South African Cricketers’ Association – Page 2

Vote-rigging? Gloves off in CSA soap opera

“The time has now come for those recalcitrant affiliates on the members council to act in the best interests of cricket.” – Stavros Nicolaou, CSA interim board chair.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

CSA’s interim board has stopped just short of accusing the members council of vote-rigging, and warned that South African cricket’s dwindling pool of sponsors is uneasy at the council blocking attempts to improve the organisation’s governance structures.

That follows Saturday’s decision by the council, CSA’s highest authority, to reject proposals for a majority independent board that would be chaired by an independent director — as recommended in the 2012 Nicholson report. CSA at first agreed to implement Nicholson, but has repeatedly reneged on that commitment. Its ongoing refusal to keep its word is tied up with the fact that, as currently constituted, seven members of the board also sit on the council — which is formed of the presidents of CSA’s 14 affiliates and associates. That leaves room on the board for only five independents, none of whom is the chairperson.

A slew of governance crises going back more than three years prompted South Africa’s government to intervene. Under pressure from sports minister Nathi Mthethwa, CSA’s board resigned reluctantly and was replaced in November by an interim structure that was given a mandate, by Mthethwa, to implement Nicholson. The council at first fought against accepting the interim board, and its decision on Saturday hints that little has changed in the council’s over-arching instinct of self-preservation — even if that means the game itself can go to hell.

Cricbuzz has learnt that, on Saturday, Boland, Northerns, Free State, Border, Eastern Province, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga voted against amending CSA’s memorandum of incorporation to make provision for a board comprised of seven independent and four non-independent — or council members — as directors, and to agree that the board should be chaired by an independent director. Gauteng, North West, South Western Districts, Western Province and Easterns were in favour of those proposals while Northern Cape — headed by Rihan Richards, the acting president of the members council — punted for an equal split of independent and non-independent directors.

It’s against that background that a board statement landed on Thursday slamming the council’s behaviour. The statement said the interim board had been in discussion with the provincial presidents because “it appears that some of the affiliate votes [from Saturday’s meeting] may not have been recorded accurately and/or there may have been some misunderstanding regarding the interpretation of certain principles including the principle of ‘independence’ of a future board”. A vote “not recorded accurately” would, in many minds, suggest corruption.

The release quoted interim board chairperson Stavros Nicolaou, a pharmaceutical expert prominent in South Africa’s fight against Covid-19, as saying the council was “seeking to engage in lawfare by defending the indefensible” in its attempts to stave off the board restructure. “It is nine years since the Nicholson report,” Nicolaou was quoted as saying. “The time has now come for those recalcitrant affiliates on the members council to act in the best interests of cricket and find themselves on the right side of history.”

The release said CSA’s “commercial partners” had “indicated” to the interim board “their discomfort with the latest stonewalling by the members council” and said there was “widespread consternation” among the public and the players, whose “very livelihoods are at stake if CSA continues to flounder”.

In a release on Wednesday, the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) “noted with shock and disappointment the actions of the members council in not agreeing to the proposals put forward by the interim board”. SACA chief executive Andrew Breetzke was quoted as saying: “The consequences of the decision taken by the members council could be devastating to our game. Ironically the very existence of the individual provinces may be in peril as a result of their decision as CSA’s financial sustainability will be placed under further pressure.” SACA president Khaya Zondo was quoted as saying: “The events of the past few days are evidence that the best interests of the game we love are not being protected. We therefore urge the members council to review their decision and move in a direction that will benefit the game.”

In a bilious statement of its own on Saturday the council railed against “the assertion” that it had “disappointed the cricket community” as “unfair and unfortunate”. It is unlikely to find much support for its position. One of South Africa’s most senior players told Cricbuzz privately this week: “Just when you think the new guys are changing things they [the members council] do the same things.”

First published by Cricbuzz.

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New old world looms for domestic game

“If your franchise came sixth did it really matter? There was no real consequence. In promotion and relegation there is huge consequence.” – David Richardson on a key aspect of the new structure.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

IF you turned on a television on Sunday and subscribe to the service offered by one of sport’s leading broadcasters, you might have seen something that hadn’t appeared on that platform for almost 15 years. There, live and in living colour on a dazzling Highveld morning, was a South African first-class match.

The coverage in the four-day game between the Titans and the Knights lasted until stumps, and will do until the match is over. SuperSport will also broadcast a game in the last round of the competition, which starts next Tuesday, and the five-day final, which begins on March 25. Banal as those facts will seem, they are extraordinary.

Last time first-class cricket was broadcast live and ball-by-ball in this country Charl Langeveldt had played less than half of his 87 matches for South Africa. He is now their bowling coach. We were days away from Jason Gillespie’s Test double century, Brian Lara’s third appointment as West Indies captain, and the ICC awarding the 2011 and 2015 World Cups to Asia and Antipodea.

It was April 2006, when the Dolphins and the Titans shared the title after somnambulating to a draw in the final at Kingsmead. With that cricket played in whites in South Africa, when it didn’t involve a Test team, disappeared from television. All the while the Lions and the Warriors, et al, have played plenty of one-day and T20 cricket onscreen. But the first-class aspect of the franchise revolution, which hit South Africa in 2004-05 when 11 provincial teams were melded into six newly minted sides with unfamiliar names dreamt up by marketing types, has barely been televised. Thirteen provincial teams have continued to exist, but essentially as feeders for the franchises, which were established through amalgamation. Geographical neighbours Western Province, Boland and South Western Districts formed the Cobras, for instance.

But from the summer of 2021-22 the franchises will be disbanded and the top level of domestic cricket in South Africa will revert to a provincial model. Boland, Eastern Province, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, North West, Northerns and Western Province will play in the first division. The second division will be contested by South Western Districts, Easterns, Border, KwaZulu-Natal Inland, Northern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga. That won’t change for two seasons. After the 2023-24 campaign the bottom team in the first division will be relegated and the winner of the second division promoted.

The intention of folding 11 teams into six was to narrow the pipeline to the national team, so only the best players would reach the highest level. That argument prevailed over the theory that the game in the country was too big to limit elite playing opportunities to 66. Now it seems the thinking has swung towards broadening the stage to ensure quality talent gets more chances to shine.

It is counterintuitive, then, that the new deal means there will be 75 fewer player contracts on offer. Currently 280 players are signed to franchises. In future the eight first-division outfits will contract 16 players each and the seven second-tier sides 11. That adds up to 205. Jobs will also diminish in the coaching sector, with franchise coaches likely to be put in charge of the major province in their region, thus pushing out some of their provincial counterparts. Administration and other staff around the country could suffer the same fate.

How did we get here? Through a process CSA started in 2016, ostensibly as a way to cut costs. South Africa’s struggling economy has left a smaller slice of the cake for sport than previously. And cricket’s share is crumbling, given its perennial governance problems that have alienated sponsors. With the franchises leaning ever heavily on CSA for financial survival, push has come to shove.

“In the long run we definitely expect the process to save CSA money,” Pholetsi Moseki, CSA’s acting chief executive, told an online press conference on Monday. “More than that we hope that it will allow the affiliates to commercialise themselves better and chase opportunities in the market.” The parents are trying to get the kids to stand on their own two feet. Less kindly, they are kicking them out of the house.

The South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA), which represents the players, necessarily took a different view, as articulated by chief executive Andrew Breetzke: “The Proteas men’s team generates over 80% of CSA revenue. We need to be competing at the highest level, we need to be at the table with the big three, and therefore we need a strong team.” That meant domestic cricket would have to be as healthy as possible. “We need our top players playing, they must be playing in competitive cricket, and the step up to international cricket must be as close as possible. Within that domestic structure we need a strong transformation pipeline. Our teams must represent the demographics of South Africa.” He spoke of the imperative for CSA to be “financially viable and sustainable”, adding ominously: “We have a consistent fear about the financial sustainability of cricket in South Africa and in the world at the moment, for that matter.”

CSA resolved in 2016 to redesign the domestic game, and the last few months have involved deciding who would be in which division. Provinces subjected themselves to a bidding process that was presided over by a four-person committee led by David Richardson, the former South Africa Test wicketkeeper and ICC chief executive. The committee used a scorecard devised by CSA management in consultation with the provinces.

“The committee’s role was to make sure that all the data that was used to populate that portion of the scorecard which evaluated the historical performance and current status of the members across the seven key dimensions was correctly captured and the weightings correctly applied,” Richardson said. “Secondly, the role was to evaluate the future strategies and plans of the members against those seven key dimensions.

“Those dimensions are cricket services and their infrastructure — what are the pathways for developing not only players but also coaches and umpires? What is the structure around the professional team performances; the high performance area? What does their stadium look like? What does their secondary field look like? On the commercial and financial side, what do the revenues look like for the future? What are the commercial plans? What kind of support do they have from other stakeholders such as local government? We also looked at the important dimension of transformation, and how they are structured from a governance and administration point of view, and the finances of each of the members.”

First-division provinces were expected to be “financially self-sustainable, well-structured and administered, producing results on the field, and providing access and quality opportunities for all who play the game”.

The difference between first and second-division realities is best illustrated by the contrasting fates of Boland and Border. Both are among cricket’s smaller provinces, and both are important in transformation terms. Boland are based in Paarl, where cricket is central to the community, most of whom self-identify as coloured. Outside of South Africa they would be regarded as brown or mixed race. Border are based in East London, which is a hub for many towns and villages where the history of black cricket stretches back more than a century.

But while Boland has thrived through excellent management, headed by chief executive James Fortuin, Border is mired in ethical and financial problems that have spilled onto the field — they were dismissed for 16 by KwaZulu-Natal in a first-class match last week.

“Boland have a tremendous fan base down in their region, especially among the coloured community,” Richardson said. “They have a true love for cricket; there is a cricket culture in the region. They have a stadium of very good quality, and they are very ambitious when it comes to the development of that stadium. Their development pathways are excellent, and they’ve produced results. They have produced players who contribute to the franchise system and their provincial team has done well consistently over the last four years.”

He painted a different picture about Border: “The evaluation committee has no doubt as to the potential of the Border cricket region, and its importance to the overall transformation imperative. Black Africans have played cricket for a long time. They know cricket, they love cricket. A successful Border region is imperative if cricket in South Africa is going to be sustainable in the long run. Unfortunately over the last few years they’ve had issues with governance and administration. Their finances are not strong and their cricket performances are not strong. They are a hotbed of talent and they have contributed players to the franchise system. But I don’t think they’ve fully exploited their potential as yet.”

In some ways not much will change. The provinces in which the franchises are headquartered — Eastern Province, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Northerns and Western Province — have all earned places in the first division. Effectively, the Knights will become Free State and slough off Northern Cape, their little brother whose players rarely reached the franchise XI. But the new system will be stress tested if bigger provinces, with their cash and cachet, are relegated.

“One of the challenges with the franchise system is that [franchises] went through cycles and stages,” Richardson said. “If you came sixth did it really matter? There was no real consequence. In promotion and relegation there is huge consequence. When you get demoted you have the potential of losing sponsors and financial support.”

That could happen in Cape Town, where it’s not impossible that Newlands’ majesty will be sullied by Western Province slipping down the ranks. The Cobras last won a first-class match in January 2019. They’ve gone three seasons without winning more than half their list A games, and they lost four of their five matches in this summer’s T20 competition. You’re not going to turn on your television to watch that, even if Table Mountain is in the background.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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The young man and the sea

“If players know they have 10 bubbles, they could do them. But is it 10 bubbles? Is it two? Is it 40? We don’t know.” – sports psychologist Kirsten van Heerden on bubble life.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

HAPPINESS wears blue shorts. The eyes and the smile are soft. The hands hold, with care and respect, a stout yellow-belly rockcod as long as an arm. Beyond the boat a vastness of slightly ruffled, air force blue water stretches wide beneath a sky slung low with pearly clouds. In the distance a long, dark blade of land stabs the scene.

It could be the moment before the fish is returned to the ocean with amazing grace. Once found but now lost in its own freedom. Until next time. What happened before and after this instant is not recorded. But we know that the man in blue shorts standing in a boat and holding up a fish in a photograph posted on social media looks happy. And that he is Quinton de Kock.

“Can’t wait to get back on the water again!” De Kock’s caption didn’t stand out. What did was the date of his post: February 2; three days after the Karachi Test and two days before the second match of the series in Rawalpindi. The picture must have been taken some time earlier in Knysna, the quiet seaside resort on South Africa’s southern coast where De Kock lives, before he left for Pakistan. Was South Africa’s captain honestly longing to go fishing in the middle of his team’s most important series this season, and in the wake of a defeat that should have rung several alarm bells loudly?

It’s easy to leap to that question, more difficult to fathom how De Kock reached that point. Part of the answer is contained in how he has looked and sounded since the start of cricket’s bio-bubble bubble era: like the epitome of a lost cause in need of a patron saint. De Kock’s unvarnished humanity means nothing gets in the way of his instincts on the field. But it also means he struggles to hide how he feels. In the same way that a fish is a dazzling acrobat in water but, on land, in even the most caring hands, reduced to futile wriggling and gasping, De Kock’s slickness at the crease evaporates when he is sat behind a microphone looking into a camera beyond which lurks the press. What you get instead is that most precious of things: breathless honesty.

Here’s De Kock at the Wanderers on January 5, the day South Africa beat Sri Lanka with two days to spare to complete a 2-0 thumping: “Lots of small things get into your mind; things that you’re not used to in life. One day we could living kind of normally and the next you’re in lockdown. Where do we go from there? We’re stuck in a bubble, and we could be stuck in a lockdown in some place for a certain period of time, which is the worst case scenario. It’s very unsettling. I don’t know how long it can last for.”

And here he is on January 18 in Karachi, eight days before the start of that series: “Eventually [bubble life] will catch up with some players, from an emotional and mental side. You’re trying to keep yourself mentally stable and perform for your country at once. There’s only so much of that you can carry on with. But you carry on because people back home want to watch good cricket and want to watch you perform. I’ve only been home for a maximum of three weeks over the last five, six months. It’s been tough but I’m soldiering on. Going forward, two weeks quarantine is almost out of the picture because we play so much cricket.”

The context of those two online press conferences couldn’t have been more different. In the first, De Kock was a triumphant captain. In the second, he was looking forward to playing in Pakistan, a challenge no South Africa team had faced since 2007. So why, both times, was he a husk, empty of enthusiasm and parched of passion? Maybe because he had been in one bio-bubble or another, barring short intervals, since the first week of September. The bubble was an invincible opponent.

De Kock’s bio-secure blues started with arrangements for the IPL. Then came the home white-ball series against England in September and the Sri Lanka Tests in December and January. That done, it was off to Pakistan. In April, Pakistan will be in South Africa to play seven white-ball games. Another series, another bubble. South Africans still fuming about Australia’s late withdrawal from next month’s Test series over Covid fears will have to forgive De Kock if he doesn’t feel the same way — that’s one way to avoid quarantine and a bubble.

De Kock has been afforded another way. The franchise T20 competition at Kingsmead started on Friday. He is not involved, and his absence is conspicuous because South Africa’s other top players are in action. The South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) revealed that De Kock is being given a break for mental health reasons. The bubble finally burst for him after the Test series in Pakistan. His parting shot to his teammates was that he would be offline and that they wouldn’t be able to find him. Last week he posted another picture: him holding a garrick of at least a metre long; the biggest of the species he has yet caught. The eyes and the smile were soft. It didn’t take a sports psychologist to see the happiness was back.

Kirsten van Heerden, who was an international swimmer for 13 years and represented South Africa at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, is indeed a sports psychologist. She’s also a player development manager with SACA, and while she doesn’t work directly with De Kock she is plugged into the challenges all players face because of the pandemic. “Often you’ll hear players say that on tours they see, pretty much, their hotel room and the cricket field,” she said. “But it’s the choice that you can go out if you want to that has been taken away. Now you can’t. That loss of control can be very difficult for players.”

Van Heerden said players can’t police what evades the Netflix firewall and leaks into their consciousness unbidden: “They’ve been given a lot more time to think and over-think, which most athletes do anyway. You drop a catch or have a bad performance, and you go back to the hotel and you’re not allowed to leave your room. There’s all this time and there’s no distraction from your thoughts.”

Life is not what we thought it was before the pandemic put the brakes on the world. But what is life now that a single positive test for Covid-19 could change everything? That is not at all clear, which is disquieting for most of us. For those accustomed to tightly regimented systems, it can be terrifying. Especially when they are marking time in the bubble.

“It would be fine if it was six weeks; even nine weeks, which is about the maximum [people can endure safely],” Van Heerden said. “But when it’s six weeks and another six weeks followed by another six weeks, it can get overwhelming. Athletes are very goal-orientated. If they know they have 10 bubbles, they could do them. But is it 10 bubbles? Is it two? Is it 40? A lot of my job with players and athletes I work with is to say we don’t know. So we have to focus on the things we can control right now, and do the things that we know can help you in the bubble. And we don’t know if it’s going to be 10 bubbles. If you’re running the Comrades [a 90km ultra-marathon in South Africa] you can’t think of the 90th kilometre at the beginning, otherwise you’re going to be overwhelmed. It’s natural, but our job is to bring the focus back to just now, or just today, or just this week.

“Normally players wake up and their day is incredibly structured — they know what they need to do, where they’re heading and what goal they have. Now they wake up outside of that and it’s really hard for them. A lot of elite athletes get told what to do. They don’t have to think what to do. As a player, your bags magically disappear and then magically reappear outside your hotel room. I know the public will say that’s ridiculous, and that players could do that themselves. But this is the world they live in and it’s very real for them. That’s what they’ve grown up in and what they know, and to be thrown into a different world is difficult. They’re having to handle things themselves, and as strange as it may sound, for them it’s almost like having to learn a new skill.”

John Smit, who captained the Springboks to victory in rugby’s 2007 World Cup, told Van Heerden he didn’t know how to buy an airplane ticket until he planned his honeymoon. He married after playing 39 of his 111 Tests, and in eight countries other than his own. Anthony Delpech, a champion jockey who has ridden 116 Grade 1 winners in South Africa, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates, was a stranger to drawing cash from an ATM: “His agent or his wife would do that.” Not knowing how to perform what most of us would regard as an everyday task is one thing. Not knowing how to recognise the difference between a pout after a poor performance and a problem that could take years to resolve is distinctly another.

“People think, ‘How can you be mentally tough and have mental health issues?’,” Van Heerden said. “I was speaking to an athlete the other day who said you have to be incredibly tough to deal with mental health issues. You can be a mentally tough cricketer, but there are things that happen in life that have nothing to do with weakness or with having a weak mind and your coping mechanisms can be overwhelmed.”

It doesn’t help that professional sport, while inconsequential to reality, can unfairly target and punish those who get it wrong. “If you make a mistake, it’s so public,” Van Heerden said. “If you are battling there’s nowhere to hide. And the public can be brutal in their comments. No-one walks out there to try and make a duck or to try and bowl badly, but in the day and age of social media everyone has an opinion. We talk to the players about social media and a lot of them are really adept at staying off it or managing it, but with nothing to do late at night you end up scrolling through Twitter. That’s not the best idea. Players are human: they’re people first. They’re mentally tough, but mental health is something different.”

The pandemic has only added to that part of the players’ challenge: “There are a lot of changes [because of the virus], and yet they still have to perform. The public is unforgiving — you’re still getting paid to play, so they expect you to win. We’re all having to adjust, but it’s not nearly as public for us as it is for elite athletes.”

To help ease the load, an app requires South Africa’s players to answer, daily, questions that indicate their levels of wellbeing. The information is forwarded to a sports psychologist — not Van Heerden — and Stephen Cook, the former Test opening batter who since the beginning of last year has been SACA’s cricket operations and player engagement manager. No-one else sees or knows what the players reveal.

“The psychologist can ask me if I’ve touched base with a guy and whether he is doing OK,” Cook said. “Sometimes he has put in a lower rating because he’s feeling a bit down in confidence after he’s had a couple of first-ballers. It might not be that he’s struggling mentally; he’s just feeling naturally a bit down that day. So it’s not perfect, but it’s a reminder to the players that there is something available. There are people there for them if they need them. Sometimes guys who get into a pickle that way, they don’t see the wood for the trees. It’s a daily reminder that someone does care about you enough to check up on you.

“For some players it’s great. For others it will be a bit of a burden. They just want to get on with life. But that’s fine. I think we’ve taken the attitude that we’ll try and help everyone, and if it helps one or two guys who otherwise wouldn’t have spoken to someone, that’s fantastic. Then we’ve done something to help. It’s a piece of a puzzle rather than an ultimate one-stop shop answer.

“If I think back to mine and previous eras, you wouldn’t have opened up. It would have been seen as a sign of weakness. But now some of the best players in the world in a variety of sports are more than happy to say, ‘Listen, I’m struggling’, and feel totally safe with the perceived fallout.”

Did the app catch De Kock? We cannot know. But we do know that he handles the fish he reels in with amazing grace. And that once he has found them he allows them to be lost in their own freedom. Like he is now. Until next time.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Domestic cricket gets bigger to get smaller

“For the past year we’ve been informing players that we believe the system will get smaller, for a variety of reasons.” – Andrew Breetzke, South African Cricketers’ Association chief executive

Telford Vice | Johannesburg

SEVENTY-FIVE professional players are set to lose their contracts next season in the key outcome of a restructure of South Africa’s domestic system that will end the franchise era, which started in 2004/05.

The revised arrangement, which has been approved by CSA’s interim board and members council, was recommended by a task team led by former ICC chief executive — and South Africa wicketkeeper — David Richardson. A roadmap for the process, which included extensive consultation with the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA), was agreed in February.

“Under the new structure, the current six-team franchise cricket make-up will be dissolved and replaced by a 15-team first-class system,” a CSA release on Friday said. “The format will see the teams split 8-7 into a division one and division two arrangement with automatic promotion and relegation. This … aims to provide healthy tension in the system which will enhance a high performance environment while providing opportunity for those division two members who want to be part of a competitive first division.”

Andrew Breetzke, SACA’s chief executive, said it was “CSA’s prerogative and right to change the system”, adding that while the player body was concerned by the loss of contracts it was not surprised: “For the past year we’ve been informing players that we believe the system will get smaller, for a variety of reasons. Covid is one of them and the restructure is another.”

Currently, 280 cricketers are contracted by one of the six franchises or 13 semi-professional provincial teams. In future, 15 teams will employ 205 players: a difference of 75. The change is a bid to cut costs at CSA, which could be up to USD68.2-million in debt by the end of the 2022 rights cycle. Theoretically, if more players are required at the highest domestic level, more players should be able to bid for places in South Africa’s teams.

“The support that the resolution received indicates the buy-in from all the stakeholders and a commitment to strengthening South African cricket,” the release quoted acting members council president Rihan Richards as saying. “We really hope that the system will improve not only access and opportunity at all levels but will contribute to a sustainable CSA and the game.”

The eight division one sides will play a single round of matches in each of the three formats. The division two teams will play in four-day and one-day competitions, and in a T20 knockout tournament against the division one sides. The Mzansi Super League, which was called off this season, will return and will feature a draft involving players from both divisions as well as their international counterparts.

CSA promised “an improved contract system, an increase in the number and quality of opportunities as well as an improvement of leadership talent within CSA’s coaching structures” as well as “a clear ‘line of sight’ pathway for all players, wherever they may be based in the country, to progress from club cricket to international cricket”.

The release quoted interim board chair Zak Yacoob as saying: “This new structure will better serve our transformation goals, which includes providing increased playing opportunities at the highest domestic level.”

The release did not say when the restructure would be implemented, but interim board member Judith February confirmed it would be rolled out for the 2021/22 season. That could leave mere weeks to set in motion a revised contracting system, considering players are normally signed in April.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Govender gone in CSA cleanout

“The role she played in the revocation of media accreditation of certain journalists in December 2019.” – the first charge listed by CSA’s interim board against Kugandrie Govender, the suspended acting chief executive.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

CSA announced its third acting chief executive in just more than a year on Monday when Pholetsi Moseki was installed following the suspension of Kugandrie Govender on allegations of misconduct. Govender’s disciplinary hearing has been set for January 28.

She is the second major CSA figure, after company secretary Welsh Gwaza, to be removed by an interim board that was appointed on November 17 following intervention from government in reaction to more than three years of maladministration in the game.

The board recused two of its own members on Thursday, leaving little doubt that it is taking seriously its mandate to root out the rot that has brought cricket in South Africa to its knees financially and in governance terms. But the board will have to keep in mind its responsibility to maintain stability at CSA, which has suffered umpteen blows to its credibility since Thabang Moroe was appointed acting chief executive in September 2017.

Govender joined CSA as chief commercial officer in April 2019 and became its first female acting chief executive on August 19 this year after Jacques Faul relinquished the position. Faul came on board in the wake of Moroe’s suspension as the appointed chief executive in December.

A release from the interim board summarised the charges against Govender as “the role she played in the revocation of media accreditation of certain journalists in December 2019”, “various breaches of the provisions of the Companies Act as a prescribed officer of CSA”, and “the role which she played in the dismissal of Mr Clive Eksteen, which CSA has now acknowledged (in terms of a settlement agreement with Mr Eksteen) was an unfair dismissal”.

Govender’s Linkedin entry says that, as chief commercial officer, she was “responsible for all commercial matters; oversight of all CSA communications and media, sponsor services, digital media and marketing”. So the buck for five cricket journalists having their accreditation revoked without explanation could be said to stop with her. The decision to act against the journalists was part of the justification used to fire Moroe in August.

In October Govender told a meeting that involved South Africa’s players that she thought the flood of negative reporting on CSA was related to the organisation having lessened the freebies it gives journalists, and that reporters may be bitter about not securing jobs at CSA.

Govender came to CSA after a career of more than 21 years as a sales and marketing executive, largely in the media industry. Asked if she would contest the charges at her hearing, she did not respond.

Eksteen was suspended as CSA’s sponsorship and sales head in October last year over allegations that he was partly responsible for a delayed payment to the players, via the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) for the use of their image rights to promote the Mzansi Super League. An investigation found Moroe and Naasei Appiah, who was fired as chief operating officer on August 16, were to blame and that Eksteen was, in fact, trying to resolve the situation. SACA concurred. CSA also accused Eksteen of selling a sponsorship for less than its executive had approved. He countered that he had informed his superior, Govender, of the offer before it had been accepted. On June 14 Eksteen was found guilty of “transgressions of a serious nature” and fired. He sued for unfair dismissal, and won his case on December 4.

Moseki, an accountant who has worked in the banking, weapons and private equity industries, has been CSA’s chief commercial officer since July 2019. He will not be expected to shoulder his new responsibilities without help. “In ensuring that CSA remains fully functional during this time, the interim board has arranged for the appointment of a capable person from an auditing firm to stand in the breach until early January 2021,” Monday’s release said.

While that will reassure cricketminded South Africans that at least one sensible pair of ears and eyes will be among the more expensive suits at CSA, it also means the board thinks cricket administration in South Africa has run out of that vital quality.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Cricket neither can nor should escape the real world

“The players were devastated on receiving the news that they had tested positive for Covid.” – Shuaib Manjra, CSA’s chief medical officer

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

WHAT would happen if more players tested positive for Covid-19 going into the first men’s T20 between South Africa and England at Newlands on Friday? “There probably won’t be a game,” Shuaib Manjra, CSA’s chief medical officer, told an online presser on Thursday.

It was a stark thing to say. But these are stark times. Both teams are staying at the same Cape Town hotel. None of the England players have contracted the disease while they have been in the country, but two South Africans — one before the squad went into their bubble and one afterwards — have been diagnosed. Two others who were in contact with one of the infected players have been isolated.

“If you’ve got lots of positives you’ve got a quarantine context,” Manjra said. “We cannot bring in a player from the outside without testing them at least twice before we bring them into this space. If a large group of people test positive we wouldn’t have adequate opportunity to bridge people into the bio-bubble. But we’ve got a squad of 24. Hopefully we can put a team together.” *

The South Africans’ fourth round of tests were conducted on Thursday morning. They hope to have the results by this evening. The hours will not pass quickly.

“We tested on Tuesday, and it was stressful,” Manjra said. “You can imagine what the consequences would have been should we have had a positive test. Thankfully all the results came back negative. But you can imagine the stress you go through waiting to find out. Yesterday and Tuesday players were asking every five minutes when their results were coming back.”

Those affected cannot be named, unless they do so themselves. But that seems unlikely, given how they had reacted to their fate.

“The players were devastated on receiving the news that they had tested positive for Covid,” Manjra said. “One player, who tested positive out of the bubble, had to be kept out. He’s taken quite a bit of strain in the sense that he’s been isolated in a hotel all alone and not participating in training. There’s going to be a lag period in him coming to the quad and getting back to fitness because of injury concerns. If you’ve been in a hotel room for 10 days we can’t simply throw you onto the park. We’ve got to give at least another seven days to return to match fitness in order to consider him for any of the games. It takes a mental toll on him and all the others.

“The dynamic is very different for the player who tested positive within the bubble. We could place the player in what we call a red zone, so there’s no contact. But because he was already part of the bubble there was some degree of limited contact with other players. That had an impact, because then we had to separate players into contacts and non-contacts, and the contacts into smaller groups. In the event that somebody tested positive we could isolate a small group of people rather than the entire contact or non-contact group. That had a role to play in the dynamic of the team in terms of training, dining and socialising.”

Friday’s match, should it happen, will be South Africa’s first since March. Five players in the squad were in action in the IPL and others have played for their domestic franchises. But care has been taken to get them to this point.

“We were concerned when we had a long lockdown,” Manjra said. “We had to have a six-week lag period for players to get back to fitness. In the English Premier League the injury rates went up by 200% post-Covid. That was a cause of concern for us. If you don’t pass your fitness test you’re not considered for selection, simple as that. We set rigid criteria, and all the players passed their fitness test.”

The South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) has provided psychological support for the players, who also have access to help provided by CSA.

“SACA realised the consequences of being in the bubble for a long time,” Manjra said. “The guys who’ve been at the IPL have been in a bubble for 11 weeks. Faf [du Plessis] went directly from the IPL to Pakistan, so he’s been in a bubble for 12 weeks. That takes a huge mental toll. ‘KG’ [Kagiso Rabada] has called it a luxury prison. It’s not a bad environment, but being locked down takes its toll on you.”

Taking the test itself was another matter: “Players don’t like it. We had a guy here doing the test on Monday and the players complained, so we had to try and get somebody else. Some of them are over enthusiastic, and not only get into your nose but into your sinuses and into your brain as well. It’s an uncomfortable test, but it’s very short.”

Covid-19 is among several significant factors the South Africans are juggling that might not seem connected to what they will try to do on the field. But how better to take the nation’s minds off the effects of the pandemic, if only for a while, than with a good performance? Why not use the platform to speak good against the evil of racism? And as long as the team is out there playing decent cricket, the failings of CSA’s suits won’t irk as much.

“Preparing without distractions is an ideal situation, but in the real world you always have distractions,” Manjra said. “Was our preparation ideal? There’s been a couple of hiccups. But one of the things that allowed our team to build resilience is the kind of work we’re doing in the background with the squad. Building resilience is not about removing distractions. It’s how you deal with those distractions, which will always be there.”

Welcome to the real world. Now, get on with it.

* All players in both squads tested negative on Thursday.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Stubborn CSA risk state control

“Uncooperative, difficult, unresponsive, arrogant and sometimes rude.” – Zac Yacoob, the chair of the interim board, on CSA’s executive management.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

CSA’s members council went looking for trouble when it rejected the interim board compiled by government. And it has found trouble on powerful fronts, perhaps throwing England’s imminent men’s tour into jeopardy, risking the withdrawal of the privilege of calling its teams national representatives, and putting the lifeline of broadcast revenue under threat.

The members council had the chance to avert those dire realities at its meeting on Friday evening. But that would have taken a sweeping reversal of the position it took at a press conference on Thursday, when Rihan Richards, the acting president, used little more than legal argument in an attempt to explain the council’s recalcitrance.

Cricbuzz has learnt that only three provincial presidents supported recognising the interim board at Friday’s meeting. Instead it was decided to revert to an earlier position of accepting the board if Haroon Lorgat is removed from the structure because of perceived conflicts of interest. Interim board member Judith February confirmed that Lorgat offered to resign but was persuaded to stay on.

On Wednesday the members council wrote to Nathi Mthethwa, the sports minister, to try and justify its refusal to appoint the interim board as proposed on October 30 — which followed the 10 elected board members resigning on September 25 and 26. Mthethwa replied in strong terms on Friday, threatening direct action, which could include legally withdrawing government recognition of CSA as the country’s cricket federation. Also on Friday, Zac Yacoob, the chair of the proposed board, issued a humiliating excoriation of the behaviour of the members council and CSA’s executive staff.

Mthethwa’s letter, addressed to Richards, said he was “quite dismayed and deeply disappointed at the tenor and tone” of CSA’s stance as outlined in their letter, parts of which he said “[defied] logic and common sense”. And those were the less alarming sections: “I need to state for the record that I have yet to exercise my powers of intervention accorded to me in terms of [the law]. “In the circumstances, I would be failing in my statutory and constitutional duty not to intervene in what is nothing other than the poor governance of a sport which is a national asset and which belongs to the people of the republic of South Africa.

“None of the grounds mentioned by you … constitute either rational and/or reasonable grounds [to not recognise the interim board]. By contrast, they appear to be an attempt to frustrate the process of correcting the many wrongs that exist within CSA which the members council has consistently, and publicly, acknowledged.”

If the members council does not accept the interim board, Mthethwa wrote, “I will exercise my powers under the Act and issue a directive in that regard. In the event that you fail to comply with my directive, I will not hesitate to impose the sanctions available to me in terms of the Act.”

The interim board “require[s] your consent, and your co-operation; not your filibustering tactics, and attempts to frustrate [it] from getting to the bottom of what is rotten in South African cricket”.

Yacoob, a former Constitutional Court judge, didn’t hold back in his condemnation: “I suspect the members council feared administration and the repercussions the minister is now promising, and to avoid that it falsely agreed with the minister and then reneged.

“Everyone accepted that the members council would legitimate our appointment. We proceeded on the basis that they would legitimate our appointment. The minister believed the members council would legitimate us. And they didn’t actually do so. In other words, they broke their promise.

“… We, as the proposed board, began interfering too quickly and too soon. They became very uncomfortable. It could be said that we should have bided our time, treated them nicely, pretended that we were going to be good to them. Then they might have confirmed us. Maybe that was a mistake on our part.”

Neither did CSA’s executive management escape a dose of Yacoob’s ire: “Those members of the administration we have reacted with have been uncooperative, difficult, unresponsive, arrogant and sometimes rude. That has been part of the problem. We have been trying to get information from them, trying to bring them to account.

“My suspicion is that it is because of the administration’s dissatisfaction with the [interim] board that they have probably complained to the members council. There is a strong chance that the executive have had a great deal of influence in this decision to exclude the interim board.” That might have happened because “we would have been able to instruct the executive and tell them what to do”.

Yacoob raised the spectre of the 11th-hour cancellation of the tour by England, who are due to embark on Monday to play South Africa in six white-ball internationals, starting on November 27: “I don’t know what the thinking is in England, but I have no doubt that if the members council doesn’t take a proper decision this evening England will probably be seriously discouraged from coming.” Word from England’s camp is that, at this stage, it’s “business as usual” for the tour. But the ECB will surely pull the plug should Mthethwa withdraw CSA’s recognition in the wake of further stubbornness from the members council.

“We, as an independent board, are saying the minister will not and cannot tell us what to do.” – Zac Yacoob

Apart from denying South Africans their first chance to watch their team in action since March, that would cost CSA USD4.2-million in revenue. It could also prompt the ICC, on receipt of a complaint from the members council, to suspend CSA on the grounds of outside interference. That would constitute a breach of the terms of a deal agreed in principle between Star, a subscriber service, and CSA for the exclusive rights to broadcast on the subcontinent all South Africa’s matches for the next four years. The contract, which includes a clause that says CSA have to be full members of the ICC for the duration of the agreement, is reportedly worth up to USD105-million.

Had Mthethwa overstepped the mark? “All the minister did was appoint an independent board,” Yacoob said. “We, as an independent board, are saying the minister will not and cannot tell us what to do. If it is necessary for us to talk to the ICC about this, we will make it quite clear that the minister’s appointment of the board, with the consent of everyone, does not amount to interference. If CSA contends that, it will be continuing in its misleading attitude.

“The members council said it was going to lodge a complaint [with the ICC]. Even if it does, the notion of ministerial interference, in my view, is completely without substance, and I hope that the ICC will be wise enough to see that.

“We have been mandated by the minister to do a particular job of clean-up. We take our job seriously. The administration are not going to tell us what to do, but if they make any suggestions we will consider the very carefully. The members council, too, is not going to tell us what to do. Nobody will dictate our actions under any circumstances.”

What of CSA’s constitution, which is central to its membership of the ICC and makes the members council South African cricket’s highest authority? “I try to run over technicalities with the biggest machine I’ve got so that I can achieve the right thing,” Yacoob said. “The step we took was precisely to fix this thing so that the ICC doesn’t step in. If the ICC steps in now it will not be because we did all this without [CSA] going into administration. It will be because the members council improperly resisted a reasonable effort to fix things. Any effort to place any ICC intervention at the feet of the interim board doesn’t really work. The members council, which has not been put under administration, is solely responsible for the mess.”

But he agreed that the members council couldn’t be summarily sidelined: “It is impossible, at this stage, to disgrace the members council without causing serious harm to South African cricket at the same time. They understand that problem. All of us want to achieve this result without harming cricket too much, and they want to persuade us that not harming cricket is equivalent to not harming them. We don’t agree with that.”

A handy hook on which CSA appears to have hung its argument is that Mthethwa said the interim board should report to the members council. Did that make the members council the interim board’s superior? “I’m quite certain that the minister was saying we should report to them in the sense that we keep them advised of what we are doing, and we try to get everyone together and work together as much as possible,” Yacoob said. “We try and consult with them as much as possible, and we make sure we take them into account in the work that we do. They have interpreted that to mean, wrongly, that we are accountable to them and we must do what they tell us to do. Or what they authorise us to do. And we were not prepared to accept that.”

The members council has objected to Lorgat’s presence on the interim board because the last two years of his tenure as CSA’s chief executive, which ended in September 2017, are part of the Fundudzi forensic investigation into CSA’s problems — the interim board is using the Fundudzi report in its work. Lorgat was also instrumental in CSA granting loans to affiliates, some of which have defaulted on the repayments.

Yacoob, who said Lorgat would recuse himself when required, was having none of that: “The Lorgat matter is … a huge, big red herring. Let’s not get misled by that. Lorgat is just an excuse. That they’ve got too much to hide is the only inference that can be drawn. That opinion may be wrong, and they can prove it wrong by saying, ‘Come into our offices and look wherever you like; you will never find that we did anything wrong’. If they do that, I will withdraw my opinion and apologise.”

There was much more where all that came from, including Yacoob’s view of some of the former board’s behaviour as “hooliganish and thuggish in the extreme”. He promised that: “There is very much we can do to create a good climate for cricket, in liaising with other organisations, to pressure the members council to recognise us, to put the administration into a situation where they recognise their position more and more. We are going to keep the pressure absolutely on at every level to ensure that they are pushed to cooperate with us.”

Yacoob’s ebullience was a balm for the souls of cricketminded South Africans, who have grown wearily bleak at hearing the suits defend and deny for all their worth. But, not long after he spoke, a SACA release brought everybody back to earth.

“We are back to square one, and the glimmer of hope has now been replaced by further disappointment and confusion,” Andrew Breetzke, SACA’s chief executive, was quoted as saying. “We have addressed formal correspondence to the members council advising them of our dismay at their decision, and highlighting their disregard for the welfare of players in passing this decision.

“It would appear as if the members council do not realise the extent of the damage being done to cricket, and sadly we are reaching a point where that damage may be irreparable.”

As you were, South Africans.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Interim board faces battle with CSA’s many-headed beast

“Do whatever is necessary and appropriate in order to resolve or restore the integrity and reputation of CSA.” – sports minister Nathi Mthethwa gives the interim board the tallest order.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

A retired judge, a pharmaceutical executive, an election official, a governance expert and a forensic investigator walk into a cricket committee room and try to tell a googly from a thigh pad. This is not a joke. Instead it’s the make-up of the majority of CSA’s new interim board.

The other members are former ICC and CSA chief executive Haroon Lorgat, Omphile Ramela, who will relinquish his position as president of the South African Cricketers’ Association to avoid conflicts of interest, André Odendaal, a former chief executive of the Western Province Cricket Association, and Xolani Vonya, who resigned as president of Eastern Cricket Union at the weekend.

Zak Yaqoob, who was appointed to the Constitutional Court — the country’s highest court — by Nelson Mandela in 1998 and served until 2013, will chair the interim board. Andile Dawn Mbatha, an auditor who is the chief financial officer at the Independent Electoral Commission, and Nkeko Caroline Mampuru, the deputy head of the Special Investigating Unit, a government agency that specialises in anti-corruption, were also named. As was Stavros Nicolaou, a pharmaceutical expert and activist who is working with government to procure drugs and equipment in South Africa’s fight against Covid-19.

They were unveiled on Friday by South Africa’s minster of sport, Nathi Mthethwa, who made good on his promise to do so by the end of the week. Thus Mthethwa also followed through after saying he would intervene, which prompted the mass resignation of the former board on Sunday and Monday. Now for the hard part: cleaning up the administration of a sport that has fallen far from expected levels in a range of areas.

At a press conference in Pretoria that was relayed online, Mthethwa spoke of “public criticism on how cricket was conducting its affairs, particularly in the areas of leadership and governance, transformation, selection of teams, and so on, from various interest groups from within and outside cricket. CSA’s reputation continued to suffer with increasing calls for the board to step down. Instead of improving the situation was getting worse. It dawned on me that no matter how long we nudge cricket and delay the inevitable, we are going to be faced with that. Clearly there was no way that CSA was in a position to self-correct.”

The interim board has three months to put CSA on the straight and narrow, although its period in office could be extended “based on progress achieved”, Mthethwa said. CSA’s annual meeting, already postponed from September 5 to December 5, is in jeopardy: “In all practicalities, there’s no way that date for the AGM will remain.”

So far so reasonable. Because five members of the board do not come from organised cricket does not mean they don’t know the difference between a googly and a thigh pad, and a lot else about the game. Besides, this is not about cricket: it’s about fixing a system that has long been broken, often wilfully.

But doing so looms as a fight against a many-headed beast. A loud alarm should be raised by the fact that the new structure will report to CSA’s highest authority, the members council — which includes half of the 10 board members who resigned in disgrace just days ago. How does that not amount to the suspects in a trial also sitting on the jury?

Mthethwa said the interim board would “expeditiously deal with current governance systems, structures and procedures; including a proper consideration with the aim of implementation of the Nicholson report”. It would also “consider the Fundudzi report, its implications and consequences for CSA, … take any action recommended in the report, or actions that the interim board deems appropriate”. And “review all board decisions taken since 2019, … report on those decisions that require the attention of the members council, and to generally do whatever is necessary and appropriate in order to resolve or restore the integrity and reputation of CSA”.

The Nicholson report was the result of an investigation by a retired High Court judge, Christopher Nicholson, in the wake of the discovery that bonuses paid to CSA in appreciation of South Africa’s successful staging of the 2009 IPL were not properly declared to CSA’s governance committees. Nicholson found serious flaws in CSA’s oversight systems and recommended in his report in 2012 that the board be trimmed to nine elected members and be restructured to comprise a “majority of independent, professionally skilled, non-executive directors” and be chaired by an independent. That never happened, partly because the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee — itself a model of maladministration — objected to all that independence. So CSA’s non-independents were able to keep control by reserving seven places on the 12-member board for themselves, one of whom would be the president.

The Fundudzi report encompasses all the calamities that befell cricket from 2016 to 2019. Several senior CSA staff were suspended last year, including Thabang Moroe, who was dismissed as chief executive in August after being found guilty of serious misconduct. So Lorgat’s inclusion on the interim board will not pass unnoticed. His departure as CSA’s chief executive in September 2017 was engineered by the faction that installed Moroe, and Fundudzi’s investigation would have covered most of the last two years of Lorgat’s tenure, which started in 2013.

Lorgat is a highly competent and experienced administrator who left CSA in a far better state financially than it is now, and there is little doubt his skills will prove valuable in his new role. But could his neutrality be questioned? The answer, perhaps, is that he is likely not implicated in the Fundudzi report. Cricbuzz understands he was never contacted by the investigators, and presumably if his name did come up in the report Mthethwa would not have agreed to his inclusion on the board.

Mthethwa would have had to make that decision because he is among the few people who have had the opportunity to see the complete Fundudzi report, which CSA has tried its best to keep under lock and key. Maybe not for much longer. “This thing where you have a report which is a secret document must come to an end,” Mthethwa said. “It must be understood, scrutinised. Implement the recommendations but be at liberty to look at the report itself critically, so that nothing is an area you can’t get into. If we are to turn around cricket we have to do things not conveniently. We have to have commitment and devotion to change the situation. If that means some toes will be trampled upon, so be it.”

Some of those toes could belong to Rihan Richards, who since Monday has been interim president of the members council. Certainly, on Friday he sounded like a man trying to stave off pain: “Eighty or 90% of those [Nicholson] recommendations have been implemented. The minister has specifically related the question around how the governance structures should work. Those matters have been taken aboard. The minister is aware of how we intend addressing this. This process has started long before the interim board was established. We have a very clear road map of how to it. The interim board will have an opportunity to review it. The should be no real or perceived conflict. Everybody can only serve on one body. You cannot sit on the board, the members council, and then still on the [provincial] affiliate. That proposal came from within our ranks and was agreed upon by all parties.”

Sounds good. Except that Richards was first elected to CSA’s board in 2013, and is still entrenched in the game as president of Northern Cape Cricket. He and his peers have had seven years to implement the most important of Nicholson’s recommendations, and haven’t done so.

Richards had the look of a desperate man as he buttonholed Mthethwa on their way off the podium, and whispered to him: “We must stay in contact as well. I have also extended a hand to the portfolio madam.” That would be Beauty Dlulani, the chair of parliament’s sports portfolio committee, on whose carpet CSA finds itself all too frequently.

Maybe the politics of the moment was beyond Richards. Mthethwa is serving his second term in the toy department of government after being demoted in 2014, a year he began as the much more important minister of police, which he came to after serving as minister of safety and security — also superior to the arts and culture job he took six years ago, and the sport component he inherited last year. He would seem intent on being conspicuous enough to merit a promotion at cabinet reshuffles to come.

South Africans have been down this road before. In January 2013, one of Mthethwa’s predecessors as sports minister, Fikile Mbalula, in announcing what became the Nicholson commission, said: “Whatever the retired judge recommends, I will implement.” He didn’t, of course. But Mbalula made enough noise in his time in sport to become minister of police. Even so, Mthethwa had better tread carefully on those targetable toes — Mbalula has since sunk to the level of transport minister.

An ambitious politician walks into a cricket club’s grubby dressingroom. Unimpressed, they look around nervously, and wonder what’s the quickest way out of there. They find a broken window, a flickering light bulb, a dripping showerhead, and ripped carpets. So they call a few repair people, and climb onto the roof to proclaim, loudly, what an effective politician they are. Relax. It’s a joke.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Bunfight at the CSA corral

“The meeting with members council was constructive and the minister expressed his appreciation of their leadership.” – government reckons CSA has, not before time, got the message.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

THE minister is satisfied. For now. Having given crisis-prone CSA until Tuesday afternoon to tell him why he shouldn’t put it out of business, Nathi Mthethwa has been placated by the board’s mass resignation.

So the focus moves to the interim structure that Mthethwa, South Africa’s minister of sport, says he will announce by the end of the week to run cricket’s affairs. How much influence CSA will be able to hang onto in the establishment of that committee and its operations is a key issue, as is the wider bunfight to be part of the body.

A government release on Wednesday said “consultative meetings with the CSA members council [cricket’s highest authority], SASCOC [the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee] and the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) were held throughout the course of” Tuesday. “The meetings with SASCOC and SACA were intended to share the outcomes of the meeting with CSA for the purpose of keeping key role-players abreast of the latest developments. The meeting with the members council … was constructive and the minister expressed his appreciation of their leadership.”

That’s more positive than Mthethwa’s quote in an October 14 release — “I have now reached a point where I see no value in any further engagement with CSA” — which followed tetchy written exchanges between Mthethwa and Beresford Williams, CSA’s former acting president, about where CSA’s authority ended and government’s began.

It was apparent on Monday, after the resignation of the last four of the 10 board members had been announced, that Mthethwa’s tone towards CSA was softening. “The ultimatum I put for [Tuesday] was precisely for that [the board to resign],” he told reporters. “So if they have done that they are doing what they are supposed to do and it will take everything forward. We are where we are today precisely because of lack of leadership, of the centre not holding. If they have realised that, then it’s progress.”

The next step is the naming of the interim committee. Cricbuzz understands that skeletons from the closet of CSA’s recent past are rattling their bones to try and clamber aboard, but also that they are being rejected. Instead, the net is being cast into the worlds of business, diplomacy, politics and sport for suitable candidates. In the best scenario, those worlds will collide to put cricket on the path to a better future.

But even those favoured few, and whoever succeeds them in a permanent capacity once this is all over, should know there is a higher power.

“We want people that are going to take the game to the next level,” Mthethwa said on Monday. “We’ve said … that we have no business running cricket or any sporting code. We want sport people, administrators and so on, to run sport. But if they engage in misgovernance, if they engage in areas where there is a total breakdown in terms of leadership, we will have no choice, even in future, to intervene.”

The minister has spoken.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Delinquent CSA threatened with state control

“I have now reached a point where I see no value in any further engagement with CSA.” – push comes to shove for sports minister Nathi Mthethwa.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

STATE control of cricket in South Africa looms in the wake of the sports minister telling crisis-ridden CSA that he will intervene. A release from the ministry to that effect on Wednesday comes in the wake unsuccessful attempts by the country’s sports confederation as well as parliament — themselves models of how organisations should not be run — to bring delinquent cricket to heel.

Under the minister’s direction, the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) told CSA’s board and key staff to relinquish their positions, pending a month-long investigation, on September 10. That has not happened, and CSA’s meetings with a parliamentary oversight committee on October 6 and 13 have not yielded evidence of progress.

The release spoke of “efforts … made over several months to try and assist CSA to stabilise its governance matters” and of “a huge outcry regarding the failure of [CSA’s] leadership to effectively manage its affairs”. Both are fair criticisms of an organisation that has stumbled from one catastrophe to the next in governance, ethical and financial terms.

“Having evaluated the discussions as well as the subsequent reporting on this matter, I have now reached a point where I see no value in any further engagement with CSA,” the release quoted sports minister Nathi Mthethwa as saying. He had “given notice of government intervention to the ICC”, and CSA have until close of business on October 27 to “make written representations, should they wish to, on why [Mthethwa] should not exercise his decision to intervene as enjoined by the laws of the country”.

The National Sport and Recreation Act says the minister may “after consultation … intervene in any dispute, alleged mismanagement, or any other related matter in sport or recreation that is likely to bring a sport or recreation into disrepute”. He may not become involved if the matter has been referred to SASCOC, unless SASCOC “fails to resolve such dispute within a reasonable time”. He also may not “interfere in matters relating to the selection of teams, administration of sport, and appointment of, and termination of the service of, the executive members of the sport or recreation body”. But he can cut off government funding and “notify the national federation in writing that it will not be recognised by Sport and Recreation South Africa”. Effectively, Mthethwa has the authority to tell the Proteas they are not South Africa’s team.

CSA did not immediately respond to requests for comment beyond saying it would issue a statement. But in a letter to Mthethwa dated October 9, which has been seen by Cricbuzz, acting president Beresford Williams wrote that the board “are of the view (and have been advised) that you do not have power, in terms of the National Sport and Recreation Act 110 of 1998, to require members of the CSA board to ‘step down’. Furthermore, we are of the view that such a requirement probably constitutes government interference in CSA’s governance, regulation and/or administration, as contemplated in the memorandum of association of the ICC and, as such, interferes with CSA’s contractual obligations to the ICC and jeopardises CSA’s continued membership of the ICC.”

Asked for its opinion, the ICC said through a spokesperson: “The ICC has received a letter from the ministry of sport, arts and culture in South Africa giving notice of potential intervention into the matters of CSA. At this stage, no complaint has been received from CSA regarding government intervention and members are encouraged to resolve matters directly with their governments. We will continue to monitor the situation.”

The ICC is unlikely to weigh in unless CSA complains formally, and the fact is Mthethwa hasn’t done anything yet. But the ICC constitution makes plain that a member is obliged to “manage its affairs autonomously and ensure that there is no government (or other public or quasi-public body) interference in its governance, regulation and/or administration of cricket in its cricket playing country (including in operational matters, in the selection and management of teams, and in the appointment of coaches or support personnel)”.

No doubt that’s why Wednesday’s release makes the point that “Mthethwa strongly believes that there is great merit in creating an environment where sports problems are handled within the sports movement and accordingly wishes to offer them every possible opportunity to demonstrate their stated commitment to cooperate on a way forward for cricket”.

CSA has done the opposite at every turn. Tellingly, it had to be bullied into handing over to parliament — for all its failings still the people’s representative — the complete version of the Fundudzi forensic report, which was used to fire Thabang Moroe as chief executive, implicates others in potential wrongdoing, and lays bare a litany of maladies.

Little wonder that, later on Wednesday, the South African Cricketers’ Association repeated its perennial call for CSA’s board to go: “The crises that have engulfed the CSA board over the past 18 months have culminated in a situation where there is no longer confidence in their ability to govern the organisation and provide guidance on resolving many of the crises that remain. SACA believes that an interim board of directors should be established to stabilise the organisation.”

This structure “must include a SACA player’s representative as well as a representative from the remaining stakeholders in the game (sponsors and broadcasters)” and appoint “an experienced administrator to assist in the operational work that is required at CSA, ensuring a link between the interim board and operational staff”.

SACA chief executive Andrew Breetzke was quoted as saying: “Cricket is in an existential crisis … [and] … as has been recognised by [the ministry] and SASCOC, the current board has no credibility to resolve the crises, and it is clear that the current impasse between government and CSA will not be resolved until such time as the board stands down.”

Omphile Ramela, SACA’s president, was quoted as saying: “As we have stated previously CSA is not able to self-correct, and the intervention of government is further evidence of this.”

CSA’s hopes that England will visit in the coming months, which could be worth the equivalent of USD4.2-million to the home board, now hang by a thread. And that’s not all that is in danger: the game of cricket as South Africans have come to know it seems on the cusp of radical change. It’s a measure of the size of the mess CSA have made that that may be no bad thing.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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