Ken Borland

Financial services provider Momentum announced on Tuesday that they will continue to prop up the national women’s cricket team but they have pulled the plug on renewing their sponsorship of men’s ODI cricket when their contract expires in April 2021, in a clear shot across the bows of Cricket South Africa.

A statement released by public relations firm Fleishman Hillard on Tuesday said “Momentum has expressed that they are not satisfied with the current state of affairs at CSA regarding governance and other reputational issues”.

“We will continue our dialogue with CSA to keep them accountable to do the right thing. We all want to see a governing body that is run professionally and ethically, and one that considers all stakeholders to the game. We wish CSA well as they move forward,” Momentum’s head of sponsorships Carel Bosman was quoted as saying.

While the move is not unexpected given the previous concerns Momentum have expressed over the governance issues plaguing CSA, there will be great relief that the Proteas Women’s side, a talented outfit that has lifted itself into the upper echelons of the game but desperately needs more support to remain competitive with highly professional teams like Australia and England, will continue to receive the backing of one of cricket’s most loyal supporters. That contract runs through to April 2023.

“We have been extraordinarily proud of our role in supporting the advancement of the women’s team and remain committed to that sponsorship agreement. Our continued support of the Momentum Proteas is in line with our brand narrative and we will continue to shine a light on their talent, build their commercial value and enable them on their journey to success,” Bosman said.

Tuesday’s announcement is a major blow for the men’s game, however, as Momentum have since June 2012 been leasing their support to just about every level of the pipeline – the U13, U15 and U17 schools weeks, developmental initiatives such as the Momentum Friendship Games, the national club championships, the Momentum One-Day Cup for domestic franchises and all ODIs involving South Africa.

While birds like the Redbacked Shrike are currently making their way from Sweden to South Africa, one of the country’s most famous sportsmen, Jonty Rhodes, is making the move in the opposite direction and all because of his passion for the grassroots development of cricket.

Rhodes will take over as Sweden’s head coach in November, once his stint with the Punjab Kings XI in the Indian Premier League is done, but he says his work will be far more focused on clubs than on a national team that is currently ranked 43^rd in T20 Internationals.

“In terms of my journey, my focus in the last two years has been on grassroots and the development of cricket and I’ve been to places like Nepal, Malawi, Zimbabwe and some of the smaller cities in India, mostly emerging cricket nations. Initially my focus in Sweden will be on developing coaches, that’s spending time in a better way – coaching the coaches.

“You can get away with any gaps in knowledge if you have enthusiasm and intensity, and I’ll be trying to get kids from other sports and introduce them to cricket, where hopefully they will have a great time and enjoy themselves. We need to share facilities and communities with other sports. It’s not about doing anything fancy, just doing the basics really well,” Rhodes told the Emerging Cricket Podcast.

According to Australian former Commonwealth Games discus champion Benn Harradine, who is now Swedish cricket’s performance director, there has been a feverish interest in the game in the Scandinavian nation over the last two years, with the number of clubs growing from 17 to 78. Rhodes’s contagious enthusiasm will undoubtedly help accelerate that passion for the game.

It was actually Rhodes who made contact with Swedish cricket asking if there was any role available for him, with Harradine saying he found the initial approach difficult to swallow.

“When Jonty first reached out, I thought he was taking the piss! But it’s been really good to get to know the person and Jonty’s tremendous contact network is really going to help us,” Harradine said of their breathtaking signing.

“I’m married to an architect who is a really big fan of the Swedish education system and with four of our six children aged 13, 10, five and three, we are relocating lock, stock and barrell with the family,” Rhodes explained. I have followed European cricket quite closely and I actually hit Sweden up first with an e-mail. I’m not going as a consultant, this is a long-term move.

“As a family we’re looking to make a future in a different scenario, we have our Swedish identity cards already and the entire process is done. I will be going straight to Sweden from the IPL in the United Arab Emirates, from 41⁰ to 3⁰! It’s all been done fairly recently, in the last three months. I have a three-year IPL contract so I will be released for that, but I love the grassroots and growing the game,” Rhodes said.

Cricket South Africa’s Members Council, having studied a summary of the Fundudzi Forensic Report over the weekend, have decided that whatever the governance failings of the Board of Directors were, they are not terrible enough to warrant them stepping aside ahead of the AGM, which has to be held by November 5.

The 14-strong Members Council includes seven members of the Board, an awful structural defect which perhaps made stronger action impossible. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a strong desire for change in CSA’s governance structures and how the Board is constituted. The weekend bosberaad decided that CSA’s Memorandum of Incorporation is to be revised with special attention given to the composition and roles of the Members Council, the Board of Directors and executive management.

But it is the current Board who will be responsible for the implementation of these changes before the AGM.

“The summary of the forensic report was quite comprehensive and covered all the burning issues. Just the litigation-sensitive stuff was kept from us on the advice of legal counsel from Bowmans Gilfillan so as to protect the case they are building against the relevant people. But there was not much in there that should affect the appointment of directors. Not many of the responsible people remain on the Board.

“There are things that could have been done better and some decisions made by the Board were not great. But often they rely on senior management to feed them the information, you trust that information to be correct and then six months later when you discover that it is not, then it’s too late. But I can’t really see why it was kept from the public,” a Members Council delegate told The Citizen on Sunday night.

The Members Council will now have their meeting with Sascoc, who have called for the Board and executive management to stand aside and allow the independent task team they are appointing to conduct an investigation into the affairs of CSA, on Monday evening.

But the practicalities of who would actually be in charge of the operations side of CSA, as well as what is seen as “quite an aggressive overstep by Sascoc”, makes it unlikely that CSA will agree to the Sascoc demand for directors to step aside.

A date for the AGM, originally scheduled for September 5, has not been finalised, but the controversy over the nominations process for new directors was discussed. The process will now be overseen by an interim selection panel comprised of people from both within and outside the game.

The proposed changes to the MOI will all need to be ratified at the AGM.

Sascoc have written a letter to the ICC clarifying that they are not attempting a takeover of Cricket South Africa but have merely requested the sidelining of the CSA Board and certain executives as they look to assist a federation that has obviously been brought into disrepute and no longer enjoys the confidence of their many stakeholders.

The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee informed CSA this week that they were using their step-in rights to intervene in the governance crisis facing the union, leading to speculation that the move could amount to government interference and could lead to the suspension of the Proteas from international cricket because the ICC’s constitution forbids that.

But in an e-mail sent to the International Cricket Council on Saturday, Sascoc have explained their decision to appoint an independent task team to conduct investigations into the administrative, operational and/or financial affairs of CSA and have denied that it is government interference. They remind the ICC of the resignations of directors and that of acting CEO Jacques Faul, as well as CSA’s refusal to make the forensic report into the possible misconduct of their former chief executive, Thabang Moroe, available on an unrestricted basis.

“Given the litany of complaints that has plagued CSA … there can be no doubt that CSA has been brought into disrepute and that its standing amongst players and ex-players, the media, the public and, most importantly, its stakeholders such as sponsors and the government, has dramatically diminished, resulting in a loss of trust and confidence in the organisation.

“The task team will remain accountable to the Sascoc Board and the Members Council of CSA … . There is thus no attempt to place CSA under administration as has been reported. Cricket belongs to its Members and the Sascoc resolution does not disturb that arrangement. What the resolution requires is for the CSA Board and those senior CSA executives who serve it on an ex officio basis to step aside in order to facilitate the work of the task team,” the e-mail signed by acting president Aleck Skhosana said.

As a first step in darning the tear in the fabric of the game at present, Sascoc seem to want to work with the Members Council and their starting point is getting the forensic report released so all the provincial presidents can study it without stringent conditions ahead of an AGM that has been postponed but needs to happen before November 5.

“At no stage … did Sascoc act under the direction … of the Minister of Sport … Sascoc rejects any allegation … that the … intervention constitutes government interference. In this regard, we are quite prepared to meet with you and discuss this issue … to give you the assurance that the Sascoc intervention is a bona fide attempt to assist one of its members who clearly and desperately needs such assistance.

“CSA’s steadfast refusal to make the forensic report available is puzzling, as it appears that they are unable to self-correct if the report is not made available, not only to its own Members, but also to the media and public at large since it is a public document. CSA (like Sascoc) remains accountable to the public at large since we are public bodies … and are required to act in the public interest,” the e-mail to the ICC said.

CSA’s Board of Directors and the Members Council are meeting over the weekend, with the latter body hopeful that they will finally be able to interrogate the forensic report. In a statement released earlier, Sascoc called the failure to release the forensic report to the Members Council “irrational and unreasonable”.

“The Presidents that form the Members’ Council of CSA have similarly been denied unrestricted access to the forensic report. This is quite ridiculous. The Presidents act on a mandate from their respective boards. How are they expected to obtain a proper mandate from their boards when they are not permitted to share the contents of a report which they commissioned with the members of their board? That is why the refusal to make the report available on an unrestricted basis is both irrational and unreasonable,” Sascoc said.