Ken Borland

Former acting CEO Jacques Faul did his best during his nine months with the organisation to put out the raging inferno that is Cricket South Africa, but on Wednesday he said anybody who served in a leadership position in the federation, including himself, needs to take responsibility for the mess.

Faul was appointed acting CEO last December when Thabang Moroe was suspended with CSA in freefall as their relationships with the players, sponsors and the media were utterly broken. Having restored those relationships and also steered CSA through the Covid-19 pandemic, Faul spent the last three months of his tenure fighting against the internal divisions that wrack the organisation, eventually falling foul of the Board and having his powers removed, which led to him quitting with immediate effect, a month before the end of his contract.

“The calibre of people in management relates directly to the stability of an organisation and the performance of the team, and something is horribly wrong when the administrators are the focus and not the people playing in the game. We have to say that anybody who served in a leadership position, including me, got it badly wrong and we now need to fix it.

“I think we will and there are some very positive things happening and I hope the interim board will bring stability. There are enough good people in cricket to make it work and we have lots of talented cricketers – we should always be top-three in my mind. But it’s not just about academic qualifications or business experience on a CV, it’s about the heart and the leaders have got to love the game,” Faul said at the Titans season launch on Wednesday at SuperSport Park, where he is reinstalled as CEO.

Faul said the health of CSA could only be restored by a cleanout and finding new leadership who are passionate about cricket and also understand the workings of the sport.

“If any of us have been in a leadership position for a while, then we have to collectively take responsibility for the space cricket is in. It’s never just one person and we should all take responsibility for letting the players, sponsors and fans down. CSA needs a clean up, my personal opinion is that is time to move on and get new people in who will do things for the right reasons.

“It’s all good and well having a very good professional CV, but the leaders coming in have got to love the game and understand sport and cricket, maybe that’s what we’ve learnt from this whole fiasco. Things have never been as bad as this before, we had even less direction and more infighting. I’m a bit worried that we are hearing the same people telling a different story,” Faul said.