A couple of days after Haroon Lorgat’s appoi-ntment as Cricket South Africa’s new chief executive, I was having a chat with an insider at the organisation, who made the point about giving the new regime there a bit of time.
“We’ve been through a lot of sh*t recently. We know we need to earn back the public’s trust, we just need time to do it,” he said.
It’s been barely six months and the general feeling about CSA is that they’re a greedy bunch of spineless turncoats. It’s hard not to agree.
Consider their actions in the past few weeks since it emerged that the boards of England, Australia and India had taken all administrative authority for themselves while creating a new financial model which saw the majority of the sport’s cash flow their way. On January 20, the draft proposal, according to CSA, was “fundamentally flawed”.
Eight days later, their position had softened, though there was still a defiant tone following that ICC Board meeting in Dubai.
“One of the hallmarks of our new administration has been an absolute adherence to the principles of good corporate governance and we do not intend to deviate from this,” CSA stated through their president Chris Nenzani.
Three days later, it emerged that CSA would “need to engage further with the ICC leadership” before they would be able “to reach a consensus position”.
In the meanwhile, a heart-wrenching letter was written, liberally quoting Nelson Mandela about adhering to “democratic principles” and “respect for the rights of all”.
CSA dismissed reports that they had entered into a deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India, which would see them become the eighth full member to back the proposals, thus leading to their adoption.
“CSA vehemently denies any notion of deals being made with any other party,” Nenzani said on the fourth of this month.
By the seventh, having met BCCI president Narayanswami Srinivasan, he had a deal which the next day saw CSA back proposals which effectively handed power in the ICC to India, Eng-land and Australia.
At the time of Lorgat’s appointment, he and the CSA insider spoke of the need for CSA to be given time to win back the SA public’s trust. At the time, I said CSA didn’t deserve to be trusted. At that point my biggest gripe was that they didn’t adhere to the recommendations of Judge Chris Nicholson. Remember nine independent directors for the board? Soon afterwards, that became a 50-50 split bet-ween independents and non-independents.
That changed again to a 7-5 split in favour of non independents, as it is now.
Trust? As an old Italian mobster would say, “forget about it!”