Financial Mail and Business Day

The chairs at Cricket SA’s board are more like smelly stools

KEVIN McCALLUM

Iwas filling in forms for a consult with a doctor the other day. Among the questions, apart from the shape and consistency of my stool sample, was what had worked for me when I tried to lose weight.

I wrote that I followed the maxim of Karl Platt, the fivetime Absa Cape Epic winner who has become a good friend down the years: “Train more and eat less.”

It’s not scientific, it probably goes against most modern trends, but, man, it works. Less in, more out, which is perhaps why the doctor wants to know how what comes out of me looks and smells in such detail.

There are seven different types on the Bristol Stool Chart. From type one, which is “separate hard lumps, like nuts (hard to pass)”, to type seven — “watery, no solid pieces”. The types in between vary in colour, consistency and substance.

We could do with a Bristol Stool Chart for sports administrators and politicians.

Type one for sports administrators on the Bristling Fool Chart would also be “hard lumps, like nuts (hard to pass)”, or, as we have learnt to call them, the Cricket SA members’ council (MC), who have lumped their way through the negotiations around their new board, have got a little nuts and found it hard to pass motions, or to even have any motions worthy of the description.

At Saturday’s annual general meeting, the presidents of the unions, the MC, objected to Norman Arendse being nominated as an independent director on the Cricket SA board. Boland Cricket president Angelo Carolissen led the charge for the MC, objecting to Arendse being on the nomination panel list. The rest of the MC supported Carolissen.

Rihan Richards, the new Cricket SA president, said: “We wanted an understanding from the panel if consideration was given to the fact that advocate Arendse was the lead independent director during the period of the appointment of Thabang Moroe as CEO and the creation of the Global League T20 tournament. And secondly the utterances he made regarding Cricket SA during the period he was off the board.”

Arendse doesn’t make utterances, but he does like to talk, a lot. Oh, those halcyon days when Cricket SA press releases would begin with “Cricket SA president Norman Arendse” and would roll into him congratulating or bemoaning or saying something that could have been said without naming him.

Becoming Cricket SA president in 2007 was a big deal for Arendse. He shed tears at the announcement, then caused tears by clashing with players and administrators for the year he was in the position. On Wednesday night, just before 8pm, Cricket SA issued a release that once again began with Arendse’s name, confirming he had been appointed as the “eighth independent director”.

I am assured by those who know that this is a positive step for the Cricket SA board. Hell, any step forward is positive these days, but we shall see how it pans out.

The Bristling Fool Chart will need definition and refinement as we keep an eye on Cricket SA and watch whether the MC can move from type one to type three (like a sausage but with cracks on the surface) or become type four (like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft) or descend to type six (fluffy pieces with ragged edges, mushy).

There were intimations that the MC cohort had co-ordinated their actions before the AGM on Saturday, doing deals to see who would be the one to have the appearance of having the most power. There were embarrassing moments on Saturday, wrote Stuart Hess of among The Star, provincial with “juvenile presidents jokes” , “petty questioning” and “the fact that one president didn’t bother reading the financial statements” before the meeting.

That sounds pretty much par for the course. Juvenile jokes are part of the swagger of the Old Boys’ club method of running sport in SA. They giggle and gurgle and grumble, they huff and puff, and fight hardest when someone tries to blow their house of cards down.

The Cricket SA board now have people on board who know how to fix cricket and they will have to work more and eat less from the trough that fattened those who came before. The Bristling Fool Chart awaits.

McCallum is a former sports editor who has covered the Olympic Games as well as Rugby, Cricket and Football World Cups.

SPORTDAY

en-za

2021-06-18T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-18T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://bd.pressreader.com/article/281938840870161

Arena Holdings PTY