Stuart Hess. Stuart Hess.
JOHANNESBURG – The price South African cricket has paid for the excesses of the Global League T20 and its successor the Mzansi Super League is fewer domestic matches.
There will be nine fewer first-class franchise matches next summer and the same in the Momentum One-Day Cup. There will be fewer senior provincial matches as well.
Cricket SA’s hierarchy has been meeting this week to discuss revising the schedule of the MSL too, with a shorter tournament said to be in the offing.
It should be noted, however, that the changes announced this week are for next season only - for now.
But it still means less cricket and that is not good.
This revised, shrunk down domestic schedule is the result of the excesses of the past.
Remember how, back in 2017, Cricket SA flew players and sponsors to London - some flew business class - and were put up in five-star hotels for the launch of the GLT20.
That launch was actually originally scheduled to be hosted at Lord’s the day after the ICC Champions Trophy final, which was being played in England.
But the England and Wales Cricket Board scuppered that move, perhaps still scarred by the time it allowed the now imprisoned American financier Allen Stanford to land a helicopter at the Nursery End at Lord’s.
Earlier that year, I attended a laser show at the Wanderers where the logo for the GLT20 was unveiled with Makhaya Ntini bowling a couple of balls to Ashwell Prince in the middle of the ‘Bullring’ as part of the festivities that night.
Even when Haroon Lorgat, who was at the forefront of the GLT20 planning, was removed as chief executive of CSA, his successors continued the excess.
That was after they had spent around R200-million paying off players, coaches and team owners when the GLT20 fell apart.
Cricket SA created the MSL, spent money on clothes, branding and parties all while it had no sponsor for the event.
There was a fall-out with SuperSport, and then a “deal” with the SABC that saw no money come in for CSA from the public broadcaster. More money, all from CSA coffers, until it became clear that they could no longer spend, spend, spend.
The original restructuring plans for the domestic game, announced in April last year, would have led to more than 70 professional cricketers losing their contracts. The body representing local players took CSA to court. More money being spent.
CSA chief executive Thabang Moroe is now suspended on full pay while a forensic audit takes place into how he managed CSA’s affairs.
But he’s not solely responsible, of course.
How bizarre it is, then, that some of the same people who rubber-stamped the excess back in 2017, and flew to London and lived it up in the five-star hotel, were authorising this week’s cut in the domestic schedule.
The price South African cricket is paying is vast and painful.