Gqberha - Cricket South Africa’s chief executive, Pholetsi Moseki, is looking forward to the coaches forum that will be hosted next month to give coaches and all stakeholders a platform to make recommendations to improve domestic cricket and the national team.
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South Africa is hanging on to the last bit of summer as only two international series’ are left in the season. Domestically, the season is done and dusted and the time for a thorough review has come.
The running of domestic cricket directly affects the product the world sees when the Proteas play all around the world.
This season has seen South Africa lose two big Test series in England and Australia. As a team in transition, opportunities were awarded to top performers in domestic cricket and most of those players found it quite hard to make the step up to international cricket.
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This has put the whole domestic structure under the microscope as ex-players and fans questioned the competence of the domestic competitions and questioned whether or not the game is run properly at domestic level.
It was revealed to IOL Sport that coaches were not involved in the setting up of the domestic structure two years ago. Western Province’s post-season press conference further revealed that players are not necessarily taken seriously.
The same media engagement revealed that coaches’ recommendations are yet to be implemented and that all this has contributed to the dwindling standard in domestic cricket which has impacted on the quality of cricket at national level.
Moseki found this “strange”, as he described the process leading up to the implementation of the structure as thorough.
“Remember the domestic structure took two years before it was implemented. There were multiple consultations. I don’t know how many times the CEOs met and the CEOs were supposed to talk to their cricket service managers and their coaches,” Pholetsi told IOL Sport.
“Remember Saca took CSA to court and then the process was restarted. There was a further one year of consultations where Saca was involved, the players were involved, the CEOs were involved and the coaches were supposed to be involved again.
“To say coaches were not involved, it sounds very strange to me, in a process that took over two years, everyone knew this structure would be happening.”
The director of cricket, Enoch Nkwe, will be hosting an annual coaches forum next month where the season will be reviewed and a platform for recommendations for all stakeholders will be provided.
Moseki stressed the importance of Nkwe’s forum in getting all the stakeholders in one room and getting everyone’s recommendations. Moseki said all topics will be discussed and debated at length in two weeks’ time.
“The most important thing is the forum that’s happening in two weeks’ time, because this will start the process of discussing at length what needs to happen for us to improve the domestic structure,” said Moseki.
“The workshop is very important because there we’ll speak about the future and all these concerns and recommendations will be debated.
“Getting the views of all stakeholders is key but ultimately decisions need to be made. It’s rare that every decision will be supported by all the stakeholders.”
Moseki also touched on the topic of scheduling that was raised in the Western Province post-season press-conference.
The summer has been the busiest South Africa has had in recent years as the country hosted the ICC Women’s U19 T20 World Cup and the senior women’s version of the tournament.
South Africa also hosted its first ever SA20 league this summer and still managed to see out the domestic fixtures. Moseki admitted to CSA being pushed to the limit because of this season’s hectic schedule.
Nonetheless, CSA has done a good job stabilising what has been an unstable ecosystem since 2019. The fans and sponsors had almost zero interest in the game not so long ago but somehow, Moseki and his team have brought the love and passion back to the sport again.
“The last few years have really been about stabilising the ecosystem and I think we have done that,” said Moseki.
“Cricket was under siege and under fire in this country from all sectors of society, so stabilising everything was key and part of stabilising is taking all the stakeholders with you.
“This is a journey we have started and it is important that we continue. Ultimately, all of us love cricket, we all want what’s best for cricket and the players as well,” said Moseki.