CSA CEO happy with Proteas’ Test fixtures in next four years
There seems to be a disjuncture between Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) management and it’s players about the number of Tests the Proteas will play in the next four years.
The international Cricket Council (ICC) recently confirmed the men’s Future Tours Program (FTP) for the 2023 to 2027 cycle.
According to the FTP, the Proteas will play 32 Tests, half of them on South African soil.
In the previous cycle, the Proteas were allocated 34 Test matches but they ended up playing 27 because of Covid-19.
The total number of these Tests is low when compared to the “big three” countries, India, England and Australia, who all have at least 40 planned for the next cycle.
While Proteas Test captain Dean Elgar didn’t want to talk much about it, he did indicate this was disappointing.
However, CSA CEO Pholetsi Moseki said while they understand the disappointment of Elgar and the Test team, as management they are quite happy with the FTP.
As management they had tough decisions to make in order to avoid bankruptcy at CSA and find ways to generate revenue for the federation that is currently making a loss of about R200m annually. “At the rate we are going, we will be bankrupt in a few years if we don’t come up with something that will
diversify our income streams because, clearly, bilateral cricket is no longer able to do that for us,” Moseki said.
Most Test matches they play contribute to the financial crisis at the federation as they don’t bring in a lot of money. He said this is why they had to block off the January window from next year to accommodate the new SA20 tournament — which is one of their attempts to boost CSA coffers.
That left CSA with limited space to squeeze in as much bilateral cricket as they could.
Moseki and his team are desperate for the T20 competition to be a big success or cricket in SA will be in big financial trouble.
“The main thing that is important for us is that we don’t make money from Test cricket,” he said.
“They are all actually loss-making except for when we play England, Australia and India, but because of bilateral commitment we obviously have to play them. For example, when we host England we have an agreement with international broadcasters, but most of the money will come from English broadcasters such as Sky.
“Sky pays most of the money for the games we play against England. And Fox will pay us the most money for the games we play against Australia and minimal amounts for all the other countries. It’s the same with the Indian broadcasters, they pay us a huge amount of money for matches against India and peanuts for all the other countries.
“The Indian broadcasters, they don’t care whether you are playing Afghanistan or Australia, they pay you the same amount for those games. And the worst part about Indian broadcasters is they value white ball cricket far more than Test cricket.
“If you think about it, a Test is over five days, so the amount that they pay per day for the Test is literally about 10% of the amount they pay for one T20.”
Moseki said while home Test matches against the big three make a lot of money on a standalone basis, they are a drop in the ocean at a consolidated level.
He added that this did not affect SA’s chance at the ICC World Test Championship as they will play a required number of matches for the title.