Player power of a different sort comes to the fore in Cobras coach debacle

IT WAS mid-December 2001 and the South African squad had arrived in Adelaide for the first Test match. Three days of preparation lay ahead and the mood was positive.

A friendly question about the team’s readiness for the challenge elicited the expected response from captain Shaun Pollock, but also an entirely unexpected aside, under his breath. “If it goes ahead,” he muttered.

Pardon? What did he just say? It must have been a joke. What could he be referring to? “We’ve just heard the Aussie players might be holding a strike, refusing to play,” he said. The concept was so alien he might have been explaining quantum mechanics.

An hour later it was confirmed — officially. The Australian Cricketers Association, headed by Steve Waugh and Shane Warne, held a media conference at which they expressed their displeasure at the terms and conditions of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) presented to them by the Australian Cricket Board.

Dialogue, they said, had “broken down” and the players were now considering their options. It was an astonishing gesture of player power that changed their relationship with the administration in that country forever.

The Australian Board hastily reconvened, agreed to mediation and reached agreement with the players the following day. When you have a team of Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh, Mark Waugh, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee you are advised to get them onto the field because it will be the paying public going on strike if you don’t.

Meanwhile, the very first seeds of the South African Cricketers Association (Saca) were beginning to sprout back at home. Saca is now more than a decade-and-a-half old and on Monday, it held its AGM at which the hot topics of the day were discussed. They included the future structure of franchise cricket, the shape and ambition of the revamped domestic Twenty20 tournament and the future shape of the international game. And also strike action. Fortunately, it is not the Proteas who are considering this drastic course of action, but the majority of the players at the Cobras, where a feud between all but a couple of the senior, contracted players and coach Paul Adams has been simmering for 10 months and is about to reach boiling point.

Saca responded when petitioned for assistance by the players, following a formal complaint to the franchise administration. It has a robust “grievance procedure” in its MOU with Cricket SA and the unions, and suggested it was implemented. Finally, after three months of prevarication, they agreed to the procedure. A mediator, former Proteas performance manager Paddy Upton, was appointed.

His report concluded that there were irreconcilable differences between Adams and the majority of the squad and his recommendation was that Adams be redeployed in a different role. The Cobras board opted, instead, to renew Adams’s contract as head coach and to issue a statement suggesting that everything would now be fine. It is not.

The Cobras players are determined to follow the letter of the law in their dispute and are now set to take it to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). After that, the last resort is a strike. A legal strike.

“This is a fundamental issue which we have been trying to deal with internally for a number of months. The franchise is now not prepared to agree to the recommendation of the expert, which the franchise itself nominated to mediate the matter. As a result, we have no option but to approach the CCMA,” said a frustrated Saca CE, Tony Irish.

Player power used to have an underground, informal and slightly nefarious ring to it. Not anymore. Cricketers have rights. It’s just that now they know how to exercise them.