Mediator makes CSA see sense in Warriors saga

Need an embarrassing climbdown to sail safely under the radar? Announce it while a significant proportion of the intended audience is otherwise occupied. Like CSA did on Tuesday (April 22).

It was 6.35pm (South Africa time) when a release fluttered out of the ether. At that hour, cricketminded South Africans are in the gym, commuting home, fixing dinner or watching the IPL. They are not waiting to hear about what the suits have done.

In five sentences that added up to 105 words, CSA's release said "the recent dispute with the Warriors regarding administrative compliance has been amicably resolved through a successful mediation process". And that "the Warriors have accepted their current log position and will pay an amount of R100,000 [USD5,390] towards CSA's grassroots cricket development initiatives in under-resourced communities within the Eastern Cape. The payment will be made within 14 days of the settlement."

With that, the effects of a misguided decision by an organisation prone to undermining its own progress, a decision that could have seriously damaged cricket in the Eastern Cape, were, sensibly, reversed.

Let's be careful not to give CSA any credit for that: all hail the mediator. Let's also be careful about which part of CSA we're talking of: the board, whose often damaging moves have to be enforced and defended by the hard-working, long-suffering and largely blameless administrators and professionals in CSA's and their affiliates' offices.

How did we get here? On February 16, Warriors coach Robin Peterson decided he needed a third spinner for a one-day game against the Dolphins at Kingsmead. He had Jason Raubenheimer in his travelling squad. So the off-spinner was deployed alongside the left-arm orthodox Senuran Muthusamy and leg spinner Junaid Dawood. Importantly, all of them are brown. Peterson also had available in his 13 two black players, Siya Plaatjie and Alfred Mothoa. But they are seamers.

The Warriors XI included the minimum of six black and brown players, as per CSA's transformation rules. But only two of them were black, which violates those rules. Peterson had not sought prior permission from CSA to deviate from the diktat, which he was required to do and which is usually granted in cases of illness, injury and life events like examinations. The Warriors won by 126 runs.

Cue outrage at CSA. Slow-burning outrage, that is: it took the board 21 days to dock the Warriors all five points they had duly earned in the match, and to fine them the equivalent of USD27,300. Half was to be paid by the end of February next year, the rest suspended for five years on condition they didn't re-offend in that time.

The Warriors were veering towards relegation before that happened, but they were able to avoid it. Had they not, the Eastern Cape, the heartland of black cricket in South Africa, would not have been represented in the first division. How would that not have harmed transformation, probably irreparably? Why would a smaller fine - as has belatedly been handed down - not have sufficed? It seems, if you sit on CSA's board, you don't think about things like that.

The points taken from the Warriors put them out of the running for the one-day play-offs. In their apparently infinite lack of wisdom, the board gave the points to the properly beaten Dolphins. Cricket has a strange sense of humour: the Dolphins ended up winning a final they had no right to reach.

The Knights are understandably unhappy at being relegated for the second time in three seasons. But they think they see a glimmer of hope. If they can convince CSA to expunge the February 16 match from the records, their net runrate would be higher than the Warriors'. That would mean the Knights stay up and the Warriors go down. Games are seldom, if ever, expunged. It would be unfair on the players involved to pretend they never batted and bowled.

Besides, given CSA's seeming mea culpa on the substantive elements of their argument with the Warriors, the chances of the match being scrapped entirely would appear to be somewhere between zero and nil.

There's more bad news where that came from in the shape of the board advertising for a selection convenor for the men's national sides. Since Shukri Conrad and Rob Walter have been able to select their squads and teams themselves, South Africa have reached the WTC final and the T20 World Cup final - which they never did when selectors were involved.

The players have enjoyed, and responded productively to, being able to find out from one person - the coach, who is right there in the nets and the dressingroom with them, not tucked away in the president's suite - what they need to do to stay in the mix. Conrad and Walter have said they consult with trusted allies before announcing their decisions.

But it seems that's not good enough for the board, who will have to forgive us for thinking they're allergic to success and addicted to meddling. They will also have to put up with us wondering why the structure exists in its current form, which promotes provincialism, greed, inefficiency and ineptitude and rarely acts in the interests of the game.

Imagine there's no CSA board. It isn't hard to do.