Cricket lore is full of arcane and eccentric statistics, but there are few half-centuries as bizarre as the one facing South African cricket right now, as it teeters on the brink of a second international ban exactly 50 years since it was first slung out of the game.
Of course, there are some major differences between the 1970 ban and the one now looming over our summer sport, not least of which is the fact that this one, if it happens, will have the backing of the South African government. Well, sort of.
The details are Byzantine and the characters Dickensian, but the bottom line is very clear.
After years of decline, Cricket South Africa is almost entirely broken. It still goes through the motions, its politburo of overpaid meat-suits shuffling into boardrooms to make announcements that change nothing, and newspaper sub-editors still gamely try to make cricketing puns, writing headlines about things getting hit for six or run out, but all of this is a facade. Cricket in South Africa is in terminal decline, and CSA in its current form is hopelessly unable to save it.
I’m not sure exactly when the current can of worms was first opened. It might have been when Haroon Lorgat was axed in 2017, or when the Proteas’ clownishly bad performance at the 2019 World Cup revealed a team in tatters. But by the time CSA started blacklisting journalists, it was clear that heads had to roll; and once the press began looking at certain necks, it was all over.
Tasked with getting its house in order, CSA promptly set fire to the house, apparently with the enormous wads of cash its utterly incompetent senior managers still get paid for some reason.
It was time to call in the big guns. Instead, the state called for SASCOC, which is to sporting governance what rinderpest is to farming. Calling in SASCOC to clean up CSA is like calling in fifteen toddlers with explosive diarrhoea to clean up your lounge.
Which left sports minister Nathi Mthethwa with only one option: the nuclear one.
The details are Byzantine and the characters Dickensian, but the bottom line is very clear.
This week, he gave CSA an extraordinary ultimatum: sort out your crisis by October 27, or the government takes over, at which point South Africa is in direct violation of the ICC’s rules on political intervention, which means the ICC is entirely within its rights to expel the Proteas from world cricket.
Crucially, Mthethwa sent the same message to the ICC, effectively enlisting it publicly as the state’s de facto hit-man, which means the writing on the wall at CSA should be very large indeed: if South African cricket is banned from the world game, there is only one organisation to blame.
It’s good brinkmanship, but it’s not entirely honest. Because, to be fair, CSA isn’t the only organisation to blame. And If I were one of the helpless, beleaguered meat-suits at CSA right now, taking broadsides from the ANC government, I’d be pretty pissed. Because everything I’d done at CSA was straight out of the ANC textbook.
Unaccountable, secretive leadership? Check. A total disconnect between remuneration and performance? Check. Only a tangential grasp of business basics? Check. A hostile attitude to critical press? Check. A confused, vacillating approach to affirmative action? Check.
Yes, the fools at CSA might be about to get their come-uppance. But you have to admit: Nathi Mthethwa is only reaping what he and his comrades have sowed.
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