Ken Borland

Cricket South Africa Director of Cricket Graeme Smith on Saturday described all the leaks coming from the organisation – many of which have promoted falsehoods targeting him personally – as a “cancer” and said the e-mails he had sent to the Board complaining about them had not yet been addressed.

Smith has even had his contract details leaked to the media and there was also a fraudulent document circulated which alleged he was a shareholder in 3TCricket.

“These leaks are a cancer within the organisation and you just wonder who in a senior position would do this? What is their end goal? It’s clearly a high-profile person because of some of the stuff that has been leaked. This kind of thing doesn’t help build relations, it feels like some people have ulterior motives, so we end up spending all our time speaking about these things and not the game.

“I have written a few e-mails about it to the president [Chris Nenzani], the board and the company secretary [Welsh Gwaza], who has been part of all my processes. And there hasn’t been a huge response. But it was good to see the president put a few things straight in an article today and there are a lot of very good people in CSA, especially at staff level, in cricket services,” Smith said in a teleconference on Saturday.

While Smith defended his appointment as director of cricket, saying he had gone through the whole chain of appropriate processes, and was keen to continue in the role, he added that he would step aside if there was someone better equipped for the job. He also defended his choice of Mark Boucher as national coach.

“I feel I have been extremely unfairly targeted over the appointments, I feel there’s a bit of an agenda. It comes back to why I got into the job in the first place – I wanted to put cricket straight and improve CSA as an organisation – and CSA courted me for a while. I went through the interview process and initially turned the job down. But in the absolute chaos of last December I decided I wanted to be part of the solution.

“I don’t feel like I’m going to be perfect or not get anything wrong, but my intentions and value system are good. But if someone can do a better job then they must tell me. I did not appoint myself, I went through a rigorous interview process presided over by mainly Black African people. You ask yourself what you can achieve in this role, but that’s why I decided to sign an extension to my contract.

“In terms of Mark Boucher, the team need a strong leader and he’s done enough coaching at domestic level and had a lot of success, his personality and experience is what was needed. He and Enoch Nkwe [assistant coach] can form a strong partnership, that’s an important dynamic. They are the right team to take the Proteas forward … theoretical qualifications are not the be-all and end-all,” Smith said.

It took some daring for Smith to accept the post of director of cricket back in December and South Africa’s most successful captain described CSA as being in “chaos” at the time.

“I fearfully got involved in December in a situation that was chaos, absolute chaos, there was zero trust between anyone. There’s still an element of internal agendas pulling in a lot of different directions and I would like to align those. Life was a lot simpler as a broadcaster! But I was sad to see South African cricket fall from its perch, that’s why I got involved.

“It’s feeling chaotic again, so I keep revisiting why I took the job in the first place. But you ask yourself lots of questions – What are the motives? What is the end game? What are these people trying to create because in the end it’s only the game that suffers. But I was captain for a long time so I have formulated ways of dealing with the stresses and public pressures of a high-profile job,” Smith said.

While Smith’s decision to take a knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement during the 3TCricket Solidarity Cup went down like a flat beer with those of a right-wing persuasion, the director of cricket said he did it to show he is serious about creating a South African cricket culture in which everyone can feel comfortable.

“The BLM movement provided the opportunity for everyone to have an open discussion before the Solidarity Cup, which is why we all decided to take a knee, to show solidarity to creating a better environment going forward. We’ve got to create a culture where everyone feels safe to talk. I was most surprised that players did not feel they had a voice in the past. “As far as I was aware, there have always been channels, but obviously these players did not feel that way, so hopefully we can improve on that. I was very taken aback by Makhaya Ntini’s stuff. When I came into the team, I never thought of him as being the silent type, he was a senior player then. He gave me a different explanation when I asked him about running to the ground and not taking the bus,” Smith said.