The Cricket South Africa interim board is hoping to build some sort of base for future transformation goals to be reached in cricketing structures across the country.
Last week the interim board delayed an expanded, long term set of targets for the national team, which highlighted an increased quota of players of colour from six to seven by the 2022/23 season in the Proteas team.
On Thursday CSA’s chairman to the interim board, justice Zak Yacoob, emphasised the importance of establishing a strong transformation plan for the future, but said the collective effort will have to run past the current board’s time in charge of the organisation.
‘Transformation is absolutely important but transformation is very difficult and those in power find it very difficult to embrace transformation completely and our country is no exception,’ he explained in a tele conference.
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‘Those who are not in power, those who suffer feel the absence of transformation mostly and those who don’t suffer, those who impose it are less sensitive about it than they should be.
‘I can make no allegations at all but say that if that general rule is not implacable in our cricketing scene then I will be very surprised because the laws of nature have no absolute exception. If anybody says our transformation efforts are wonderful and no one’s unhappy they would be lying.
‘There a lots of people who are unhappy, but transformation is very complicated, we have looked at it to some extend, we understand that a lot of work has to be done. The seeds have to be laid but it is a very long term thing and if in the next month and a half we can plant some healthy seeds for the transformation tree to grow properly we would be very happy. We don’t think we can do much more than that.’
Yacoob also highlighted that the interim board’s main responsibility currently is to establish a healthy operational structure and framework for the board and Members’ Council to work together, based on the findings from the Fundudzi report.
The justice added that although that remains their main priority for their temporary time in charge, they hope to get the ball rolling for a constructive and fruitful long-term objective of developing world class black cricketers.
‘We have to get rid of staff who are problematic in the organisation. Our job is first to ensure Cricket South Africa runs properly while we are on the board, we want to ensure we bring a level of stability in a short time that we are there.
‘We make sure those people who are called in trouble go, in our view, as soon as possible. We have gone to the attorneys, consulted by the Members Council, to ensure there is no deviation between the two and ask them for recommendations about the best possible structure they can think of so that our main job is to determine a new permanent structure for the board,’ he added.
