Ken Borland

Cricket South Africa was plunged into monumental chaos on Monday as acting chief executive Jacques Faul resigned with immediate effect, hot on the heels of long-term president Chris Nenzani standing down.

The departure of Nenzani, who has been the longest-ever serving president, having been elected for the first time in 2013 and extending his term twice through constitutional amendments, was confirmed by CSA in a statement released on Monday morning.

But, according to CSA sources, Faul also tendered his immediate resignation on Monday. He had announced at the end of last month that he would step down from his role as acting CEO on September 15, his initial appointment from December 2019 to June having been extended on a month-to-month basis.

It is believed the CSA Board has stripped Faul of his powers, which is why he has decided to leave the embattled organisation immediately.

Faul was thrust into the role of acting CEO after Thabang Moroe was suspended nine months ago, triggering a forensic audit and a disciplinary process which to this day has still not been finalised, even though the Board have been sitting with the report for weeks.

Last December, CSA were facing deficits of close to a billion rand, fighting the players’ association in court, had alienated major sponsors and cancelled the accreditation of five journalists who had been critical of Moroe and the organisation. And the Proteas were seemingly in freefall just before the arrival of the England team.

Since then, Faul has ensured there have been no retrenchments through the Covid-19 pandemic and mended relationships with the players’ association, sponsors and media. The appointment of Graeme Smith as Director of Cricket and then Mark Boucher as Proteas head coach saw the team rally somewhat, beating a powerful Australian side 3-0 in an ODI series at the end of the summer.

It is believed company secretary Welsh Gwaza, a strong supporter of Moroe, will now be the acting CEO.

Gwaza is emerging as a powerful new figure within the organisation and he is also the current acting president until the CSA Members Council elect a temporary replacement for Nenzani, who stepped down just three weeks before the AGM to elect a new president on September 5.

CSA gave no reasons for Nenzani’s resignation, but an insider told The Citizen that they were told Nenzani had resigned “because of the cloud over CSA, too much is pointing back to the organisation and he wants to help clear the path for a new leader”.

Another insider pointed to the increasing influence of independent director and chairperson of the Transformation Committee, Dr Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, who “is now running the whole show”.

A new power struggle is emerging with long-time Nenzani and Moroe supporters Beresford Williams, the current vice-president, and controversial Eastern Province Cricket Union head Donovan May believed to be mounting campaigns to succeed Nenzani.

KwaZulu-Natal president Ben Dladla, who has helped rebuild a strong Dolphins franchise, is also rumoured to be in the running, although he has not been a member of the CSA Board. Northerns Cricket Union president Tebogo Siko, a Board member since last September, is also perhaps in contention.

But in the shadowy world of secret CSA meetings and internal politics, credible leadership has been in short supply.

Cricket South Africa president Chris Nenzani on Tuesday night denied that the organisation was afflicted by terrible chaos but admitted that the delays in holding former CEO Thabang Moroe’s disciplinary hearing were not good for the game, although unavoidable to ensure correct procedures were followed.

Moroe was suspended in December pending the outcome of a forensic investigation, and last week returned to the CSA offices, purportedly to ‘return to work’ as he believed his suspension expired after six months. This happened after the South African Cricketers’ Association, the players’ union, warned that the CSA Board lacked the will to finalise Moroe’s case.

CSA’s former Head of Sales and Sponsor Relations Clive Eksteen, who was suspended by Moroe in October and fired by CSA at the weekend, on Tuesday announced that he would be taking the organisation to the CCMA for unfair dismissal.

“I don’t think Cricket South Africa is in chaos although there are challenges we have to go through. We have to make sure we deal with certain in-house issues so they don’t impact on the game. We hoped by now that we would have been able to announce the outcome of the investigation into Mr Moroe, but unfortunately not and there is great disappointment over that at Board and Members Council level. It is not desirable that it take so long and we will take the necessary action to ensure CSA are protected.

“But I ask for understanding because we must complete a forensic investigation that meets the highest levels of governance and that is time-consuming. We have been promised by the investigators that the first part of the report will be ready by Friday and the Members Council will then decide the way forward. But set processes need to be followed so we don’t fall foul of the law. I can assure that the terms of reference of the investigation are as exhaustive as possible, but it is not common practice to make them public,” Nenzani said in a virtual press conference on Tuesday evening.

While Nenzani did his best during an hour-long conference to depict all CSA’s cups as being half-full, the organisation’s president since 2013 admitted that he should not have extended his record tenure by another term.

“One of the things I would have done differently in hindsight is that I would not have agreed to serving as president for an additional year. I regret that. But when you are an elected official you have an obligation to serve and so when the Members Council asks you to continue then you subject yourself to that. But the term of the president will come to an end in the AGM in September,” Nenzani said.

The Bisho schoolteacher refused to deny, however, that he has his eye on the position of International Cricket Council Chairman.

“As far as the position of chairman goes, the ICC has issued a moratorium on people expressing a desire for that post. They haven’t even opened the process of nominations yet, so it would be premature to make any declarations of being available or not being available,” Nenzani 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.

And now the pieces are starting to fall into place.

Many people were taken by surprise when CSA director of cricket Graeme Smith, totally unprompted, announced his support for Indian cricket chief Sourav Ganguly to become the new ICC chairman. It was an opinion which was backed by CSA chief executive Jacques Faul.

It was a development that certainly took CSA president Chris Nenzani by surprise, wherever he has been hiding out from the justice that surely deserves to be meted out to him for all but destroying our cricket. He has been silent about all the important matters that have been going on in the game in 2020, such as the efforts to rebuild South African cricket, all the disciplinary hearings that are going on, the resignations of board directors and even the Covid-19 crisis.

But Nenzani poked his head above the parapet to put Smith and Faul right, talking about things like “due process” when it comes to Board matters. What he was really saying was “Graeme and Jacques, you look after the onfield matters and leave the politics to me”.

The reason Nenzani suddenly saw fit to do something presidential was, of course, that he has designs on being the next ICC chairman himself. Which is an absolutely laughable proposition because the rest of the world knows how thoroughly self-serving and incompetent he has been in running the South African game.

It would seem, however, that Smith and Faul have a better grasp of global cricket politics than Nenzani does. In fact I am certain of this because I remember Nenzani telling the media in December 2017 in Port Elizabeth that they would force India to release players for the T20 Global League by refusing South African players permission to play in the IPL!

And now this week we have the news that the ICC T20 World Cup, scheduled to be held in Australia in October/November, is likely to be postponed.

That would allow India to fill that gap with the IPL, which is massively important for them as the richest event in world cricket. India, largely on the back of the success of the IPL, bring in around 65% of global cricket revenue and are also the most lucrative team to host because of the massive broadcast rights fees their national team demands. That is why other countries are quite understandably eager to keep in India’s good books.

India are scheduled to make a full tour of Australia from October which is critical for the finances of the game Down Under. But they will need to abide by Australian government public health protocols which are likely to include lengthy quarantine periods and lockdowns, which will not be very pleasant for them.

And that is why Cricket Australia, who stand to make A$300 million from the tour, are falling over backwards to appease India. As a reward for the BCCI agreeing to tour, Australia look set to accept the postponement of the ICC T20 World Cup (it wasn’t even on the summer schedule they announced this week) thereby creating a window for the IPL to be held.

From a South African viewpoint, it seems that Smith and Faul, who travelled to India before Lockdown for very constructive meetings with Ganguly and the BCCI, are in on the game and have said they would be comfortable with the ICC T20 World Cup being shifted to February/March next year. And they have also publicly backed Ganguly.

The pay-off for South African cricket is that India seem committed to coming here at the end of August for three T20s that could add some $50 million to CSA’s depleted coffers.

The importance of India as a global roleplayer in cricket should not be underestimated and the vitriol they are often subjected to is also unwarranted. The fact is they bring the most money into the game because Indians love cricket more than any other nation, and so they should have one of the loudest voices in the ICC boardroom.

The key, of course, is for them to use that power responsibly, and Smith and Faul certainly seem assured that Ganguly, who started India’s blossoming as a global power as captain back in 2000, understands what is best for the modern game as a whole.