Johannesburg - Cricket SA (CSA) will meet with the SA Sports ministry on Saturday to discuss the ban on the major sporting codes from bidding for any major international events due to a lack of transformation.
Minister of Sports and Recreation Fikile Mbalula announced the ban of rugby, cricket, athletics and netball last month, and the news came as a surprise to CSA CEO Haroon Lorgat.
“We believe firmly in the need for transformation strategies, we were caught by some surprise by what the minister announced a few weeks ago. It's something which we will understand better when we meet on Saturday,” said Lorgat on Wednesday at the Wanderers where CSA announced a four-year sponsorship deal with Standard Bank.
“Across the board we are held up as the market leaders in so far as good governance, transformation and world class administration. We'll engage [with government] and try to understand better why we were short on some of our dimensions.”
The past season of South African cricket has seen two black African players Kagiso Rabada and Temba Bavuma star for the Proteas in Test cricket.
Rabada, in particular, has stood out in all three formats of the game as the 20-year-old fast bowler looks ready to take up the responsibility of leading the Proteas attack over the next decade. Also in favour of the national setup is that the Proteas regularly field four or more players of colour.
At domestic level, CSA introduced new transformation targets during the 2015-16 season. National representative schools teams were required to have eight black African players in a squad of 15, while national representative university teams three black African players in the starting XI.
Both provincial and franchise teams were required to have at least six players of colour in the teams, of which at least two must be black African. It was a particularly aggressive approach taken by CSA towards transformation during the season, which resulted in some contracted players simply not representing their franchise in order to meet the set-out targets.
Though Lorgat said CSA had not targeted any specific events to bid for yet, there were already discussions on the hosting of future international events.
“We haven't set our sights on specific events just yet [to bid for], there are some conversations happening but it's very early days at the ICC with future events. I have no doubt South Africa will be a sought-after venue and I'm sure by that time we will have completed our engagements with the minister, finding out where we were short and committed to making things right. The fundamental point is that none of us differ that we need to transform. We know where we want to get to. We've been aggressive in our own way to get ourselves transformed. There's no doubt we'll be able to align ourselves with the minister.” - African News Agency (ANA)