New board signals a time of healing for SA cricket

John Mogodi of Limpopo, Daniel Govender of KZN, Craig Nel of Mpumalanga, Tebogo Siko of Northerns and Simphiwe Ndzundza of Border are the people elected by the Cricket South Africa members council, the body that pushed the sport to the edge of the precipice before eventually seeing some sense, to the new board that will run cricket in this country.

Of those five, it is fair to say Nel and Siko are the only two who have not been opposed to the efforts of the interim board and, by extension, the sports minister, to rescue cricket from being flushed down the toilet.

While that reflects on the embarrassing quality of leadership on the members council, it is a relief that the new board appointed this week will be dominated by eight independent directors and there is plenty of leadership, financial and legal expertise and governance experience amongst that lot.

Andrew Hudson, whose post-playing career has been centred on the banking world, is the only director with top-level cricket experience and it perhaps would have been nice if more former players had been appointed.

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And the lack of female representation is an even bigger blot on the board. Independent director Ntambi Ravele and acting chief financial officer Christelle Janse van Rensburg are the only two women out of a board of 15, and that’s even after sports minister Nathi Mthethwa made it clear that he wanted to see a greater push towards gender equality.

It is typical of the double-speak nature of the members council that president Rihan Richards should speak of their full commitment to greater female representation and then, when the vote was tied for the fifth non-independent director’s post between Anne Vilas and Simphiwe Ndzundzu, they chose the man.

And Ndzundzu is not just any man. He is president of one of the most dysfunctional provinces on and off the field, and someone who is being investigated over a charge of assault involving the elderly mother of a colleague he had a dispute with as well as a broken arm for his rival’s sister.

And Vilas is not just any woman. Acknowledged as one of the best administrators in South African cricket and very successful in business, as president of Central Gauteng Lions she has overseen their rise to arguably the best team in the country.

Anne Vilas at the Lions season launch late last year. Picture: Gallo Images

So it is fair to say that there will still be small pockets of resistance to progress in South African cricket, but hopefully the cricketing family can start to heal.

CSA has been a dysfunctional organisation and the events of the last few years have demoralised so many people involved in the game. Good leadership was replaced by an environment of suspicion.

Hopefully this new board can bring some much-needed stability after their predecessors did so much to kill the hopes and dreams of young cricket fans.

Critical to that becoming a reality is for the right person to be elected chair of the board and also whoever represents CSA at the International Cricket Council requires much thought.

It’s been a depressing time for those cricket lovers looking for moral leadership as the CSA board and incompetent members council were captured by vested interests and a downright crooked culture developed in the running of the game. But this new, majority independent board will hopefully ensure good governance.

Cricket’s governance issues have, without a doubt, affected the on-field performance of the men’s national team as well, but after a lean period, the victory in the first Test against the West Indies provided some encouraging signs that the Proteas might just be regaining their mojo.

So let the healing begin, and thank you to the six members of the interim board for their top-class work which saw their vital task through to completion, shouldering a massive burden in the process.