Eclectic bunch bat for cricket

14 April 2016 - 02:35 By Telford Vice

Between them, the four members of the review panel Cricket SA has appointed to investigate some of the challenges the game faces, have played 112 first-class matches, 149 list A games and 24 T20s.Sounds decent. Except that all of those caps belong to Adam Bacher - the only one of the four who has experience at the level that will be the panel's focus.Which is not to doubt the credentials of the others. Dawn Mokhobo, a CSA independent board member who will lead the probe, is an accomplished businesswoman. Ross Tucker is South Africa's pre-eminent sports scientist. Francois Pienaar is Francois Pienaar, World Cup winner and unofficial national headboy.The decision to make the probe largely independent of people currently attached to CSA is laudable. But what does it say about the game in this country that an important examination of its health will be conducted largely by people with little first-hand knowledge of what they are investigating?Or does finding out what goes wrong for South Africa at tournament time require a different set of skills that people cannot be expected to have simply because they have played cricket at a high level?"To have an HR person [Mokhobo, a former Eskom senior human resources manager] in charge of a cricket review doesn't sit that well," former Test batsman Barry Richards said yesterday."I don't have a problem if they're reviewing the finances or a strategic plan. But if you're reviewing cricket I think you need cricketers."Richards also wondered out loud about how "open and honest" the review would be. He might, then, be given hope by Tucker's involvement."I've always tried to be outspoken and direct, candid and honest," Tucker said yesterday."So, if I get any inkling of a failure on CSA's part to take this process seriously and give it the necessary weight, then I will be vocal about that, too."Tucker was listed as a "sports physiologist" when CSA named the panel but he is a lot more. Besides serving as professor of exercise physiology with the school of medicine at the University of Free State, he is World Rugby's head of research in high performance and injury prevention.After investigating South Africa's poor performance at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Tucker produced a 12-year plan to hike standards in all Olympic codes.His proposal was not adopted because of political infighting between the suits, but some sports have taken up his ideas on their own initiative.Perhaps cricket will, too...

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