Being a CSA board member is worth up to R400 000 a year.
TELFORD VICE in Paarl
TO the many fronts Thabang Moroe is fighting on, add his relationship with Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) highest echelons.
CSA chief executive Moroe has an ally in president Chris Nenzani, but the latter’s position has been weakened by dissatisfaction with the decision, taken by the Members Forum (MF) in August, to change the constitution to extend Nenzani’s term by a year.
At least two figures on the MF, CSA’s ultimate authority, are known to have opposed that move, and to harbour growing concerns about the many challenges facing the game.
Deepening debt heads a list that includes too many interim appointments, multiple suspensions, the paying public’s rejection of the Mzansi Super League, and a men’s Test team that needs to bounce back from their disastrous series in India when they take on England next month.
It is in the MF's jurisdiction to call for the dissolution of the board, although that appears unlikely to win the required support at this stage.
Board members could earn up to R400 000 a year from CSA if they attend all meetings of the board and the relevant sub-committees, which doubtless make them less likely to rock the boat and take on the status quo.
Even so, it appears Moroe and his fellow suits are on divergent paths.
“He’s young and lacks experience as an administrator at this level, but there’s no-one to guide him,” a source close to 37-year-old Moroe said.
“The board is hopeless. Not one of them knows anything about cricket.”
Another insider said the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) would wade into cricket’s troubles — but also that their intervention wasn’t imminent.
“That will happen down the line, especially if there’s a financial collapse,” the source said.
“But because cricket isn’t an Olympic sport there isn’t much SASCOC can do before than happens.
“CSA are an affiliate, but SASCOC’s only real involvement with cricket is to award national colours.”
And, without SASCOC’s engagement, the sport ministry are unlikely to take action.
All the while, cricket struggles on. Staff were summoned to a meeting on Thursday and, an insider said, “given a 20-minute lecture about how journalists are out to get CSA and are not to be trusted”.
They were apparently threatened with “the use of forensics if required” to stop the steady flow of leaks to the press from worried staff.
The connection on a call on Friday to CSA’s acting chief financial officer, Ziyanda Nkuta, wasn’t sound, but she had the good manners to call back within seconds. Asked to confirm whispers that she had resigned, Nkuta said she was driving and could not comment.
It was Nkuta who assured cricketminded South Africans in April that “it’s been incorrectly reported in the media that CSA are in a financial crisis” — despite the fact that the organisation could lose between R654-million and R1-billion by the end of the 2022 right cycle.
Which might bring SASCOC into the equation, but given the Olympic body’s own systemic problems South Africans shouldn’t hold out much hope that will resolve cricket’s multiple challenges.
As outlandish as many will find the prospect, the game’s best hope of avoiding terminal trouble could come down to the performance of the least likely suspect for that outcome: Moroe.
First published by the Sunday Times.
Oh boy! I was going through the list of board of directors of various provinces and clearly almost none of them have any background of cricket. No wonder they are in so much trouble. The number of non-cricketing people in cricket in SA is outrageously large.