Cricket takes media limelight cup, for the wrong reasons
Athletes in some parts of the world rightfully consider the backpage as their hallowed ground, but in SA, a uniquely different set of rules exist and they make a mockery of this expectation. You see, the administrators regularly compete with athletes for space on the sports pages in this part of the world and Covid-19 has only served to confirm this reality.
Folks, sports officials are royalty in SA and I’ve seen some of their adoring fans come to blows in the name of defending their favourite suits.
Hell, I’ve seen journalists defend beloved administrators with more passion than they would display for members of their own families. I’ve seen some even go as far as publicly trade insults in full view of stunned colleagues to emphasise their point.
If the walls could talk at FNB Stadium, at Loftus, at Ellis Park, at Newlands, at Orlando Stadium, Kings Park ....
Anyway, it has always been that way in these parts and athletes have to sometimes perform extraordinary feats to muscle their way to the front of the sports news cycle on days when the administrators have wandered near the microphone.
Live sport was suspended in March in SA in response to the outbreak of the pandemic and the inactivity only served to give the men and women who run sport in this country time and opportunity to take turns on the podium almost on a daily basis.
Cricket officials have made more trips to the podium than anyone else during this dark period. No other sporting code has managed to attract anything close to the negativity that continues to hover above the sport like a putrid fog of stench.
The skeletons have been tumbling out of the closet at an alarming rate and there are days when the repulsive fetor emanating from the sport has been so overpowering that it even took pride of place alongside the disgraceful, disgusting, reprehensible and shameless corruption in the government.
All this is rather curious as some believed Thabang Moroe’s suspension as Cricket SA CEO in December 2019 was the magic pill desperately needed to cure the sport’s numerous ills.
But boy, were they wrong. Acting Cricket SA CEO Jacques Faul has spent the past few months putting out numerous fires and I wouldn’t be surprised if the man breaks into a cold sweat every time his phone rings.
Even the appointment of former Proteas captain Graeme Smith has turned into another public relations nightmare and the man whose arrival was hailed as a masterstroke is now fobbing off persistent suggestions that he is the face of a jobs-for-pals syndicate.
I wouldn’t be surprised either if Smith too breaks into a cold sweat whenever his phone rings.
Cricket has continued to dominate the headlines, and we were pursuing new shocking allegations in the sport even as I penned this column.
The soccer administrators must have been conflicted as they watched all this from a distance as their spats usually dominate this space. They did try a couple of weeks ago when the perennial battle between the SA Football Association (Safa) and the Premier Soccer League (PSL) surfaced and momentarily stole the spotlight from cricket.
The Safa vs PSL tension is a battle that is older than the mountains and at some point it seemed football would not resume as the egos got in the way of sanity.
But that didn’t last long and cricket returned to reclaim the headlines. Kaizer Chiefs football manager Bobby Motaung also tried when videos of him partying with his friends with no regard for lockdown regulations surfaced a few days ago.
That old dinosaur Sascoc and even Boxing SA also gave it their best shot, but in the end, cricket is still standing and remains the undisputed king of the headlines and airwaves.
The next few weeks are going to be interesting as it seems the looming Cricket SA annual general meeting set for September 5 could be used as the final battleground.
That Smith likens the climate to “a cancer from within the organisation” pretty much sums it up. Spare a thought for the poor players.