Here’s how Cricket South Africa’s new administration would have worked:
The Board of Directors comprising the independent component – Louis von Zeuner (chairman), Dawn Makhobo, Geoff Whyte, Vusi Pikoli and Mohammed Iqbal Khan – plus five provincial union presidents, one of whom would be vice-chairman of the Board and president of CSA, would meet about four times a year.
Through the expertise of the independents, which cover a range of topics including business, marketing, the law, accounting and banking (local and foreign) merged with the understanding of cricket’s needs – transformation, growth of the game, expanding club cricket, improving/sustaining facilities etc – which the five provincial union presidents will bring to the table, is expected to provide CSA with a wider, more balanced view of how to run the game better.
The Board’s policies will go to CSA’s Members Forum, comprising the presidents of all the provincial unions, numbering 16, from where decisions are implemented.
So the Board of Directors would be answerable to someone, to correct a notion the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee tried to purport last week. The Board, with it’s strong independent element – made up of people with no previous attachment to the sport, which gives them a clean slate off which to work – is modern and refined with people of high integrity serving cricket.
Why should Sascoc be afraid? Well, if CSA’s Board works it will provide a blueprint for all sporting bodies in South Africa, Sascoc included. Federations can’t be run solely by “sports people”. There are demands on sport that require its administrators to look at the wider world for how their organisations can be better run.
Sascoc has not exactly covered itself in glory in the last few years and for it to criticise CSA over the make-up of its new administration is rich. It was desperately poor on Sascoc president Gideon Sam’s part to say publicly he shouted at CSA’s interim CEO Jacques Faul and stand-in president Willie Basson when the pair came to explain to him the new structure and the people who were to stand as independents.
What would Sascoc’s executive look like if it had a stronger independent element made up of the kind of people who will serve on CSA’s Board? Would a Sascoc Board with independent directors have allowed a situation where the president went to parliament, cap in hand, seeking a R400-million handout? I think not.