Ken Borland

In the wake of Duanne Olivier becoming the latest South African cricketer to drop the Kolpak bombshell, it would be only human for Cricket South Africa chief executive Thabang Moroe to be feeling betrayed and to be considering his options when it comes to ensuring that his organisation and the staff involved with the national teams don’t have to go through that pain again, never mind the considerable resources expended – and now wasted – on grooming a player to make a successful entry into international cricket.

Olivier was probably the good news story of the summer, getting a prolonged run in the national team thanks to injuries to Lungi Ngidi and then Vernon Philander, and his immediate success prompted the Proteas brainstrust to take drastic steps to keep him in the side: World-class spinner Keshav Maharaj was sidelined and they even went into some games a batsman short, further weakening an already struggling batting line-up, just to ensure their new-found Enforcer could keep charging in and taking wickets.

The falling-over-backwards continued at board level as Olivier was offered a two-year contract, something highly unusual. The fact that everyone else only received a one-year contract when the new deals were announced on Friday shows just how obliging they were trying to be to the 26-year-old Free State fast bowler.

And then it turns out that all the time he was talking about his Proteas achievements being a dream come true and how proud he was, all the time he was negotiating with CSA for a two-year contract, he had already decided to sign a lucrative Kolpak deal with Yorkshire.

South African cricket has been through this betrayal before of course, with Kyle Abbott and Rilee Rossouw jumping ship midway through the previous home series against Sri Lanka in January 2017. Abbott had spent the previous weeks gushing about how delighted he was to be finally getting a prolonged run for the Proteas while Rossouw, after CSA had spent huge amounts of medical bills on him and persisted with through one of the worst duck-laden starts to an international career, merely dumped his employees with barely a word spoken.

This is not a Kolpak move like Morne Morkel’s, who, after more than 10 years of service to South African cricket, decided his body could no longer take the grind of the international game and nobody bemoaned him giving his pension a well-earned boost in England.

Olivier is in his prime, has played just 10 Tests and two ODIs, and Ottis Gibson and Faf du Plessis have very much been making plans for the future around having him in the fast bowling pool.

Olivier is, of course, represented and managed by an agent, Weber van Wyk. Who just happens to be the same agent who organised the Kolpak deals for Abbott and Rossouw, hence the same scarcely ethical modus operandi that clearly cannot be termed ‘negotiating in good faith’. Van Wyk has earned a fortune exporting South African talent to England.

If you were the CEO of a multimillion rand company that spends millions on developing their key assets, only to see them up-and-leave as soon as they get promoted to a level that makes them attractive to others, what would you do? If the same person was behind three of your prize assets leaving, would you reconsider having any dealings with that agent or his clientele ever again?

When Olivier was called up to replace Abbott for the third Test against Sri Lanka in 2017, he told CricInfo: “I want to play as long as possible for my country. When I am playing, I don’t think about stuff off the field. I haven’t considered a Kolpak deal.”

Who would have thought he would follow Abbott so closely and so quickly, swelling his pockets but surely to the detriment of his standing in the game.

Sadly, we have seen this lack of patriotism stretch to rugby circles in Bloemfontein as well. Apart from the despicable shenanigans of Johan Goosen in retiring from the game for a year just to get out of a recently-extended mega-millions contract in France, so he could sign an even bigger contract with a rival club, a school like Grey College is not even pretending to support South African rugby anymore, having signed an exclusive deal with Goosen’s Montpellier club to feed players into their – and therefore France’s – pipeline.

Money can buy many things, but it will never be able to buy respect.

South African cricket was obviously already in troubled financial waters before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, but outgoing Cape Cobras chief executive Nabeal Dien on Wednesday gave a gloomy forecast for the future of the game over the next couple of years in this country.

Dien is retiring after being at the helm of cricket in the Western Cape since February 2015 and he admitted to some relief that it won’t be his responsibility to negotiate one of the biggest franchises in the country through the coming turmoil as the game looks to recover from their governance scandals as well as simply just trying to get back on to the field again.

“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that Cricket South Africa was already in dire straits and already talking about making cuts, and all that will obviously be exacerbated due to the virus. The game will have to reinvent itself with the money and resources we have left. It’s going to take a collective effort for us to survive and remain competitive.

“If not much has changed by June/July then we run the risk of not playing at all for the rest of this year, only starting cricket again in January next year. I’m sure that there will then be a flood of members and suite-holders wanting to withdraw. And it would be a huge challenge to play without spectators because it costs money just to host a game and that revenue has to be offset from ticket sales.

“At the moment, CSA just gives us hosting fees, which isn’t enough to cover costs, so we supplement that with our 40% share of ticket sales. To now also have to pay for thermometers, sanitisers, washing of the stadium, will require a rethink. I think this whole situation is going to take away a lot from what it means for us to go and watch cricket,” Dien said on a conference call from Cape Town on Wednesday.

Dien also said he supported a new playing structure in which the 12 provinces would be divided into two pools with promotion/relegation. That would mean teams like Border and Northern Cape, who come from historically economically depressed areas, trying to compete on the same playing field as franchises like the Cobras, Lions and Titans, who come from the major city centres. Dien said he nevertheless expected them to be competitive.

“I unashamedly support going to 12 teams but it’s important to have an A and B Section with promotion/relegation, for the four-day and one-day cricket. I think this has been accepted as the way forward, the Members Council have agreed in principle, but with Covid-19 we don’t know if there will be further changes. The Mzansi Super League will continue but will be different, with the six local franchises plus two new teams based in Free State and Border.

“There’s always this debate around transformation and playing opportunities and having 12 teams will resolve that. It’s up to the affiliates to be competitive and there should be better rewards for the top six. Players will also gravitate towards the top six and the people who run the bottom six teams must do their work, especially in terms of younger players, they will need a vibrant academy system,” Dien said.

CSA announced at the end of March that the six franchises would still compete in 2020/21, playing in two groups, with four home-and-away matches in their own pool and three cross-pool matches, before a final between the two group winners.

Proteas coach Mark Boucher on Wednesday admitted to being disappointed with how the national team performed in his first four months in charge, but like a chef cooking up a new dish, he now believes he has the right ingredients to ensure the South African cricket side meet expectations once they resume playing.

Boucher took over the reins in December and although the Proteas won his first Test in charge against England at Centurion in stirring fashion, they went on to be thumped 3-1 in the series. They shared the ODI series and lost the T20s 2-1, in both cases again wasting a 1-0 lead.

They lost the T20 rubber against Australia 2-1, but then produced the highlight of the summer with a 3-0 whitewashing of the strong tourists.

“Now that I’ve had time to reflect on the season, our performances were quite disappointing to be honest, especially against England. We didn’t perform the way we ought to or the way we wanted to. But as a new coaching staff, we asked some questions and we got some answers, some of them good, some of them bad.

“But the nice thing is there was light at the end of the tunnel, especially in the short formats, the performance against Australia. A lot of work still needs to be done on Test cricket, that side needs a lot of rebuilding and a couple of injuries didn’t help either.

“But it was exciting to see the players grow as we gave opportunities to a couple of youngsters. We were no longer relying on just one individual guy. But there’s still a helluva lot of work to be done before we are the finished product,” Boucher said on Wednesday.

For someone who was criticised in some quarters for not having done enough coaching courses, Boucher, who brought sheer competitiveness to the 147 Tests and 295 ODIs he played, also seems to have handled the man-management aspects of his new job well.

“It’s always difficult but we gave some opportunities to youngsters when we could rest senior guys and I was pleased with quite a few of them. They were thrown into the deep end a bit but I was pleasantly surprised by how they went.

“It meant that towards the end of the season we had a lot of guys in good form and with a lot of confidence, which meant we were selecting from a pool of about 20 players. That’s good for South African cricket, we were in a strong position, and although it causes a couple of headaches it’s better than just having 11 definites.

“Communication is important in that situation and I think I did fairly well. We made it clear that it didn’t matter what performances were put in, the senior player rightfully holds on to his position. But if people don’t perform then they have to go to the back of the queue, it is what it is unfortunately,” Boucher said.

The 43-year-old, who won five trophies in three seasons with the Titans, said his relationship with assistant coach Enoch Nkwe, who he ostensibly replaced at the helm of the Proteas, was also growing.

“Enoch and I have had some great conversations and I think we understand each other. We certainly have the same ideas and agree on how to do things, we know there are going to be hard calls to make but we’re not scared to make them.

“Enoch has a good relationship with some of the youngsters I don’t know properly yet and he takes a load off my hands, which I appreciate. We’ve just got to keep working hard together and drive our vision together,” Boucher said.

While Boucher praised assistants Charl Langeveldt, Justin Ontong and strength and conditioning coach Tumi Masekela for all adding value, he said he hoped consultants Jacques Kallis and Paul Harris could be retained on a contractual basis by the Proteas.

Amidst these tumultuous times in South African cricket it does seem like acting chief executive Jacques Faul and interim director of cricket Graeme Smith have brought some stability, but it is vital that fans and stakeholders of the game in this country do not forget the reasons for the crisis that led to their appointments and the clarion call for the Cricket South Africa board to stand down must still ring out loud and clear.

There is the danger that because of the sterling work done by Faul and Smith, people think everything is suddenly hunky dory with South African cricket. The battle against the Covid-19 pandemic has also provided a timely distraction for the incompetent, self-serving board to hide behind.

But an expected loss of a billion rand and the poor governance and thoroughly undemocratic behaviour of people like suspended CEO Thabang Moroe and president Chris Nenzani happened on the board’s watch. Many of them were active participants and supporters of #CricketCapture, the rest turned a blind eye and were in breach of their fiduciary duties as directors.

So far, the board has shown no intention of accepting accountability for their gross dereliction of duty to the game.

The big problem in South African cricket, however, is that the governance structure is all wrong and that makes getting rid of the parasites on the board a tough task.

The problem dates back to 2013 and CSA’s reaction to the Gerald Majola Bonus Scandal and the Nicholson Commission’s findings which eventually forced the board to get rid of the then chief executive. But CSA did not follow the commission’s recommendation that independent directors make up the majority on the board. Instead, CSA implemented a new system where five independent directors were elected on to the board alongside seven non-independent directors.

Those seven non-independent directors also sit on the Members Council, a 14-member group that elects the board and, according to CSA’s Memorandum of Incorporation, is the only structure that can dissolve the board.

The seven non-independents are elected from the 12 provincial presidents and CSA also devised a system whereby provincial presidents sit on the Members Council for three years, and can also serve a second three-year term.

So you can see the problem?

With the resignation of Gauteng’s Jack Madiseng as a director, six of the seven non-independent board members also sit on the Members Council that will vote on their fate. So it means at least seven provincial presidents have to vote against them.

But many of those provincial presidents have been part of the problem because they sit on the Members Council for three years. The old saying of turkeys voting for Christmas springs to mind.

A quick survey of the 12 provinces suggests four that would probably vote for change – Gauteng (Madiseng) and KwaZulu-Natal (Ben Dladla) apparently have their mandates already, North-West are currently under the administration of Archie Pretorius, one of Majola’s critics who was kicked off the board during the 2013 sham, and Western Province, who have a new president in Nic Kock, an advocate who has not been scared to take on CSA already in his short term in charge at Newlands.

But Eastern Province are led by a massive supporter of the Moroe/Nenzani axis in Donovan May, Boland have also been a backer through their president, Angelo Carolissen, although his second three-year term should be coming to an end soon. Border have a new president in Simphiwe Ndzundzu but sympathy for Nenzani would be understandable because he comes from the Bisho area.

South-Western Districts also have a long-serving president in Rudi Claassen, as do Free State (Zola Thamae, one of the directors) and Northern Cape (Rihan Richards). Northerns seem unsure of how to vote, mostly because their president, Tebogo Siko, has been newly elected on to the board and should not be blamed for the crisis. Easterns also have a new, young president in Xolani Peter Vonya.

Nenzani and his vice-president Beresford Williams, who has also strongly supported the regime, also have votes on the Members Council.

So because clubs wanting change in some provinces still have to wait two more years before they can outvote their president, change will be slow in coming via the traditional route.

Which is why I would call on any angel investors looking to get involved with Cricket South Africa to stipulate in their contracts that their sponsorships are dependent on the board changing.

And companies like Momentum need to follow through on their earlier ultimatums that they will withdraw their support unless the CSA board resign.

What will hopefully become a new era in South African cricket administration also desperately needs a change in governance structure so we don’t get into this sort of mess again. They had a chance in 2013 to get it right, hopefully in 2020 that chance will be taken and not dropped like a sitter at mid-off.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/sport-columnists/2265248/cricket-south-africa-clean-up-should-extend-to-the-board/