Missed chance
Behind the mess at Cricket SA
The organisation running the game in this country may have played itself into a losing position by dawdling over the price of the broadcast rights and having to settle for a lot less in the end
It was at Sandton’s Maslow Hotel, of all places, that the final episode in the latest Cricket SA (CSA) crisis played itself out. Present at the Maslow were CSA board members, several overseas franchise owners of the T20 Global League (SA’s first foray into international T20 cricket) and, serendipitously, MultiChoice CEO Imtiaz Patel. The purpose of the meeting, ostensibly, was to notify owners that CSA would be firing its beleaguered CEO, Haroon Lorgat, the following day, but that there was no cause for alarm — indeed, as far as CSA was concerned, it was business as usual. There was a sense of almost literary symmetry to the showdown because Patel, and not Lorgat, had been the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) preferred candidate to take over from CEO Malcolm Speed in April 2008. Patel considered, wobbled, then turned down the offer as MultiChoice moved heaven and earth to keep him. This paved the way for Lorgat to run the ICC — an organisation that is, at least theoretically, t...
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