Cricket South Africa is officially a joke. But not one to be laughed at, rather one at which you shake your head and roll your eyes.
It emerged this week that the Eastern Province Cricket Board have nominated a convicted fraudster, Rajan Moodaley, to be that union’s president. And apparently this is okay with Cricket SA. “Approving nominations,” Ray Mali the chairman of CSA’s nominations committee told The Times, “is based solely on the cricket knowledge and contribution made by the nominees – nothing else.”
Given the current climate that is a horrendously careless remark from Mali, a former CSA and ICC president.
Just two months ago, following Cricket SA’s AGM, the organisation’s vice-president AK Khan, said that CSA’s Board deserved sympathy over the bonus mess that their chief executive dumped them in because, “none of us are experts in knowing the details of the Companies Act and so may have made mistakes”.
They clearly don’t appear to be learning from them if Mali is to be understood. He reckons all you need is “cricket knowledge” to serve on the Board.
So this weekend that Board will in all likelihood vote that they have no confidence in Mtutuzeli Nyoka doing the job as president. They will hope that as Nyoka makes way – and he won’t go quietly – that with him the controversy will disappear.
However, as Nyoka leaves, with him also goes whatever trust anyone can have in cricket’s administrators, especially the Board. Big companies, bar SA Breweries, have indicated they want no part of Cricket SA, by not sponsoring the two domestic limited overs competitions, nor the series involving Australia and Sri Lanka this summer.
And now, as if their image hasn’t taken enough of a battering, CSA may well have a convicted fraudster sitting on their Board too. Good luck to commercial manager Richard Glover, as he tries to find sponsorship because should the EPCB go ahead and vote him in as their president, who would then want to be associated with them?
Now more than ever Cricket SA needs some new administrative blood. When the national players err, they are dropped, so too must this Board be dropped. They have plunged the sport into the ugliest mess since Hansie Cronjé took money from an Indian bookie.
All the unions, who have met in recent weeks concerning the motion of a vote of no- confidence, need to meet again and ask if the current CSA board best serves cricket in this country.
That would start the process of drawing a line under this sordid affair.