Cricket South Africa on Wednesday morning confirmed that it had suspended three senior officials claiming they “were or were not derelict in fulfilling their duties.”
Independent Media understands that the three officials are the current interim Director of Cricket, Corrie van Zyl, Chief Operating Officer Nassei Appiah, and the Head of sales and sponsorship, Clive Eksteen. The trio were apparently all asked to leave the building following a staff meeting at Cricket SA’s head office in Johannesburg on Tuesday afternoon.
In its statement, released just after 7am on Wednesday, Cricket SA claim that the suspensions resulted from “an unfortunate situation involving players and player contracts.”
That situation pertains to the non payment of fees to players for last year’s Mzansi Super League. Last week the South African Cricketers Association, the players union which represents over 300 professional players in the country, served notice that it was launching a dispute against CSA. The dispute resulted from CSA’s failure to pay the players for use of their image rights in last year’s MSL.
On Wednesday CSA said it was investigating the matter “to determine the extent to which certain CSA employees were or were not derelict in fulfilling their duties.”
Meanwhile CSA stated that it had been in contact with SACA and agreed that all fees due to the players would be transferred to them with immediate effect.
“CSA wants to reassure all cricket fans and all cricket stakeholders that our organisation and indeed our staff adhere to the highest ethical standards in all our dealings and that consistency and accountability remains uppermost in all our processes and procedures,” said CSA’s chief executive, Thabang Moroe.
“It is our expectation that all our staff members, including third-party stakeholders who are associated with the CSA brand should protect the reputation of CSA and the sport of cricket at all times.”
The suspensions rocked the organisation on Tuesday afternoon, leaving many employees shocked. Asked for comment on Tuesday evening, Van Zyl, who in his capacity as acting Director of Cricket, accompanied the Proteas men’s side to India recently, said: “Please respect, I don’t want to talk.”
Eksteen, who played seven Tests and six ODIs, and had previously been suspended after posing for a picture in a Sonny Bill Williams mask during a Test between SA and Australia last year, also refused to comment when contacted.
Cricket South Africa is facing a crisis as it tries to deal with the poor performances of various national teams,while also dealing with two court cases, one brought by the country’s professional players, over the proposed restructuring of the domestic game.
The mens and womens Proteas teams struggled badly in India on recent tours, while the under-19 boys team, which plays in a World Cup on home-soil early next year, has also lost more matches than it has won in the last 12 months.