Change at CSA’s administrative level desperately needed
CRICKET South Africa’s annual general meeting set for 5 September, needs to be about much more than just electing new board members and announcing the financial results for the last year.
The AGM must address fundamental restructuring of CSA’s administration, because the federation badly needs it. Just carrying on as if nothing has happened in the decade since Chris Nicholson’s report was made public won’t be sufficient.
CSA wasted the opportunity Nicholson gave it in the wake of the bonus scandal – which happened more than 10 years ago. The organisation has been beset with problems, most of its own making, because of greed, incompetence and administrators playing petty politics for which they are ill-equipped. It didn’t help that, post Nicholson, in an attempt to dilute some of his recommendations, they followed advice from Sascoc, a body so flawed and with corrupt leadership it too faced a SA government sanctioned commission of inquiry and now needs an IOC official to help it hold elections.
What CSA needs to do at its AGM is change the administrative structure. There is no need for seven representatives of the members council – CSA’s highest decision-making body, which is made up of the 14 provincial presidents including CSA’s president and vice president – to sit on CSA’s board of directors. Currently the board comprises of 12 people – those seven members council representatives – including the president and vice president – and five independent directors, four of whom have served on the board for less than a year.
That the seven non-independent directors also comprise of half of the members council, means there is little difference between those two bodies.
So when CSA president Chris Nenzani said three weeks ago that the board was mandating the members council to assume control for the independent forensic audit regarding suspended CSA chief executive Thabang Moroe, it was the majority of the board – now with their members council hats on – who drew up the terms of reference for the investigators. That is a structural weakness that is incredibly harmful to CSA.
Three of the non-independent directors, including the president, will not be eligible for re-election at the AGM this year. It’s a pretty good time to make some changes.
For instance, reduce the size of the board of directors from 12 to 10 – have just three members council representatives. Then add an eminent former player (preferably someone from the post isolation era; Shaun Pollock, Gary Kirsten, JP Duminy or Andrew Hudson for example) along with a representative from the SA Cricketers’ Association.
Someone like Saca’s president Omphile Ramela would be an ideal candidate – he certainly knows a hell of a lot more about the game in SA in the 21st century than do many of the current non-independent directors.
There needs to be more of that “player” knowledge on the board, to help formulate plans that are pertinent to the game as it exists in SA and around the world.
There may be those criticising why the need for a union representative on the board – “it’s just not the way businesses work” – to which the answer would be: the Covid-19 pandemic has shown businesses haven’t been working properly before hand because if they did, so many people would not have been left unemployed just weeks into a national lockdown.
My proposals aren’t even that radical, but the need for change at CSA’s administrative level is.
In trying to understand how best to restart international cricket, CSA’s director of cricket, Graeme Smith, said recently that all options are on the table. That same kind of thinking needs to be applied to how CSA administers the game – all options should be on the table.
The AGM offers an ideal opportunity for CSA’s administrators to assess how the game is run, and to implement changes that will make it operate better. It has been a poorly run organisation for too long. Time for some change – reduce the number of board members, reduce the number