates — for tabling at their meeting that evening. Despite winning widespread support earlier in the day, when it came to the crunch it is believed only Western Province and Gauteng were in favour.

Maybe that happened because Arendse’s original recommendations for the proposal demanded that “[CSA’s] entire board and the chief executive [Thabang Moroe] must be suspended and an interim structure put in place”. That was refined to “the members council to populate positions” with the proviso that “no board members who held positions in the past 12 months” could be involved. Currently the members council includes five provincial presidents who also sit on CSA’s board. They would thus have been supporting their own removal. Friday’s members council meeting stretched on for more than six hours, and ended with the board’s survival.

Many questions swirl around the board’s actions and inactions in the face of clear and present dangers to the game itself, and they have become targets for open hostility from the public and former players. Hugh Page, an isolation-era fast bowler and a former national selector, posted on social media: “I would have thought by now that with all that has gone on in cricket over the last week or so, any self-respecting individual sitting on the board of CSA would have said, ‘Hang on, there’s a major crisis here, I can’t afford to be associated with this fiasco. I need to resign and move on quietly while still having some sort of dignity (and I say that lightly) intact. By staying on, it clearly shows one’s lack of regard for the game and that they are clearly there for their own personal gain. Simply put, they are not going anywhere without a shove. If it weren’t for the sake of the game and respect to other playing cricket countries around the world, we as supporters should insist that the players go on strike immediately and refuse to play under this association of incompetent individuals that call themselves directors. I implore all those who sit on the board of CSA to resign now and move on quietly for the sake of cricket. Please!” 

Moroe was indeed suspended as per the elders’ plan, albeit earlier on Friday. And other provisions — the appointment of Smith as director of cricket, with Jacques Faul or Haroon Lorgat to take over as acting chief executive — either have or are in the process of being enacted. Faul was unveiled in that position on Saturday, and CSA president Chris Nenzani said he hoped to sign Smith by Wednesday. 

So Kirsten coming on board would seem plausible, at least. “I’m always willing to help in whatever way possible but only if it’s done through a proper and sustainable process and not just a as quick fix solution,” Kirsten told Cricbuzz. Indeed the process of securing his services seems underway, as Faul indicated: “I hope to meet with Gary during next week or call him. The director of cricket will also be in contact with him. Hopefully we can involve him. He has a lot to offer.”

Another point of the blueprint calls for Linda Zondi’s immediate re-instatement as convenor of the selection panel, which was abolished after the World Cup and not replaced. The significance of that suggestion is that it is one of the few in the plan that proposes a black person’s contribution as a solution to a problem. Smith, Faul and Kirsten are all white — a fact that will not have gone unnoticed in South Africa’s wider society. Exponentially more blacks than whites play and follow cricket in South Africa, but the game continues to be considered a white preserve there and abroad. That’s a lingering consequence of its cultural weaponisation during the country’s racially regulated past. The wounds from that time remain unhealed, not least because levels of social and economic inequality between whites and blacks have grown alarmingly since the first democratically elected government took power in 1994.

So there was poignance in Arendse saying the proposal had been “broadly accepted by prominent cricket persons whom I would loosely describe as former hardline SACOS people, who swallowed hard but accepted that we face an unprecedented crisis in cricket in this country”.

The South African Council on Sport, the non-racial authority in the apartheid era, was guided by the principle that there could be “no normal sport in an abnormal society”. Decades on, not nearly enough has changed — neither in cricket nor in society. But, for the first time, and notwithstanding the fact that racial unity in cricket was proclaimed in 1991, figures as disparate as Arendse — a firebrand for non-racism — and Page — who played for what was called South Africa’s team against an Australia rebel side in 1986-87 — stand together.

Broken by Cricbuzz.

Du Plessis goes to bat for SA cricket’s new deal

“It’s time for us to look ahead from all this crap that’s been happening behind the scenes.” – Faf du Plessis

TELFORD VICE in Paarl

FAF du Plessis has endorsed South Africa’s new power structure, which was installed less than three weeks before he is due to the his team in a men’s Test series against England. And he is mindful that not much time remains to stop the rot that has afflicted the wider game from leaping the boundary.

Cricket South Africa named Jacques Faul in an acting capacity on Saturday to replace suspended chief executive Thabang Moroe, and they hope to confirm Graeme Smith as their director of cricket on Wednesday.

But the board have stubbornly refused to take the blame for the crises that have befallen the game under their watch, including a slew of questionable governance practices and an estimated loss of USD 68.3-million by the end of the 2022 rights cycle.

Amid all that uncertainty, at least Du Plessis’ continued captaincy would seem assured, even though South Africa do not currently have a selection panel and are strewn with interim appointments. So it will come as good news that he approves of the new deal: “Jacques [Faul, currently the Titans franchise’s chief executive] is obviously a very experienced CEO, a doctor [of sport business studies], so I am sure he is pretty clever. But it’s about experience; getting people in that can take this great game of ours on the right track again. There’s too much negative stuff that has happened over the last four, five weeks. Our cricket is too strong to have so many issues all the time. We are too proud a cricketing nation to be talking about this stuff all the time. The attention needs to be on the cricket and making sure we will build ourselves as a team and ourselves as an organisation to be great again.”

Du Plessis could hear the clock ticking towards his team’s four-match rubber against Joe Root’s side, which starts in Centurion on December 26: “There’s not much time before the English series, so now it’s about putting our focus back on to the team and making sure that the Test team gets all the things that are required for them, or for us to be successful. It’s been a little bit paused for the last two or three weeks, which is already too late. So we need to make sure in the next week that things start unfolding to make sure the Test team gets the most attention over the next week. The last two weeks there hasn’t been much attention on that so that is what we will try and drive over the next week.”

Du Plessis made his debut under Smith’s captaincy, played in the latter’s last 14 Tests, and would doubtless welcome his appointment. But he was also determined to keep his gaze on matters on the field: “I am a firm believer that it’s time for us to look ahead from all this crap that’s been happening behind the scenes. It’s about making sure that the players are focused on to what is the cricket side of things. The players have got absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening behind the scenes. For me its important to separate that from a player’s point of view, and if it needs me to be dealing with some of these things then that’s OK. It’s about getting focus on what’s really important now, which is a a Test series against England. As I said before, it’s already a little bit 99 [11th hour] and things haven’t happened as they should have. But now we can start getting things on the right track.”

Du Plessis spoke after leading the Paarl Rocks to a tense 12-run win over the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants in a Mzansi Super League fixture that confirmed the Rocks’ place in the December 16 final, which they will play at home.

The tournament, which has been of a high standard and has delivered close finishes more often than not, is the among few positives in the game currently. But, as Du Plessis said, soon the spotlight will be back on the real world of international cricket. England are coming, ready or not.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Biff and Biffer aboard, but …

 … CSA’s bamboozled, bamboozling, bamboo-for-brains board still a blight on the game.

TELFORD VICE in Paarl

CRICKET South Africa (CSA) have pinned their hopes on Graeme Smith and Jacques Faul to try and stop the bleeding, in effect calling back the past to try and forge a better future from the wreckage of a calamitous present.

At a press conference in Johannesburg on Saturday, CSA said Smith was on course to become their first director of cricket while Faul had been appointed acting chief executive. Smith was South Africa’s captain from 2003 to 2014 and took them to the No. 1 Test ranking. Faul guided CSA out of another crisis by serving in the same position in 2012 and 2013. But what many will see as the biggest obstacle to progress, CSA’s board, have resisted attempts to remove them.

Smith had been in talks with CSA but on Monday he said, for the second time, that he had pulled out of joining their staff. His agreement to come on board is understood to have been conditional on the absence from CSA of Thabang Moroe, the chief executive. That door was opened on Friday when Moroe was suspended over what CSA termed “allegations of misconduct, pending further investigations”, a decision that followed “reports received by the social and ethics committee and the audit and risk committee of the board related to possible failure of controls in the organisation”.

Chris Nenzani, CSA’s president, said on Saturday that Smith was close to shaking hands on a deal: “We have engaged him and he has agreed that, by next week Wednesday, all the negotiations around the contract terms that need to take place will have been concluded.”

Smith has little administrative experience, but the respect he earned in a stellar playing and captaincy career would lend integrity to organisation that has squandered that vital commodity. Faul, currently chief executive of the Titans franchise and among the most experienced and respected administrators in South Africa, stepped in when CSA suspended former chief executive Gerald Majola over undeclared bonuses — he was eventually sacked — and remains a trusted and highly regarded figure.

But the survival of CSA’s current board, despite eight provinces resolving on Thursday that they should be dismissed, will disappoint legions of cricketminded South Africans. Saturday’s press conference followed a CSA board meeting, which came after a gathering in Johannesburg on Friday of the members council — CSA’s highest authority — that started as 7pm (local time) and dragged on until 1.15am on Saturday, and that apparently included the minister of sport, Nathi Mthethwa. The members council has the power to dissolve the board, but declined to exercise that option — not least, probably, because several of the 14-strong members council also sit on CSA’s board. “We had very robust meeting,” Nenzani said of Friday’s affair. “It was very honest in terms of addressing the issues. But at the end of the day, or at the end of the night, or in the morning, the members council supported and endorsed the board to continue in its role and move forward in its efforts to turn the organisation around.” A high-ranking provincial official saw things differently: “I am gutted. There is no appreciation by Chris Nenzani and his fellow board members that their credibility is shot and that their stakeholders will not engage with them.”

One of those stakeholders, major sponsors Standard Bank, whose involvement in cricket started 21 years ago, said on Friday they would not renew their current agreement — which was worth USD 27.3-million over four years — when it expires at the end of April. That could be seen as an effort to put pressure on CSA to right their wrongs with a view to re-establishing the connection in future. But as things stand the national team are set to lose their title sponsor. The relationship between CSA and broadcaster SuperSport has sunk to its lowest ebb because of disagreement over the latter’s rights to the Mzansi Super League, and the value of the rights the board are able to command going forward is likely to fall thanks to the declining fortunes of South Africa’s team. The South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) have estimated that by the end of the 2022 rights cycle CSA could face losses of USD 68.3-million, and have dragged CSA to court over a domestic restructure plan that could put 70 players out of work. Nenzani said repairing CSA’s on-the-rocks marriage with SACA was on the agenda: “If the players weren’t there, there wouldn’t be a CSA. This is part of an engagement CSA will have with SACA as a matter of urgency.”

So much more that is wrong with CSA. Last Sunday they revoked the accreditation of five senior journalists, and seven staff members are suspended currently while three of the five independent board members have resigned. So it would take a brave administrator to wade into the mess. Was Faul up for that challenge? “You can’t blame the public for not trusting us after what’s happened, so you’ve got to act in an ethical way, plus you’ve also got to put out fires,” he said. “You’ve got to solve the SACA issue, and it sounds like we are close to [appointing] the director of cricket. Ultimately, you’ve got to relate to attaining sponsors and attracting sponsors. That to me is the indicator — if you can appoint new sponsors that means corporate South Africa has again agreed to … give you a chance. It’s easy to say to you that we are going to do the right thing, we’ve actually got to do the right thing. As the relationship becomes better with SACA and with sponsors, that’s when credibility returns.”

For the sake of the future of South African cricket, the present needs to be relegated to the past post haste: the first ball in the Test series against England is set to be bowled in Centurion on December 26.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Moroe goes, but so do major sponsors

“Extremely poor leadership, both at operational level and at board level, is what has got cricket into this disastrous position.” – SACA boss Tony Irish nails CSA to the cross.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

PUSH came to shove for Cricket South Africa (CSA) on Friday when the national men’s team’s title sponsor announced the imminent end of their involvement with the organisation. The decision has everything to do with the toxicity of being aligned to a game in deepening crisis, and that is likely to hamper cricket’s ability to secure new backing.

But there is a glimmer of light at the end of cricket’s darkening tunnel: controversial chief executive Thabang Moroe has been suspended. A letter from CSA to staff on Friday, which has been seen by Cricbuzz, said Moroe had been “put … on precautionary suspension with pay, effective 06 December 2019, on allegations of misconduct, pending further investigations”.

The decision came in the wake of “reports received by the social and ethics committee and the audit and risk committee of the board related to possible failure of controls in the organisation”. While Moroe wasn’t around, “a forensic audit of critical aspects of the business and the conduct of management related to such aspects shall be conducted by an independent forensic team”. CSA president Chris Nenzani will meet with former International Cricket Council chief executive Dave Richardson with a view to appointing an acting CSA chief executive to serve during Moroe’s absence. The names of Haroon Lorgat, CSA’s chief executive until he fell foul of the current regime in September 2017, and Jacques Faul, who acted as chief executive during CSA’s previous major scandal — over undeclared bonuses — in 2012 and 2013, are swirling. It is understood neither has been approached. Another mentioned in dispatches, Cricket Boland chief executive James Fortuin, shut the door on that theory: “I haven’t been approached and I’m not interested.” Might Richardson himself be the prime candidate?

The Moroe bombshell followed Standard Bank announcing that their relationship with the game, which started in 1998 and currently is worth USD 27.3-million over four years, will end when the existing contract expires on April 30 next year. “Standard Bank is committed to upholding the highest levels of leadership, integrity and governance,” a release from the bank quoted Thulani Sibeko, their group chief marketing and communications officer, as saying. “In light of recent developments at CSA, which are a culmination of long-standing problems which have damaged Standard Bank’s reputation, it has decided not to renew its partnership with CSA.” The release stopped just short of lecturing CSA on their responsibility towards the game and its stakeholders: “Cricket is a national asset valued by millions of South Africans, many of them our clients, and is an integral part of the bank’s heritage.” 

Months of unease over governance issues issues at CSA came to a head on Sunday, when five senior journalists’ accreditation was revoked. It was reinstated the same day, but the damaging episode prompted Standard Bank to demand a meeting with CSA on Monday. “In recognition of the widespread interest in and support for cricket, we value the right of South Africans and the broader cricket community to know about developments within CSA, especially those that relate to governance and conduct,” Sibeko was quoted as saying in a release on Sunday. 

Until their meeting with the bank CSA had tried to claim the moral high ground, claiming the journalists had been reporting untruthfully and had refused to meet with them. CSA changed tack dramatically on Tuesday, with Moroe calling four of the five reporters — the fifth was unreachable — to personally apologise. A public apology followed. But that wasn’t enough to stop the wheels from coming off, with three independent board members resigning this week and, on Thursday, eight provinces demanding Moroe and the entire board resign, that an interim structure be set up to run the game, and a forensic investigation conducted into cricket’s ills.

The South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) echoed that call, and went further, in a damning release on Friday. “Extremely poor leadership, both at operational level and at board level, is what has got cricket into this disastrous position,” Tony Irish, SACA’s chief executive, was quoted as saying. “It is abundantly clear that there is no confidence, from any quarter amongst cricket stakeholders, in the CSA board. No-one on the board can say that he, or she, was unaware of what has been unfolding over at least the last year. It has all been happening, in many respects even publicly, under the board’s very nose, and in some instances with board support.”

SACA have estimated that CSA could lose USD 68.3-million by the end of the 2022 rights cycle, and have launched legal action over a CSA domestic restructure plan that might put 70 professional players out of work. “We have consistently flagged CSA’s financial position as being an area of real concern,” Irish was quoted as saying. “Everyone in cricket, including the players, is dependent on the ongoing health and financial sustainability of CSA. Accurate forecasts over a financial cycle are critical as one has to understand how big the financial problem actually is in order to find a solution to it. We have also just seen the resignation from the board of CSA of the chairman of its finance committee and its audit and risk committee [Mohamed Iqbal Khan] citing amongst other things financial irregularities relating to credit card use. [On Wednesday] more CSA employees were suspended, including the former acting chief financial officer [Ziyanda Nkuta].”

But the prospect of strike or protest action, while “not ruled out”, was unlikely. “SACA re-iterates however that industrial action by the players should be viewed only as a very last resort,” Irish was quoted as saying. “We also wish to reassure cricket fans, and other cricket stakeholders, that SACA will not embark on industrial action with the players during the upcoming England [Test] series [which starts in Centurion on December 26]. We are very aware of the importance of this series to the Proteas and to England, to the many fans from both countries and to the media and commercial partners.”

As things stand South Africa do not have a permanently appointed coach nor selectors to pick the squad. “We know that the players will give 110% for South Africa on the field but it is critical that a proper professional structure is in place around the team,” Irish was quoted as saying. “The way in which CSA has dealt with this to date, and the fact that nothing is in place, is totally unacceptable. It is ludicrous to expect players to be selected by unknown selectors.”

Moroe’s fate will be considered a positive development by cricketminded South Africans, not least because it could clear the way for Graeme Smith to agree to become CSA’s first director of cricket — a position Smith is thought to have rejected because of Moroe. But the bigger news is the withdrawal of a major sponsor from an industry that cannot afford to lose what support it has. With the number of suspensions now up to seven and more resignations likely, the coming weeks and months are likely to loom like storm clouds, laden with the thunder and lightning of bad news and with little in the way of silver linings. That won’t help CSA attract sponsors, except at a bargain price. Cricket in South Africa is a long way from out of the woods.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Hold the spice, SA tell groundstaff ahead of Pakistan series

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in London

ANOTHER team from the subcontinent are in town. Does that mean another tap on groundstaff’s shoulders from South Africa’s dressingroom, asking for pitches that make the most of the home side’s strengths and exploit the visitors’ weaknesses?

It seems not: last season’s lesson would appear to have been learnt.

Asked on Thursday if the South Africans been in touch to request a bespoke pitch, Gauteng Cricket Board chief executive Greg Fredericks said: “We’ve heard nothing from them at all.”

Fredericks spoke from the Wanderers, where the third Test against Pakistan is set to start on January 11 — almost a year on from the drama that unfolded when the Wanderers surface became the villain of the third Test against India.

It was a pitch made to order to take opponents who had grown up on slow, turning surfaces as far out of their comfort zones as possible. 

But the joke was on the South Africans late on the third day, when no less modest a purveyor of pace than Jasprit Bumrah managed to hit no less canny an operator than Dean Elgar on the grille of his helmet.

Enter the medics to administer treatment for the ninth time in the match. Seven of their previous interventions had been to remedy raps on the gloves and once they came on to soothe the impact of a rib tickler. All were caused by deliveries that had no business rising as sharply as they did.

The Elgar incident prompted match referee Andy Pycroft to sashay magisterially — he’s a lawyer by profession — into the fray and onto the field and for play to be suspended.

That plunged Fredericks into a world of worry that the match would be abandoned because of a pitch officially deemed dangerous.

Happily for all concerned — the battered batters excepted — that didn’t happen and India won by 63 runs after tea on the fourth day.

That followed South Africa’s victory, by 135 runs, in the second Test in Centurion, where a teddy bear of a pitch took the game into a rare, for the venue, fifth day.

Despite their success the South Africans were infuriated, and said so plainly and repeatedly.

Titans chief executive Jacques Faul admitted on Thursday that “we got the wicket wrong”, but he wasn’t going to go quite so quietly: “We tried to help them [South Africa] too much — we left too much grass on, then the heat wave came and the grass died and the wicket was too slow.”

The Pakistan series will start in Centurion on December 26, and like his colleague down the N1 — and unlike last season — Faul said he hadn’t heard from the South African camp.

“They want a good wicket with good pace and bounce,” Faul said, echoing the standard instruction that used to be issued before last summer’s twist.

The India pitch earned Bryan Bloy, who was presiding over his first Test surface, a cacophony of criticism.

“I’ve never seen someone singled out like that and I think that led to the Wanderers wicket,” Faul said.

What of the pitch Bloy is preparing for Centurion’s first Boxing Day Test?

“Bryan’s confident it will have much more pace and bounce,” Faul said. “The colour looks better but I’ve got a nervous groundsman.

“We’re all nervous. We do well on the field with the Titans and in areas like administration, but until that first ball is bowled you just don’t know.”

You don’t. But you should know better than to tell people how to do their jobs.