CSA need the services of their players more than anyone else
The Cricket South Africa Board have brought in the services of a PR company to help polish their tarnished image, which is so bad at the moment that not even all the distractions of a racial witch-hunt have been able to disguise their complicity in the ugly shambles that the beloved game in this country has become.
Of course CSA have also engaged the services of a quarrel of lawyers to help them handle the numerous legal issues they are dealing with, the most recent of which is their failure to appear before parliament’s sports portfolio committee as scheduled on Friday.
The forensic report into the activities of suspended CEO Thabang Moroe and whether the Board itself is implicated in any misgovernance was bound to have been a hot topic in parliament on Friday, but CSA cried off and begged for a postponement because they said the report is not yet ready to be made public.
My legal friends tell me this is probably above board because if serious allegations are made by the report, it would need to be sent by CSA’s Audit and Risk Committee to lawyers in order to ensure due process is followed. But given that the report was finalised at the end of June, progress in this crucial matter has been glacial. Perhaps the sports ministry should apply some ‘global warming’ to the backsides of the recalcitrant administrators, whose behaviour is certainly indicative of people who have something to hide.
But more important than any PR company or even lawyers, CSA have to take notice of what their players are telling them. Their services are the very lifeblood of the game; without our top cricketers, the Proteas slide down the rankings, sponsors, crowds, viewers and broadcasters disappear, and the money dries up. Although that would surely chase away the self-serving vultures feeding on the game, it also creates a vicious circle because with less money, teams become less competitive and the cycle continues to spiral down into oblivion.
The current players, apart from showing their support for the heroic Lungi Ngidi and Black Lives Matter, have been largely quiet in terms of weighing in on all the issues that have been tearing cricket apart during Lockdown. Their union, the South African Cricketers’ Association, have quite rightly been taking up the cudgel and speaking on their behalf.
But the first few murmurings are starting to emerge of how desperately uncertain and unhappy the players are. There have been numerous reasons for top cricketers to leave this country for greener pastures over the last few years but the possibility of the entire professional game collapsing in this country could see the floodgates really open and get that vicious cycle spinning out of control.
While hearing those former players who are speaking out about previous discrimination and the pain it has caused is important and valuable, we have heard way too much from people who have either disgraced the game or who have based their accusations on factual inaccuracies.
I believe these charlatans have been pushed to the front of the choir to further the Cricket Capture agenda which has been in place ever since Moroe and his allies on the Board and in CSA management set it in motion.
Moroe’s temporary replacement, Jacques Faul, has now given up his efforts to clean up the game, forced out by a Board which actively worked against him. Director of Cricket Graeme Smith is clearly now the main target because there have been way too many spurious allegations made about his time as captain. Lest we forget, under his watch the Proteas became the best team in the world in all formats and were at their happiest in terms of unity and embracing diversity.
SACA are now coming under fire too and this fits in perfectly with Moroe’s agenda. The suspended CEO stated clearly his intention to destroy the power and influence the players’ union had in the game. He was trying to achieve this by causing racial divisions, having tried to engineer a split with all the Black African players leaving SACA. Sound familiar in terms of what is now happening?
Fortunately SACA have had a strong president and servant of the game in Omphile Ramela.
There is still hope for South African cricket. We still have incredible playing talent and there is so much love for the game in this country. South African sport has produced many tremendous administrators so they are out there.
But it is getting late. Short of doing what one provincial president recommended to me – “the CSA Board is now in such a bad place that in our culture we say you have to slaughter a goat to cleanse it” – one can only hope the CSA Members Council do the right thing at the AGM on September 5 and vote in people who are committed to saving the game, not parasitizing it.