Ken Borland

The ODI series between South Africa and England is set to be cancelled later today after the first ODI in Paarl was called off shortly before the toss due to the two positive Covid tests returned by the English touring party.

The first ODI was originally meant to be played on Friday, but it was postponed at short notice after a Proteas player (believed to be Heinrich Klaasen, who missed the third T20 because he was “sick”) tested positive.

Sunday’s match looked good to go when the rest of the Proteas squad all returned negative tests on Saturday, but then two members of The Vineyard hotel staff tested positive that evening. The England squad, already perturbed over the positive test in the Proteas camp, all went for testing that night as well, and on Sunday it was confirmed two of them were positive for the virus.

The future of the series, which comprises two more matches at Newlands on Monday and Wednesday, now depends on those two positive results in the England touring party being ratified by independent medical experts. The chances of the original results being wrong would appear to be slim and with the England players not wanting any form of forced isolation to jeopardise their departure date from South Africa on Thursday, it is likely they will call off the series. Some of the players have lucrative Big Bash contracts in Australia to fulfil, while others just want to get home for Christmas.

It would appear there must have been some sort of breach to the bio-secure bubble both squads are in at The Vineyard in Cape Town, leading to plenty of questions as to how this could have happened but pretty much only vacant stares in response.

“At this stage, it is not clear how the staff members became infected as neither have left the bio-secure area since November 16 and they do not work on the same team or in the same area. Our Covid response team is endeavouring to establish all the facts and contact tracing is underway. We have placed all our resources and efforts into investigating and resolving the situation,” Roy Davies, the general manager of The Vineyard, said in a statement.

Cricket South Africa’s chief medical officer, Dr Shuaib Manjra, was equally mystified.

“There has been some kind of breach and we have gone into great detail in our investigations. We have spoken to the player and looked at the footage from security cameras, but come up with nothing yet. Ninety-nine percent of this environment works, but there may be an unknown breach.

“But I can categorically say that no player has been able to leave the bio-bubble, security would not allow it, nobody can leave unless they’re in an official vehicle with an official driver. The command centre is led by the colonel of the Claremont police station and he would not allow anyone to leave. Even the guys going across the road to train at the Oval where a concern for him,” Manjra said.

Perhaps we should blame it on a night on the tiles or Wacky Wednesday, but reports on Thursday that a majority of the Cricket South Africa interim board were opposed to the decision to suspend company secretary Welsh Gwaza defied belief.

Are we supposed to believe that the independent chairman, Justice Zak Yacoob, a former judge of the Constitutional Court, over-rode a democratic vote of the board and went with a minority view?

We know that previous CSA boards have lied about decisions being unanimous when they were not. Or maybe they just struggled with the meaning of the word ‘unanimous’. But this interim board, made up of three directors serving the vested interests of the Members Council, three from the vested interests of the South African Cricketers Association (the players’ union) and Sascoc, and three independents works on majority vote.

It is the only way they can balance all those vested interests and Yacoob undoubtedly knows this is the only way they will be able to fulfil their mandate from the sports minister. Or is Yacoob suddenly not the upstanding bastion of he law he has always been before?

And the interim board have admitted that there were differences of opinion, but it is believed the division only involves a couple of members.

Anyone who has read the Fundudzi Forensic Report can see there is clearly a prima facie case against Gwaza that needs answering; he misled the Board on several occasions. And there is also skulduggery that went on in his office that is not in the Fundudzi Report but of which members of the interim board are well aware.

And then also on Thursday, the acting CEO, Kugandrie Govender, a great ally of Gwaza’s on the CSA Exco, joined him in the dog box because Clive Eksteen, the former head of sales and sponsor relations, had his dismissal in June deemed unlawful by the CCMA.

Apart from yet more legal fees – Gwaza has been directing millions of Rands the way of Bowmans Gilfillan, his former employers, in recent months – CSA are now facing a hefty damages bill. Govender was Eksteen’s line manager and gave evidence against him at the CCMA. Evidence which Eksteen contested and now that he has won, the spotlight will fall on Govender and her evidence.

Former chief financial officer Naasei Appiah and fired CEO Thabang Moroe are also contesting their dismissals but judging by the contents of the Fundudzi Report, the chances of them winning are about as good as the chances of Yacoob having gone rogue and becoming a dictator who wants to take control of cricket.

In the midst of all the legal wrangles the interim board has to sort out, the huge issue of transformation in the national team has once again reared its ferocious head. The previous board approved the increased quotas demanded by the likes of Dr Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, the independent director who arrived out of the blue, became a powerful figure extremely quickly and has now thankfully disappeared almost as rapidly.

The interim board has now suspended those targets, meaning the Proteas will continue, in the meantime, to play under the same targets, to be averaged out over a season, as last summer.

The problem with the revised targets is that they were formulated without any input from the people on the ground – the coaches and selectors who have to implement them and the players who have to live and work under them. The Cricket Capturers, much like the State Capturers, have done well to hitch themselves to the transformation train, but the absence of any meaningful plan to actually change the game from the grassroots up means it is all just a cynical exercise in ticking the box at Proteas level and gaining the approval of the politicians.

The issue of quotas is a highly complex one and the vital thing is for those who are most affected by them – the players, coaches and selectors – to have the input they deserve.

The administrators in their ivory towers who proposed the increased national team quota of seven Blacks per XI, including three Black Africans, might be surprised by what they hear.

As one Black African Protea said to me this week: “I’m no house n****, but where are they going to find the players to reach those targets?!”

The first ODI between South Africa and England scheduled to be played at Newlands from 1pm on Friday has been postponed due to a positive Covid-19 test and will now be held at Boland Park’s scenic surrounds on Sunday.

Cricket South Africa confirmed on Friday, only an hour before the match was scheduled to start, that a member of the Proteas team had tested positive for Covid-19 in the final round of testing which was done on Thursday. While that player obviously goes straight into isolation, everyone else who has been in close contact with him now also has to quarantine or be re-tested.

The bottom line is that the entire series, which was meant to end on Wednesday, is now in doubt because South Africa only have a squad of 18 players in the bubble. The potential loss of revenue from the three ODIs being cancelled is something the professional game in this country can ill afford.

According to the CSA statement, England and Wales Cricket Board CEO Tom Harrison has agreed to the first ODI being postponed rather than cancelled. Sunday’s second game in Paarl will now become the opening 50-ovr fixture, with the Newlands match now being played on Monday and Cape Town also hosting the third match on Wednesday.

Sunday’s fixture is a day game while the last two matches are day/nighters.

Both teams have been tenants of the luxury Vineyard Hotel in Cape Town, in a strictly-controlled bio-bubble, but the Proteas had two players – believed to be David Miller and Andile Phehlukwayo – test positive for Covid before the T20 series between November 27 and December 1.

The former head of sales and sponsor relations, Clive Eksteen, has won his CCMA hearing against Cricket South Africa, who had their dismissal of the former Proteas spinner hit out of the park by the presiding officer.

Eksteen was suspended by CSA on October 29, 2019, along with head of cricket pipelines Corrie van Zyl and chief financial officer Naasei Appiah, and then fired in June for “transgressions of a serious nature”. Former CEO Thabang Moroe had initiated the suspension over the non-payment of Mzansi Super League image rights fees to the South African Cricketers’ Association.

But as the Fundudzi Forensic Report made clear, Moroe and Appiah were actually the ones responsible for the delay in payment and SACA were amongst the witnesses who exonerated Eksteen and Van Zyl. Nevertheless, CSA continued with the disciplinary hearing, with Eksteen’s then line manager Kugandrie Govender, who was then the chief commercial officer but is now the acting CEO, apparently driving the process.

Additional charges were laid against Eksteen that he sold a sponsorship deal to a multinational company for a lower amount than had been approved by the CSA Exco.

“No evidence was presented of Exco having mandated a final amount for the sponsorship; and my superior [Govender] in her evidence failed to mention that she had read a message from me to her, prior to the Exco meeting, in which I had told her of the current offer on the table from the sponsor,” Eksteen said in a statement he released after his dismissal.

Eksteen could not be reached for comment on Thursday, but other high-ranking officials have confirmed the CCMA has ruled in his favour.

Eksteen, who turned 54 on the day he received the good news, has been working in the media industry since his departure from CSA and is highly unlikely to accept his job back. It means CSA are now liable for a large damages claim, given that Eksteen’s dismissal has been found to be unfair and he suffered huge reputational damage as a result.

It is another blow to the cash-strapped, scandal-ridden organisation’s exco. Company secretary Welsh Gwaza was suspended by the interim board this week due to his misgovernance as revealed by the Fundudzi Report, and Govender could now also be in their sights given the costly botching of Eksteen’s disciplinary case.