TIME RUNNING OUT TO SAVE CRICKET SA

FRANTIC, last-ditch attempts are being made to rescue Cricket South Africa.

There is still time to save the organisation. Sports Minister Nathi Mthethwa’s crafty timing on announcing his intention to invoke Section 13 of the National Sport and Recreation Act has given CSA until Thursday to agree to the new Memorandum of Incorporation needed to ensure the administration of the organisation can be restructured.

By Friday, when the Government Gazette is published, the door will be shut on Cricket SA. It will no longer get government money, and more crucially, it will lose recognition as the governing authority for cricket in the country.

And then the Proteas will no longer be recognised as the official, representative team of South Africa. That will have far-reaching effects, and as CSA staff pointed out in their weekend letter in which they asked the minister to reconsider his stance, thousands of jobs could be lost.

There have been meetings between CSA’s provincial presidents, who comprise the Members Council, over the weekend to try to break the impasse with their colleagues who are resistant to change. The fear among those who don’t want to vote for a new board with a majority of independent directors is that they will lose their power in the sport.

However, what cricket needs is to adopt a more modern administrative structure that will serve the sport better. Cricket SA has had three major scandals in the last decade, and the lack of proper oversight, primarily because a majority of the board was made up of directors who were attached to provinces, is the main reason for that.

These are challenging times for cricket. Racism continues to cloud the sport, the financial state of CSA is dire, mainly because of Covid-19, the men’s national team – the primary source of income for the game in this country – has been playing poorly of late, and globally, CSA is being left behind while other countries get the international schedule re-jigged.

Cricket SA can ill afford the petty squabbling continuing. It definitely can’t afford a government ban.

Time is running out, but crucially, there is still time to save the organisation.