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File Photo: Michael Clarke of Australia appeals for the wicket of Faf du Plessis of South Africa, but is rejected by the third referee during the Australia v South Africa Test Series in Adelaide, Australia on November 26, 2012. EPA / JAMES ELSBY IMAGES TO BE USED FOR NEWS REPORTING ONLY, NO COMMERCIAL USE, NO USE IN BOOKS WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT OF AAP AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND
The shabby CSA suits are clinging to power despite being told by cricket’s highest authority to step down. But they may have left on Sunday. Or on Tuesday, when Nathi Mthethwa speaks up.
Hell no they won’t. The board of Cricket SA (CSA), that is, it struggled to challenge the latest demand that they resign in a meeting Thursday that went from tense to chaotic.
The South African Sports Confederation and the Olympic Committee (Sascoc) have called for the CSA board to step aside. So has the Minister of Sports, Nathi Mthethwa. On Thursday, the CSA Council of Members, the highest authority on South African cricket, joined the chorus.
And yet the board remains in office; seemingly oblivious to the mess they’ve made with almost everything they’ve touched. Under his watch, cricket has gone from a financial crisis to an ethics crisis to a governance crisis, which has followed a series of resignations, suspensions and firings, including that of Chris Nenzani, who resigned as president in August, and Thabang Moroe, who was fired. as CEO in the same month.
Another Membership Council meeting on Sunday morning could change the narrative by forcing the board to submit, and if that doesn’t work out, Mthethwa could have the final say. He has given CSA until Tuesday to give him reasons why it shouldn’t take control of the game.
At the meeting on Thursday, Daily maverick Various sources have said that the Council of Members, which is made up of representatives from the 14 provincial affiliates of CSA, asked the entire board to resign from their positions.
“The feeling was that it would be prudent for the entire board, including the independent directors, to step aside, especially since the minister is now involved,” said a source with direct knowledge of the meeting.
More than three hours of bilious bickering later, that hadn’t happened. Instead, threats of legal action came and went.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the six non-independent board members, the true villains of the many pieces cricket has broken into in the past two years, are also on the Membership Council. In fact, they are being asked to retire from a job that earns up to 400,000 rand a year.
The board is likely to meet before reporting to the Membership Council on Sunday. What if they still want to hold on to power and privilege?
“Perhaps that would not be the worst, because you would have corporate memory to work with and could be replaced by an interim committee by the minister, according to Sascoc’s proposal,” said the previous source. “That structure could include a former player and someone from the International Cricket Council (ICC), and they could find out if anything has been covered up.”
According to the Simplicable online encyclopedia, corporate memory is “the ability of an organization to retain information to improve strategy, decision making, problem solving, operations, and design.” Entities suffering from “little corporate memory” are “condemned to repeat the same mistakes and reinvent things repeatedly in a costly cycle.” To illustrate this entry in your post, Simplicable could do worse than use the CSA logo.
Sasacoc, acting under Mthethwa’s instructions, asked the board to step aside for the first time in September. After meetings between CSA and Mthethwa failed to move the situation forward, Beresford Williams, CSA interim president, took a belligerent tone in a letter to the minister, telling him he did not have the authority to sideline the board and interactions with the minister. Parliament grew bitter and the government toughened up and imposed a Tuesday deadline.
Mthethwa could cut cricket funding and tell the ICC that CSA are no longer the official custodians of the game in South Africa, knocking the Proteas off the international stage.
Cleverly, Mthethwa has shown that he has the interests of cricket-minded South Africans at heart by granting approval, together with the ministries of health and interior, for the England men’s team to tour next month to play six internationals. white ball in bio-safe environments in Cape Town and Paarl. That comes despite the UK being on a list of 20 countries whose level of Covid-19 infection is too high, the government has deemed, to allow contact with travelers.
It’s not entirely clear whether Mthethwa, Sasacoc, or an interim committee will have control of the game when CSA holds its annual meeting on December 5. But the ball is highly unlikely to stop with the current sorry batch. DM
