Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
CSA ‘drastic action’ to avoid bankruptcy
CRICKET South Africa sought to save face yesterday following a week of stinging criticism from the country’s cricketers over the restructuring of the domestic game, saying it wasn’t bankrupt but needed to take drastic action to prevent that from occurring.
The organisation again laid out plans first announced last weekend, but reforecast losses at less than R200 million from the R654m announced last October. Cricket SA also stated that it had engaged with the players union, the SA Cricketers Association, about the restructuring and that in principle the players supported the changes. SACA said last night it was still studying the contents of CSA’s statements from earlier in the day, and would be releasing its own statement today.
Cricket SA received the support of the majority of provincial CEOs for the restructuring measures, but claimed that various details still need to be outlined. The most critical of those relates to players’ contracts. The federation’s manager for cricket, Corrie van Zyl, said the number of professional contracts in the new structure of 12 provincial teams as opposed to the current six franchises, still needed to be worked out. “We have plans, and we have worked with certain assumptions and the number of players is an assumed number at present.” He added he did not want to go into detail yet, and was awaiting further interaction with the players association.
Meanwhile CSA’s chief executive Thabang Moroe insisted that the restructuring was urgent to help alleviate some of the financial stress CSA was facing: “We as CSA are seeing an iceberg in front of us and we are slowly turning our ship, so that we don’t hit that iceberg.”
The organisation’s acting financial officer, Ziyanda Nkuta insisted CSA is financially stable. “We have healthy cash reserves, healthy investments which are performing really well in the market.”
It is her job to try and bring down the forecast financial losses first revealed at the alarming figure of R654m to parliament’s portfolio committee for sport and recreation last year. Saying costs would be contained, Nkuta explained that CSA hoped to peg losses for the four-year period ending April 2022 at under R200m.
However, CSA will still have to support the Mzansi Super League which Nkuta said incurred losses of R209m on its own, a figure not added into CSA’s overall loss forecast. Cricket SA remains hopeful of recouping some of those losses through its next broadcast deal, the talks about which will begin in a few months. Moroe insisted yesterday that CSA wants to continue having matches broadcast on the SABC despite the public broadcaster not paying a cent for the rights to those broadcasts.