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Australia's South Africa tour still on, but could be complicated

January 21 2021 by Telford Vice
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The Australians are due to play three Tests in South Africa in April.
The Australians are due to play three Tests in South Africa in April.
Wear a mask. Maintain social distancing. Don't drive drunk. South Africans have heard it all
before. But not from a cricket administrator telling them how to do their bit to keep Australia's
tour on track despite the coronavirus pandemic.

England abandoned their white-ball tour in December with half their six matches unplayed
because of positive tests within the squads' bio-secure environment. But no cases of the
virus were detected in the bubble before and during Sri Lanka's two Tests in the country in
December and January. Where did that leave the visit by the Australians, who are due to
play three Tests in South Africa in April?

"I had a chat with the chair of CA [Earl Eddings] about a week ago, and we agreed that the
tour is going to go ahead," Zak Yacoob, who chairs CSA's interim board, told an online press
conference on Thursday (January 21). "We agreed that we are going to try and ensure that
we are going to make sure our facilities are as good as possible; as good as necessary. We
agreed that we learn every day, but that is not on the basis that we did anything wrong when
England was here, of course. Because you know that none of the England people were
affected. That's the bottom line."

Two positive tests in the England camp were subsequently declared false. A common South
African view of why that tour failed revolves around England listing as a condition of their
agreement to play the series in South Africa that they be allowed to leave the squads' shared
hotel to play golf. CSA acquiesced, and the visitors embraced that privilege enthusiastically
by taking to five different golf courses spread between 13 and 72 kilometers from their hotel
on eight of the 24 days they were in the country. It seems the lesson landed firmly with CSA
- all involved were confined to the hotel for the Sri Lanka series - and will influence
arrangements for Australia's tour.

"The learning in relation to this virus changes all the time, and as it changes things must
change," Yacoob said. "We agreed that as professionals neither [Eddings] nor I know
anything about this. So we rely on professionals. We have doctors, virology experts, isolation
experts and so on, who lead us through this process. We have adopted the approach that as
long as the experts on both sides, true professionals in relation to corona and health, agree
that the facilities are fine, we go ahead on the basis that the facilities are fine. So far there is,
between the chair of CA and myself, no doubt that the [tour] will go ahead."

Pholetsi Moseki, CSA's acting chief executive, was confident the venture would get the
green light: "The details will be finalised and announced to the media in a week or so."

But Yacoob's assurance was necessarily conditional: "We have agreed, also, that the
coronavirus is so changing that we cannot predict what will happen. So if things suddenly
take a turn for the worse and the experts say we can't do it, we won't be able to. We have to
pray that things don't get so bad."

Which is where cricket-minded South Africans come in: "The cricket supporters in our
country must know that when they're complying with distance and masking and so on,
they're doing it not only in their own interests. They're doing it in the interests of cricket. And
if they don't mask, don't keep distance, and they don't stop driving drunk, and all that sort of
thing, each of them by their contribution to expanding the virus will be making some
contribution to the stopping of cricket and a whole range of other things."

Keeping international cricket going in the time of Covid-19 wasn't CSA's only ongoing
challenge. "The most important thing for the interim board now is to go into the brass tacks
of how to change the structure of CSA in order to ensure that it works better," Yacoob said.
The members council - comprised of provincial affiliate presidents - and not the board is
CSA's highest authority. To muddy the waters of authority still more, most of the seats on the
board are reserved for members council suits.

"You cannot have two centres of power in one organisation," Yacoob said. "Our preference
at the moment is for the board to be the centre of power in relation to day-to-day operational
matters. We should make absolutely certain that the majority of the members of the future
board are independent."

That would bring CSA into line with the recommendations of the Nicholson report, which the
organisation has avoided implementing fully since 2012. But there was a catch, as Yacoob
explained: "According to [CSA's] memorandum of incorporation [MOI] as it currently is, only
the members council can change [the MOI]. If the members council refuses to agree to the
change there may be some trouble and things could take a longer time."

The members council presided over the financial corruption in CSA's professional arm in
2009 that led to the Nicholson investigation. The buck for the financial and governance
calamities that have engulfed CSA since 2017 also stops with the members council. Even
so, Yacoob expected it to do the right thing this time: "I have no doubt that the members
council is not going to come to the negotiations with any ulterior purpose. I think they will
come in genuinely and we will have a bona fide debate. But the complication is that an
independent board does in a sense result in a reduction of the powers of the members
council in some ways."

The interim board was established in November with the help of Nathi Mthethwa, South
Africa's sports minister. Its term was to have expired on January 15 but has been extended
by a month. Yacoob said the board might seek more time to complete its work. But, just as it
was up to the members council to appoint the interim board - which it refused to do initially -
so it will be the members council's decision whether the structure survives beyond February
15. "If the members council does not approve the extension, unless something happens or
the minister does something, or unless there is some agreement, out we go," Yacoob said.
"So we really are at the mercy of the members council and we don't know what they are
going to decide."
As if that wasn't enough to keep the interim board busy, it is being taken to court by Omphile
Ramela for removing him as a member. Xolani Vonya, who had been recused from the
board, has been accepted back into the fold. Kugandrie Govender, CSA's former acting chief
executive, and Welsh Gwaza, the company secretary, have been suspended pending
disciplinary hearings. And there's a new domestic structure to consider. Where will the
money to pay for it come from, and how will the consequent disappearance of more than a
quarter of professional players' contracts be handled?

If South Africa's current lockdown restrictions didn't prohibit the sale of alcohol, that might
have been enough to drive the interim board to drink. Or just to drink: no drunk driving,
remember.

Ⓒ Cricbuzz

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