Something’s fishy about CSA’s new plan
There is a saying in Afrikaans: Daar’s ‘n slang in the gras.
Its got nothing to do with an actual snake or grass, it’s just a phrase which illustrates suspicion. Pretty much similar to “I smell a rat”. How many people really know what a rat smells like anyway?
The snake and the rat is also not a direct comparison to any person involved in arising suspicion, purely part of the expression to illustrate the whole affair.
Currently I am very suspicious about Cricket South Africa’s radical new plans and bullish utterings by CEO Thabang Moroe.
Two things that came out of his address to the media on Tuesday
were very worrying. The first is his clear disdain for the players’ union, the South African Cricket Players’Association (Saca), and the second that he is not practising what he is preaching as far as the word accountability goes.
Moroe’s standoff with Saca is a long-standing one. Last year CSA and Saca were at loggerheads over the Memorandum of Agreement between the players and CSA with punches flying everywhere and then came the new plans to revert from a six-franchise to a 11-team provincial system for top flight local cricket. In fact, the latest mess isn’t even sorted out yet as Saca is taking CSA to court, claiming too many local cricketers will lose their jobs if the new system is implemented. Moroe openly guns for Saca, saying CSA should look after the players’ welfare in what he claims will be a “one-stop shop”. You have got to be kidding me. That is like the boss of a gold mine demanding of his labourers to leave the union as he as employer will look after their wellbeing. Seriously? The mine workers will burst out laughing when the boss pitches them that idea.
The whole purpose of a union is to look after the players in offering them some kind of protection from their employers. In other words assisting them in dealing with the devil. Now Moroe wants the players to get in bed with the devil. Haibo!
What is particularly worrying is that Moroe seems to have a personal vendetta against Saca CEO Tony Irish. That is not good for the game or the players, which is CSA’s biggest assets.
As far as accountability goes, national coach Ottis Gibson and convener of selectors Linda Zondi have been fired in the wake of the World Cup mess. And Moroe says that in his new coaching structure the director of cricket will be accountable to him as CEO. In other words everybody is accountable except for the players and Moroe himself.
The CSA boss even whines that he is the one who’l have to explain to parliament why CSA didn’t meet its transformation targets. But he was the man in charge of the system that didn’t meet the transformation targets, the man in charge during the hiring of Gibson and the man in charge during the World Cup fiasco. Not to mention that he was also in charge when CSA’s R654 million loss over four years surfaced. But everyone must pay except for Moroe.
There is a huge rat in the grass, And it smells like a snake.