Ken Borland

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/

Cricket South Africa (CSA) chief executive Thabang Moroe could still obtain the selection veto powers he is seeking for himself, with the matter to be decided at the next board meeting, in Johannesburg on May 17, CSA themselves confirmed on Monday.

The Rapport newspaper reported at the weekend that Moroe’s bid to be able to veto Proteas selections was initially approved by the board last June, when president Chris Nenzani was absent as he was attending a family funeral. The report stated Nenzani then removed the proposal from the agenda at the next meeting he attended.

But a CSA spokesman told The Citizen on Monday that Moroe’s suggestion is still on the table.

“A final decision on that has not been made and it’s currently sitting with the board. A final decision on that will be made in the next board meeting. Confirmed it with Thabang now”, the spokesman said in a message.

While Moroe stated publicly two weeks ago that there would be no quotas in terms of selection for the World Cup squad that will be announced on Thursday, according to ICC rules, South Africa can make changes to their squad up until May 23.

A return to a high-ranking CSA official having a selection veto would take the organisation back to the dark days of 2008, when the veto was abolished after several controversial meddlings by then president Norman Arendse, who is now believed to be advising Moroe.

The players’ union, the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA), were at the forefront of efforts to do away with the veto and on Monday they were still under the impression that the CSA board had shelved the idea. If Moroe is given a selection veto, it is certain to only add further strain to the relationship between the players and CSA.

“A veto used to exist but the players and SACA campaigned for a number of years to get rid of it and CSA eventually did. We opposed the veto on the basis that nobody should be involved in selection except the selectors and the selectors should not be micro-managed. Any decision to reintroduce the veto would be a concern for us collectively,” SACA chief executive Tony Irish explained to The Citizen on Monday.

What has worked well for both the Proteas and CSA over the last decade has been a system where the national selection panel must know and comply with CSA’s policies, especially those regarding transformation, and the board have recourse if they are unhappy because they appoint the selectors on an annual basis. Whether the Proteas have reached transformation targets is also judged over the whole season and across all three formats.

The Proteas players will have no trust in a selection system that allows an administrator to arbitrarily intervene in order to add whatever player he fancies at the time or remove a cricketer he does not personally like.

You don’t need to be an economist to realise that Cricket South Africa (CSA) is in deep financial strife, but unfortunately their response looks set to come straight out of the socialist economics playbook used in Venezuela.

CSA’s Members Council will meet this weekend to rubber stamp a proposal to do away with the franchise system of six teams that, most stakeholders will tell you, has actually been working quite well, both in terms of keeping their heads above water financially in tough economic times and in ensuring the standard of domestic cricket is high enough to ensure a steady flow of quality players reach the Proteas.

They want to return to the system that was in place pre-2004 of having 12 teams, returning sides like Border and Northern Cape to the top table. There will no longer be two levels of domestic cricket – franchise and semi-professional.

Apparently, according to the figures CSA have been distributing to the provinces, that will mean 71 less players getting contracts and CSA will save R71 million over three years. That’s the sort of neat co-incidence that makes me suspicious.

My problem with this move is that it is not about cricket, but more about playing politics and ensuring the six franchises, a couple of which are growing strongly, are not in a position of power to challenge the many hare-brained schemes CSA come up with as their senior management lead their merry lives of excess.

CSA’s own reviews have stated that only seven fully professional teams are financially viable, so why would they want to increase the number to 12? My cynical thought is that they want to create a dozen dependants who will always do CSA’s bidding and not challenge the wayward administrators that so often populate their board.

In the current economic climate, fully professional teams in East London, Kimberley, Potchefstroom and Benoni are not viable and there is no way they will be able to keep up, in the long term, with the sides based in Johannesburg, Centurion, Cape Town or Durban.

Think of all the sponsorships and investments in their brands and stadiums those four franchises – the Lions, Titans, Cobras and Dolphins – have made in recent years, which will now be undone on a whim of CSA senior management. I predict that CSA is going to have to spend much more than R71 million in order to keep cricket alive and competitive in the six smaller teams they want to promote to the top table.

The actual workings of this new 12-team system have not been properly conveyed to CSA’s stakeholders and obviously the South African Cricketers’ Association (the players’ union) are going to want a lot more details as to how, when and why this dramatic change is taking place.

Perhaps the most laughable aspect of this new plan is that CSA chief executive Thabang Moroe repeatedly told the media this week that “as CSA management we don’t know what the Members are thinking until they tell us. The Members asked us to look at domestic cricket again and we need a directive from them, we need them to tell us what their concerns are. We merely play an advisory role, we cannot say no to the Members.”

Which is completely at odds with what the provinces have been saying, with one senior administrator telling me the plan was formulated by CSA. “When it comes to CSA, nothing starts with all the stakeholders sitting and discussing pros and cons, they just come and present us with the plan”.

It would seem the campaign promises of Moroe in his bid to be appointed CEO and by president Chris Nenzani in his efforts to secure another term are now due. Provinces like Border, Boland and Northern Cape are calling in their debt.

The CSA leadership, instead of trying to sort out some strained relationships in the franchises, most notably between Boland and Western Province at the Cobras, or making the tough decision and only adding one or at most two new franchises, have opted for the easy way out. Which will sadly be the road to ruin, with the smaller centres closest to the precipice.

When Marizanne Kapp mooted the idea of becoming a professional cricketer to her mother, her greatest supporter, it did not go down well. But remembering it was the previous decade and Cricket South Africa contracts and having their matches televised was still a long way off for our top women’s players, this should not be a surprise.

Mother Nereda Lamprecht had earlier been the one to approach the principal of Hoerskool DF Malherbe to convince him to allow her 13-year-old daughter to play boys cricket at the Port Elizabeth school. The immense talent was obvious, but ensuring Kapp had the platform to reach her potential was another matter.

“To be able to play cricket for a living, that’s my biggest dream come true. My mother was so upset when I told her I wanted to be a professional cricketer, she said no, I must get a proper job. Well now I can take her anywhere in the world she wants to go and pay for her, so I guess it worked out in the end.

“I was a bit of a tomboy growing up and I wanted to do anything the boys were doing. My cousins used to play cricket in the streets, so I started playing with them and then I graduated to indoor cricket. Then my mother went to the principal and asked if I could join the boys team. I did everything at school and I got provincial colours for swimming, biathlon, cross-country and netball, but it was cricket that really stuck,” Kapp, who has a degree in sports management and is studying for another one in human resources, told Saturday Citizen.

Chosen by South Africa for the first time in March 2009, Kapp was still a teenager when she was given a baptism of fire by hosts Australia in the World Cup. But she has grown into one of the best all-rounders in world cricket, chosen by the International Cricket Council for their 2017 ODI team of the year and headhunted by the Sydney Sixers for the inaugural Big Bash in 2015. That’s the most lucrative event for women’s cricketers, their version of the IPL, and the Sixers have been the most successful team, winning the title twice and being runners-up in the other two seasons.

There is no question that the Proteas Women have been helped into the upper echelons of the world game by the arrival of the tremendously athletic Kapp. She forms a formidable new-ball partnership with Shabnim Ismail, rated by many as the best in the world, while she is good enough with the bat to play in the top-order and she has scored South Africa’s only World Cup century.

A feisty character on the field, Kapp may seem a bit shy and withdrawn in the public eye when not playing cricket. But she is clearly the type of person you can go to war with and is hard on herself. She is especially eager to contribute more with the bat.

“I really want to do a bit more with the bat, I’ve been playing for the Proteas for quite a while now and the seniors need to put up their hands and take the load. The bowling is still our team’s big strength, but the batting has to improve. Batting at number three, I’d like to end more games.

“The bowling just comes more naturally for me and in ODIs you’re normally bowling first and batting second. Which is why my batting took a bit of a knock, but I want to get into it more and it’s something I can work on. I’m just waiting for the chance now because we’re playing matches every second day at the moment, whereas in the past we had a few more rest days,” Kapp says.

The Proteas, having whitewashed Sri Lanka 3-0 in their T20 series, now take on the tourists in three ODIs in Potchefstroom next week and if Kapp plays in them all, she will be tantalisingly poised on 99 ODI caps.

Her wife, Dane van Niekerk, is the national captain and will probably get to the 100^th game milestone first as she already has 98 caps. They will join Mignon du Preez and Trisha Chetty as the only centurions.

The corridors of Cricket South Africa  can be a rabbit warren of political intrigue, but one thing they are clearly getting right is stabilising and growing the women’s game. Kapp is very appreciative of their efforts and, once her playing days are over (which will hopefully only be in a long while because she is only 29), she is determined to continue working towards the progress of South African women’s cricket.

“It’s tough but there are very good signs which show how serious CSA are in taking the women’s game forward. I wold like to give back when I’m done playing, to contribute to women’s cricket here becoming like it is in Australia,” Kapp said.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-african-sport/sa-cricket-sport/2080036/women-in-sport-how-feisty-marizanne-won-her-mom-over/