Ken Borland

Graeme Smith is now the full-time Director of Cricket for Cricket South Africa for the next two years and one of the first decisions he announced after his permanent capacity was confirmed on Friday is that Quinton de Kock will not be the Proteas Test captain.

Wicketkeeper De Kock is currently South Africa’s captain for ODIs and T20 Internationals, as well as being a key batsman across all three formats. There are few other realistic contenders who are certain of their place in the five-day team. The Proteas are scheduled to play two Tests in the West Indies in July/August.

Smith, the Proteas’ record-breaking captain from 2003 to 2014, said there was the threat of burnout if De Kock was also made Test captain, as well as keeping wicket and being arguably their most important batsman. The 27-year-old De Kock has made it clear that he does not want to give up the gloves.

“There’s no one person right now that we are looking at but I can tell you that the Test captain is not going to be Quinton. So it will be who escalates themselves as a consistent performer, who steps forward and has the respect of the team. Quinton is our white-ball captain but he won’t be doing the job in Test cricket as well.

“We want to keep Quinton fresh and playing well, and to be the captain in all three formats is very challenging. It probably won’t work. Just in terms of workload and mental capacity, being captain in all three formats probably isn’t going to be beneficial. We also have to consider the style of personality and player that Quinton is, and keep him as free and fresh as possible,” Smith said on Friday.

CSA acting chief executive Jacques Faul on Friday hailed Smith for the top-class leadership skills he has shown as the director of cricket in an interim capacity and announced that he had now received a two-year contract.

“It gives me great pleasure to contract Graeme permanently through to March 31, 2022 and I thank him for the willingness he showed to come on board and all the hard work he has done so far. I’m not sure anyone’s administrative career has started off with so many challenges, but he has looked at cricket administration in a different way in a very difficult time.

“We wanted to appoint him permanently from the word go in December, but there was a lot of uncertainty and we both wanted to see if the partnership worked. It has definitely worked well and Graeme’s leadership is vital to us, we’re extremely happy with his performance and he has also played a big role in this Covid-19 crisis,” Faul said.

Smith said he had agreed to become Director of Cricket on a fulltime basis because he wanted to make a difference for the sport in South Africa and get the Proteas back to the top of the world game.

“I would be lying if I said there was 100% certainty when I took on the job because there was so much doubt on all fronts. But operationally I’ve now got to know the staff and there are a lot of hardworking people who are passionate about the game. I feel more invested now, I care about the national team and the business side more than I used to now as well.

“I want to get stuck in and make a difference. We need to make good, consistent decisions over a period of time when it comes to the Proteas and grow our pool of players. We need to maximise our strategies, although our financial position will play a role. The players feel a lot more settled now and we’re having good feedback and conversations with them,” Smith said.

Graeme Smith has agreed to a two-year contract to continue as full-time Director of Cricket, Cricket South Africa are set to announce on Friday.

South Africa’s most successful captain was appointed to the post of interim director of cricket in December to see the Proteas out of the crisis – caused by the fall of former chief executive Thabang Moroe and numerous staff suspensions at CSA – and through the summer.

Smith has managed to get on-field operations on to something of an even keel and said at the end of last month that he was keen to sink his teeth into making the structural changes necessary to restore the national team’s reputation as one of the world’s best teams and fix CSA’s pipeline at all levels.

“I feel we have a really strong and exciting season coming up and now it’s about looking at the seasons to follow. I’m busier now than I was before the Lockdown – looking at new content, but it needs to be financially viable; trying to improve our women’s team even more and looking at them in exactly the same light as the men’s game; advertising for both women’s and U19 coaches, as well as the convenor of selectors, and just trying to ensure effective, high-quality cricket bearing in mind the sponsorship situation and the TV rights market.

“I’ve been in the job for such a short space of time but there have been important learnings. I’m probably in a good place now to implement the ideas I have in terms of contracting and getting all our teams to perform well across the board. Hopefully we’ll have a really successful team at the 20/20 world cup. We’re also going into a new financial year so I hope to improve some of those aspects as well,” Smith said.

One of the most important issues Smith will have to deal with ahead of the 2020/21 season is what to do with the 17 Kolpak players who have signed to play in England this year.

Because of Brexit, all Kolpak contracts will be terminated at the end of the year. Judging by the news coming out of England earlier this year, it is probable that the counties will, however, be allowed to play two overseas players, which would make some of those Kolpaks eligible for new contracts. Whether the counties will be able to afford two overseas players though remains to be seen after the crippling effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Either way, England are going to ‘deport’ several players back to South Africa and Smith needs to strategise how best to get them back into the system.

Once Kolpak is scrapped on January 1, 2021, those players also all become eligible for the Proteas again and Smith will have to handle the hot potato of balancing the renewed availability of some elite cricketers who would certainly add value to the national team with the undeniable ill-will that exists towards players who have ‘deserted’ their homeland by taking the skills that were honed locally to foreign shores for great riches.

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/

Graeme Smith

It’s very difficult to decide between AB and Virat. AB probably has more shots. He started out a bit like Jacques Kallis early on, being very technically correct, but now he hangs back in his crease waiting for the bowlers to come to him. He’s the sort of guy who can get a hundred in 50 balls.

Virat is also always looking to take the bowlers on, mentally he loves a contest – you can see that in how many times he has got India over the line, he has an outstanding fourth-innings record. He seems able to plan exactly how he wants to take a bowler on and he can kill you clinically. They are both outstanding batsmen.

Sunil Gavaskar

AB just seems to have a bit more time and he is so composed, so for me he is just that little bit better.

Virat can get out to what a bowler has done, whereas you see in this series that AB has only got out because of something the pitch did. But there is enormous pressure on Virat and he is a brilliant player with great intensity and understanding of the game. He’s at another level to the rest of his team and makes batting look very simple. He is a great talent.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-africa-sport/sa-cricket-sport/1790774/who-is-better-ab-de-villiers-or-virat-kohli/