Ken Borland

What strikes you most when chatting to Cricket South Africa’s CEO Pholetsi Moseki is that this man just loves the game so much and also feels he has a responsibility to it, which explains why he stuck it out through the organisation’s most problematic years.

Moseki first joined CSA in July 2019 as their chief financial officer. By the end of that year, the organisation was in an administrative shambles and Moseki found himself fulfilling various extra roles until he was ultimately appointed acting chief executive in December 2020, succeeding the likes of Jacques Faul and the shortlived Kugandrie Govender.

CSA then made that appointment permanent, on a five-year deal, in March this year, a decision which, by all accounts, is a popular one with the staff and the organisation’s stakeholders.

“I was introduced to cricket in the mid-90s by my cousin and it was huge fun watching the Proteas back then. The beauty of it was being able to watch five days of cricket on SABC and Test cricket is still my favourite format,” Moseki told The Citizen.

“So when I joined CSA as their CFO, I felt I was doing something I love and the first three months were lovely. Then all the chaos started and I thought ‘What have you done?!’

“I don’t know how many times I was deciding whether to stay or go, but by the time I thought I should go, in late 2020, I was the only executive left and I felt a responsibility.

“I was the last man standing, but I was fond of the organisation and the people working there, and I love cricket. So for 18 months it was the sense of responsibility that kept me going.

“It’s not just about head office, there are 1800 people employed in our affiliates around the country. I did not want all of that to collapse so I committed to contributing to the rescue operation.

“It meant sometimes I was having three hours of sleep a day to do it, Graeme Smith had to step up and the staff as well, and I was extremely proud of their efforts.

“There were bullets flying all over, but we kept out heads down. We understood what was at stake. Cricket is not just a hobby, it pays for peoples’ school and medical fees,” Moseki said.

Apart from cricket, the chartered accountant says family are his other great passion.

“I was born and bred in Soweto and I went to school there until Standard 7, when my parents decided, with all the 90s chaos in the townships, to send me to school in the city centre of Johannesburg – St Endas College in Hillbrow.

“The only subject I really liked was accounting, maybe because I had a lovely teacher, young and pretty,” Moseki chuckled. “And then I did my CA through Unisa.

“I am married with a son who is 16 but believes he is in his 20s. They keep me sane and I am very close-knit with my siblings and my Dad is still around too.”

Having begun his working career as a Natal Building Society teller, he says a stint at Deutsche Bank was “when my ambition formed, investment banking was the place to be and it was the most amazing time of my life”.

Since then he has run his own consultancy and advisory businesses, as well as being a CFO at one of Denel’s divisions and, before joining CSA, at Magalies Water, which meant driving to Rustenburg every day.

Our cricket is in the hands of someone who not only knows how to count those all-important beans, but also how to grow and sustain them.

“Our new T20 competition is going to be key to our sustainability going forward. But like any new product, you don’t expect it to make money in the first few years.

“But if, after five to 10 years, we get 5% of the revenue the IPL is making, that would already be more than our current revenue. Our two previous editions cost us hundreds of millions of rand, but now we have a long-term plan with great partners like SuperSport.

“The nature of the cricket calendar means you’re always competing against someone’s T20 league, but we’re backing ourselves. In January people are still in holiday mode, the varsities haven’t opened yet.

“We need to get our fans’ hearts and souls back. We will make it the best we can and back our local market,” Moseki said.

Which is where the new partnership with Roc Nation comes in. The entertainment and events brand are experts at reaching urban youth and there is going to be a real focus on improving spectator experience and using digital to drive CSA’s vision for the game.

“New technology is absolutely important and digital is so crucial – the IPL has just sold their digital rights for $4 million per match, more than the TV rights. We don’t want to get left behind.

“We’re going to go big on our app, there are a lot of amazing things planned for that, linked to the sort of amazing stadium experiences you have in the U.S.

“It’s all about connectivity and over there you can order food on your app inside the stadium, book specific seats; the digital experience of the game is key.

“Over the next few years, there are going to be a lot of changes in South African cricket, and technology will be front and centre of that, to improve the stadium experience,” Moseki said.

But as Moseki beavers away in his Melrose Estate office, he knows that CSA’s most important property is the game. The cricket must come first.

“For the last two years we have not been focused on cricket but on everything else. It’s actually amazing that our Proteas teams and our staff and members are doing so well.

“But our attention needs to go back to cricket, developing more players, improving our relationships with our stakeholders and improving the stadium experience.

“We want to make sure we are the partner of choice and the employer of choice, and that our fans and the media want to come to our events,” Moseki stated.

One of the positive aspects of forcing South African franchises to compete in both the United Rugby Championship and the Currie Cup at the same time has been the way it has opened up an avenue to the professional game for those late developers who would previously have been stuck in club rugby and whose talent would ultimately have gone to waste.

It has also meant Griquas and the Pumas are now way more competitive in the Currie Cup, both being strong contenders for the semi-finals.

Surely no-one would disagree that the broader and more far-reaching the South African pipeline is, the better it will ultimately be for the Springboks. When one considers the roads players like Makazole Mapimpi and Marco van Staden took to the national team, one does wonder just how much great talent is still going to waste. Are they just the absolute flukes who made it through to the big time?

Drawing players from club rugby is something the Bulls have managed quite successfully, given how they go into the final weekend of Currie Cup round-robin play on the top of the log, while also competing in a URC semi-final in Dublin on Friday night.

But, as praiseworthy as their efforts have been, that should not detract from the fact that next season, when all four URC franchises have an extra European competition to contend with, the situation is going to become even harder to manage.

Both the Bulls director of rugby, Jake White, and Sharks head coach Sean Everitt have called for SA Rugby to release the franchises from their player caps. At present, South Africa’s top four teams can only contract 50 players and cannot spend more than R60 million on contracts.

While the intention – preventing unions from stockpiling talent as they did in the past and forcing them to draw from the amateur ranks – is noble, 50 players is simply not enough if you have three concurrent competitions to look after.

While a R60 million salary cap already puts South Africa at a disadvantage in Europe because it translates to just £3-million – compared to the £4.2m Scottish clubs can spend, £5m for Wales and England, £6.6m for Ireland and £10m for France – it is the numbers game that needs attention most urgently.

When a team travels, they usually take between 26 and 28 players with them – the match-day 23 plus cover in specialist positions like hooker, prop and scrumhalf. That leaves just about enough contracted players for a Currie Cup match on the same weekend. Unless, of course, as the Sharks experienced last weekend and the Bulls are dealing with on Saturday, you also have injuries, which are pretty much inevitable during a rugby season.

Then there are also call-ups from national teams like the Springboks and the SA U20s …

Now that SA Rugby have secured five lucrative seats at the European table, the last thing one wants is for the South African teams to be mediocre. The Currie Cup is also far too historic and valuable a brand to be allowed to become not much more than a club competition.

Just increasing the number of players a union can offer some sort of contract to will give the struggling coaches some breathing space. When the cap was originally introduced, South Africa was still in Super Rugby and the Currie Cup generally only really got going once that competition was over.

So there was no need for such massive squad numbers and the development of fringe players suffered as a result.

That is no longer the case and it is time to ease this particular burden on the unions.

Cricket South Africa’s announcement on Thursday of a partnership with global events company Roc Nation is indicative of a newly-prioritised effort to restore their relationship with their fans and ensure better engagement and experiences for them, while hopefully attracting new converts to the game.

Given Roc Nation’s understanding of creating great experiences for fans, and their already-in-place connection with South African sports fans (especially the crucial Black market) through their management deals with national captains Temba Bavuma and rugby star Siya Kolisi, they are the ideal consultants for CSA as they not only look to restore their public image but also ensure the game grows in the post-Covid world.

Roc Nation are the entertainment strategists for the NFL in the United States, tasked with enhancing the league’s live experience for fans, including the SuperBowl, which is second only to the Uefa Champions League final as the most-watched annual club sporting event worldwide. Roc Nation are also lead players in augmenting the social justice efforts of the NFL through the Inspire Change initiative, which will come in handy when CSA have to negotiate movements like Black Lives Matter.

CSA’s new management, both in terms of the board and the executive, have been frank about how they need to restore trust after the divisive battles of recent times.

As CEO Pholetsi Moseki said: “One of our big tasks is to rebuild confidence and the faith of the fans. It’s about how we enhance the brand and bridge the divide, the lack of trust, between us and our stakeholders, especially the fans.

“If we’re honest, we were struggling to attract fans back even before Covid. This partnership is about how we re-connect with our fans and get new ones.

“We are the custodians of the game, but we are also in the entertainment business and Roc Nation are the absolute best partner we can have for that. Fan experience is key whatever the sport.“

Given the dreadful mess they inherited, it is likely the new CSA executives will not err in thinking the sport is about them, because that drove the game on to the rockiest of reefs. Roc Nation are ideally placed to help restore the damage.

WorldRugby this week confirmed the hosts of their World Cup tournaments for men and women through to 2033 and proved again that, as the governing body for the sport, they are mainly concerned with making as much money as possible and not necessarily the good of the game or sporting principles like fairness and equity.

Of the nine men’s World Cup tournaments held, six have been won by New Zealand and South Africa, and yet they are the countries most unlikely to ever host rugby’s showpiece tournament again, purely for economic reasons.

New Zealand’s small population and time zone issues mean the 2011 tournament they won is likely to be the last one they ever host, while South Africa are mainly prejudiced by their weak economy. Although the exchange rate does make hosting the tournament cheaper, WorldRugby still demand a guarantee of about R2 billion from whoever stages a World Cup.

That sort of money can only really be stumped up by northern hemisphere nations and Australia.

But having put on some of the greatest sporting events ever held – Madiba’s 1995 Rugby World Cup at the dawn of democracy, the 2003 Cricket World Cup and the 2010 Football World Cup – there is no denying South African rugby fans feel tremendously hurt at being snubbed by WorldRugby.

That hurt is only made greater by the skullduggery that saw France snatching the hosting rights for next year’s World Cup, after WorldRugby’s own evaluation committee had recommended South Africa.

But when it came to the WorldRugby council voting on the issue, the powerful European bloc backed France. The worse betrayal of all came from Rugby Africa, the continental body which has its offices in Cape Town, paid for by SA Rugby, and who also voted for France.

Much like in African football, there is a growing sense of north African teams seizing power and aligning themselves with the old colonial power of France.

In a decision WorldRugby chairman Bill Beaumont, the former England captain, said would “accelerate the growth and impact of rugby globally”, Australia were awarded the 2027 World Cup and the USA the 2031 edition. The next three Women’s World Cups (2025, 2029 & 2033) will be hosted by England, Australia and the USA.

Apart from an obvious trend towards favouring the Anglosphere, the USA are hardly a rugby power. Their women may be ranked seventh in the world, but the men’s game is still taking baby steps.

Major League Rugby has been on the go in America since 2017 and the sport is growing in the world’s biggest commercial market. But the USA would be the weakest team to ever host the World Cup and they still only attract around 20 000 people to their home matches.

Sevens rugby is their most popular format, with nine million TV viewers for the Rugby World Cup Sevens in San Francisco in 2018.

One can argue giving Australia a World Cup is also helping the development of the game because Rugby Union is perpetually fighting a battle for prominence in a country that prefers Aussie Rules and Rugby League. Especially with the Wallabies slowly drifting away from rock-bottom and their union admitting that hosting the World Cup will basically save them from going bankrupt.

Having been kind enough to help Australia out of their financial hole, one hopes WorldRugby will show the same generosity and offer the same opportunities to New Zealand and South Africa, historically the most important rugby nations.

But it will be at least 40 years between World Cups for South Africa, and New Zealand are lagging in the sporting arms race when it comes to the capacity of their stadiums, the size of their population and technological advancement.

Oh, and don’t forget that both these great nations cannot pour enough of that all-important cash into WorldRugby’s greedy coffers.