Cricket South Africa clean-up should extend to the board

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 this 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 tougher task.

The seven non-independent directors are elected from the 12 provincial presidents and provincial presidents sit on the Members Council for three years, and can serve a second three-year term.

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 (Jack Madiseng) and KwaZulu-Natal (Ben Dladla) apparently have their mandates already, then companies like Momentum need to follow through on their earlier ultimatums that they will withdraw their support unless the CSA board resign.

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.

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.

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.

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