Tabloid sleaze is part of SA cricket's brave new world

A sorry episode in the history of South African cricket comes potentially to an end on Friday when the Cricket South Africa (CSA) board are exposed to KPMG's forensic audit for the first time.

It is not known what the auditors have found or what they will recommend because investigations of this kind gain their authority from being watertight. We'll have to wait and see.

Neither can we tell from the manner in which they have laid out the parameters of their investigation in an early document how far they have dug. This is because their document - which I've read - is ambiguous, although the ambiguity is not necessarily deliberate.

I have heard they will uncover instances where Gerald Majola, CSA's CEO, has been fraudulent; in conjunction with this they recommend a broadening of the investigation's scope so they might delve further into CSA's malfeasance.

I have also heard that their findings will echo those of the in-house Khan investigating team, who exonerated Majola at the conclusion of their probe with a limp slap of the wrist. Which is to be believed? We don't yet know.

We might never know, because CSA's board could fudge matters or decide it is in the organisation's best interests to go into damage- limitation mode. This, one could argue, is their habitual position in relation to a tired public and a cynical media.

Cricket's world, after all, has recently become sleazy with tabloid intrigue. In the past few months we have seen the circulation of supposedly authentic letters, apparently penned but not signed, by CSA's Kass Naidoo; CSA's president, Mtutuzeli Nyoka, has been warned that his life could be in danger; there have been more bonuses for top staff without the appropriate checks and balances.

Last week, this newspaper wrote about the promotion of a phantom club to the Gauteng Premier League. Such nonsense is what passes for cricket's brave new world.

Majola, all the while, behaves like a tortoise. When the going gets tough, he retreats into his shell. Never has a sports body been as poorly led in a time of great public crisis than it has been by Majola, a man who has a pathological fear of an apology, a microphone, or an explanation.

There is a deeper, very South African and very contemporary sadness in all of this. Ali Bacher once told me that shortly before he headed the 2003 World Cup organising committee, he'd offered that Majola serve an apprenticeship beneath him in the six months before he left. Majola, who had no great experience in cricket administration, found this unacceptable. I wonder if he regrets this decision now, as his organisation stumbles from one crisis to another and he is forced to meet KPMG for a second time this week - as he did for several hours on Friday.

I also wonder if there is a generation of white cricket administrators out there who don't regret that they bailed when they did (or allowed themselves to be pushed) when they could have been committed to walking the long road. The governance of cricket, like everything else, is best served by the cut and thrust of competing views.

People might not always agree; they might not serve the same constituencies, but there is something profoundly healthy in argument. Alas, as South Africans, we are scared of debate as snakes are frightened of secretary birds.

If SA cricket governance isn't garish enough, consider this: there is a ghost hovering around the edges of cricket, that of Majola's late brother, Khaya.

While both brothers loved cricket (and Gerald has been exemplary in his support of the Proteas) there is an occasional feeling that Khaya's love of his fellow man and his vision would have served cricket well in such times, times in which the sport's many people have generally failed to serve it with the dedication it deserves.