It's a noxious smell that has ordinary cricket people holding their noses. Only those who sit at the very top of the game in this country can't smell it. Perhaps their noses are elsewhere.

It's not that the source of the smell is unknown. We have seen it emerge from the board and managing director of Cricket South Africa and, just lately, from the CEO of the SA Olympic Committee as well.

Instead of getting in the fumigators, they have sprayed a little air freshener around. It helped to placate one or two sponsors, but most of the grassroots cricket people have not been so gullible.

Wherever you go at that level of the game, people just shake their heads, mutter a bit, but then get on with the game. When you are involved in cricket for purely altruistic reasons, it doesn't help to get uptight about the CEO of Cricket SA helping himself to the cash when the board itself thinks it's all right.

And if you think that "helping himself to the cash" is being unfair on Gerald Majola, go and read what Judge Phineas Mojapelo had to say about it in the high court a few months ago.

What the judge found was that money came into Cricket SA's accounts from the Indian Premier League and Majola simply took some of it for himself without telling his bosses.

This egregious act by a CEO has been widely reported since it was exposed, but it bears repeating.

It is this stark fact that lies at the heart of what has become known as the Cricket Bonus Scandal.

The Mojapelo judgment came in a civil action between Mtutuzeli Nyoka and the board of Cricket SA which had ousted him - illegally, in terms of the judge's finding.

If that was not damning enough about the cavalier manner in which Majola deals with Cricket SA money, the KPMG report raised the possible violations of the Companies' Act.

Cricket SA flunkeys have tried to spin all this with figurative googlies and doosras but every one of their wrong 'uns has been picked as it left the hand.

The board of Cricket SA, confronted by all this evidence of wrongdoing, felt the need to act - not to clean up the mess or get rid of the smell, but to hide it.

A legal opinion was sought, with the help of the SA Olympic Committee. It was delivered orally, we are told.

And Majola was reprimanded, so we are also told.

Except that Cricket SA no longer has any credibility.

Requests to read the legal opinion sought by Cricket SA have been ignored. Requests for interviews with Majola have been snubbed. Cricket SA, it seems, has something to hide.

It is also in denial. The board, which will meet on Thursday, insists that the Cricket Bonus Scandal is over and done with - "finish and klaar", they might have added.

Except that it isn't.