Ken Borland

Cricket South Africa’s midnight statement saying former CEO Thabang Moroe is still suspended has only heightened the terrible uncertainty around the game in this country, the chief executive of the players’ union said on Friday.

Moroe was suspended on December 6 pending a forensic investigation into his management practices but arrived at the CSA offices in Melrose Estate on Thursday morning, ostensibly seeking to ‘return to work’. His lawyer, Michael Bill, said his suspension had lapsed after six months.

But the CSA Board issued a statement more than 15 hours later saying the “letter of suspension issued to the Chief Executive Officer explicitly stated that he was suspended until the conclusion of the independent forensic investigation” and that there was no predetermined timeframe attached to his suspension. The Board added that the forensic investigators had indicated their report was “imminent” and “there will be more clarity and certainty provided before the end of June.”

The South African Cricketers’ Association issued a warning earlier this week that CSA’s failure to make progress on Moroe’s disciplinary hearing would seriously erode the small gains in confidence in the organisation that have been painstakingly acquired by acting CEO Faul and director of cricket Graeme Smith, and Andrew Breetzke, the players’ union CEO, said on Friday that CSA’s statement did not alleviate the level of suspicion aimed at the Board.

“We’ve taken note of their intention to complete the disciplinary process with haste and that the forensic report is imminent, but there’s no real comfort that it will all be resolved soon. Thabang Moroe has not even been charged yet and history shows their disciplinary hearings have taken six months to complete from the date the person was charged.

“Given the crisis cricket is facing, we need certainty and CSA are just not creating that at the leadership level. It’s critical that President Nenzani answer the important questions because never before have there been so many crises all at once, and major sponsors Willowton, Standard Bank and Momentum have all said they are very concerned over governance,” Breetzke told Saturday Citizen on Friday.

Breetzke said it was also vital that there was transparency over the forensic investigation’s terms of reference, to allay fears that they were only examining the tip of the iceberg in terms of CSA’s financials.

“It’s a real concern that we don’t understand the terms of reference of the investigation because a lot hangs on that. Nenzani said the whole process would take six months and there is clearly evidence because Moroe was suspended based on the reports of the Social and Ethics and Risk and Audit committees. You would have thought the CSA Board would have dealt with this as a matter of urgency and not in such dribs and drabs.

“This is a systemic issue that runs really deep in CSA, but they are the custodians of cricket, not the owners, so all lovers and stakeholders of the game have a right to know. In terms of the court papers SACA have previously filed, there are lots of incorrect figures and significant negligence regarding the second MSL, plus journalists’ accreditation being revoked, so CSA don’t really have to look much further than that,” Breetzke said.

Depending on whether you believe the suspended chief executive and his legal advisors, Cricket South Africa now have two CEOs in Thabang Moroe and Jacques Faul and it is a chaotic situation that is almost entirely the fault of the president Chris Nenzani and the CSA Board.

It has been more than six months now since CSA’s Social and Ethics and Audit and Risk committees provided the evidence needed to suspend Moroe on December 6. A time period which, according to Moroe’s lawyer Michael Bill, means his suspension has lapsed. Which is why the suspended CEO pulled his brazen stunt this week of rocking up to CSA’s offices in Melrose Estate to ‘report for duty’ and there just happened to be a radio journalist on the scene to take the photo …

Despite the South African Cricketers’ Association warning CSA at the beginning of the week that their failure to make progress on Moroe’s disciplinary hearing would seriously erode the small gains in confidence that have been painstakingly acquired by acting CEO Faul and director of cricket Graeme Smith, the CSA Board were taken by surprise by Moroe’s act of defiance and, despite having practically the whole day to respond, could only issue a statement after midnight in the early hours of Friday morning.

While acknowledging that it might not be easy to pin down a slippery character like Moroe, six months is surely enough time to formulate charges against him given that the financial audit was already picking up irregularities a couple of months into their brief. Plus the state of cricket in December and the relationships Moroe had destroyed with vital stakeholders such as the players association, sponsors and the media should be enough to dismiss a chief executive for obvious incompetence.

The CSA Board have made such a pig’s ear of the entire situation that it is easy to wonder if it has not all been deliberate. Nenzani and Moroe were certainly in cahoots for much of the program of Cricket Capture and it is known that there are still directors who want the former CEO back. Plus the person responsible for handling disciplinary matters, company secretary and head of legal Welsh Gwaza, is a known Moroe ally.

Perhaps commercial manager Clive Eksteen and chief operations manager Naasei Appiah should also get ideas now and return to work after they were suspended by Moroe at the end of October? The then CEO made them, along with Corrie van Zyl, who has already been found guilty and given a final warning, the scapegoats for SACA not receiving the image rights money that was due to the players. But the players’ association say there is proof that it was not Appiah, Eksteen and Van Zyl who were delaying the payments but Moroe himself. Such malfeasance should be sufficient reason to dismiss the CEO.

The CSA Board’s response to Moroe’s ‘return to work’ was to say he is still suspended. Those incompetent directors who have shown themselves to be utterly incapable of coming up with ideas that will benefit the game look set to argue that the former CEO was never told his suspension would only last six months. But Nenzani is on record as having promised the process would be completed within six months.

CSA’s disciplinary processes talk about employees only being suspended for two months, unless there are exceptional circumstances. The Board obviously believe there are exceptional reasons for them to have flouted process, while Moroe and his legal team are within their rights to claim they have been unfairly prejudiced, pointing out that there has been a lack of formal written communication and just ‘conversations’.

There is little doubt the whole fiasco is heading for court and it will be for a judge to decide whether CSA or Moroe are in the right.

It’s going to be yet another financial drain on an organisation that was in dire straits even before the Covid-19 pandemic. All of this overseen by Nenzani, who is still trying to wrangle the constitution into allowing him to stand for yet another term as president. He has changed the constitution three times already and is the longest-serving president South African cricket has ever had to endure. And what good has he done for the game?

For South African cricket-lovers, it has been another week of shame that our beloved sport is in the hands of such delinquents.

SA Rugby chief executive Jurie Roux is not subscribing to the views of players and former players from Australasia that the days are numbered for South Africa’s partnership with Sanzaar, but he did acknowledge on Monday that major changes for both SuperRugby and the Rugby Championship were inevitable in a post-Covid world.

New Zealand’s SuperRugby franchises will resume play this weekend in an internal competition, while Australian teams are set to follow a similar route. There has been talk of the two countries setting up a Trans-Tasman competition and increased speculation that South Africa will cast its lot in with the Northern Hemisphere.

“As far as Sanzaar goes, we are busy with negotiations in good faith. I’m not too phased about whatever former players, current players or media have to say in Australia or New Zealand, I’m only interested in the people that sit around the negotiating table and they have a completely different viewpoint. But I always have a Plan B, you need the foresight to plan for the worst-case scenario.

“We are very dependent on the decisions of government and that changes quite regularly. But hopefully next Monday we will hear that we can return to training and then return to play in August. That would be a home-based, truncated version of SuperRugby, followed by the Currie Cup and then moving into more international exposure with the international window now moved to October/November.

“It depends on border restrictions, but there is a biosphere model for our teams to be based in Australia, Argentina or here, with a competition in the Northern Hemisphere being an alternative. The biggest influence on Sanzaar will be if New Zealand and Australia don’t open their borders until April. But it’s very clear that the pool format is not the preferred option, we had to come up with a round-robin in which all the teams play each other and it had to make commercial sense.

“We’ll make a rugby decision and then look at the commercials and logistical challenges like reduced flights and number of business class seats, plus whether teams will have to isolate, which means being in a bio-bubble, or quarantine, which means a month in a hotel room without training, will determine those. But the current format will be too tight in a post-Covid world, which is why we’re looking at different options,” Roux said in a virtual press conference on Monday.

The CEO said that the pandemic had at least provided world rugby with the impetus to move towards a global calendar.

“Covid has enabled us to do what we couldn’t do for 130 years and that’s get a global calendar aligned because all competitions are on hold, agreements have been breached or are being re-negotiated. Basically rugby in the Northern Hemisphere will move from winter to summer. The Rugby Championship will move to the beginning of the year with the Six Nations, SuperRugby will stay at the beginning of the year and international rugby will be in October/November. We’ll probably have that all done by July 1.

“We can’t make a final decision on the Springboks until government opens the borders, but by the end of July we should have a very good idea of their schedule. There are very detailed plans for the Rugby Championship to be held at a single venue. If that doesn’t work out then hopefully we’ll have local inbound tours, otherwise we can go North. Failing that we have some very exciting plans for local competitions,” Roux said.

Winter may be upon us and the country still in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, but according to Central Gauteng Lions Cricket chief executive Jono Leaf-Wright, there are still sunny skies over the Wanderers and the floodlights will metaphorically keep shining bright through the crisis.

Leaf-Wright said the Johannesburg-based franchise is in a good position to hit the ground running when cricket resumes when he spoke in an online press conference to introduce the new Central Gauteng Lions board.

“The financials were in a great place back in February, but nobody envisaged then the impact Covid would have and we have lost many revenue streams. But it was to our benefit that the virus hit at the back end of our season and we are still in a decent place with no real long-term impact to the organisation. We are all working really hard on returning to work, training and playing.

“But we’re also working on mitigating the risks so we can return as quickly as possible and as safely as possible. It’s full steam ahead for our operations team and we’ve had exciting interest from our sponsors. Hopefully a lot of us will be back at the Wanderers in the next week or two and the floodlights are staying on to show people we are ready to return as soon as government allows,” Leaf-Wright said on Friday.

Leaf-Wright said they were hopeful that domestic cricket would be able to resume in November, but said they would be able to weather the storm if they had to wait until the new year.

“The plans we have discussed with Cricket South Africa are to have matches in November and there are still international tours that need to go ahead before that. There may be some problems if we don’t start as planned, but obviously we have to put safety first, we have a duty of care to the players. It’s not essential that we get back to playing in November, but we would need to if we are going to fit everything into the season.

“There are new tournaments that we want to launch but we won’t be able to if the schedule is full. The three existing events, the four-day series, One-Day Cup and the new-look Mzansi Super League, are key for us and our sponsors though. It’s just about how jam-packed we can make the season. In the meantime everybody on the team is working hard to stay fit and strong,” Leaf-Wright said.