Kimberley cricket capers

If there were a competition to see which cricket union is the worst in the world, Northern Cape Cricket (NCC), based in Kimberley, would come close.

Last year a bowl of sweets was left in the players’ dining area at the Kimberley Oval, where the Northern Cape Heat and the Knights were playing the four-day second division final. The sweets were to have far-reaching ramifications.

Several players and support staff helped themselves to handfuls, not knowing the sweets were laced with dagga.

Jonathan Malan, the Heat’s video analyst, ate some and later felt ill, passed out, was put on oxygen and taken to hospital.

 “I now have to take chronic heart medication for the rest of my life,” he says. “Toxicology reports confirmed a drug count in my blood of 99/100. Two other staff members also overdosed.”

NCC is itself on metaphoric medication. It has not had audited financials for three years and no AGM in that time. Having given NCC a series of deadlines — and ample opportunity to get its house in order — Cricket South Africa (CSA) lost patience last month. It took the unusual step of intervening in NCC’s affairs.

“Only limited expenses are reflected for the first seven months of the financial year and NCC’s bank balances reflect no change since the April 30, 2024 year-end,” says CSA.

Intervening meant appointing an external administrator, Jesse Chellan, to work in NCC’s Kimberley office three days a week. Chellan has been CEO of the Titans, Dolphins and Warriors.

“After fact-finding in the first week, with CSA’s permission, in the second week I appointed a firm of external auditors,” says Chellan. “They’ll paint a picture of the mess, reporting directly to CSA CFO Tjaart van der Walt.”

Following the money — or lack of it — at NCC is the smart move. NCC president Gibson Molale admitted to the FM that NCC’s finances “are not in the best state”, so it’s an open secret that the union is in a financial hole. Whether that hole is as deep as Kimberley’s Big Hole, is the question.

Running parallel with CSA’s intervention was an application brought last October by Ferdi Bitterbosch, one of NCC’s directors, to have five fellow NCC board members declared delinquent.

Bitterbosch said the five — Rizwaan Engelbrecht, Samuel Molawa, Mbulelo Bosman, Molale and CEO Thapelo January — had failed to convene regular board meetings and had not presented those meetings with up-to-date financials.

In February, Judge Mpho Mamosebo upheld Bitterbosch’s application in a 23-page ruling. None of the five will be allowed to become company directors again, she ruled and, though the judge did not say as much, there must now be doubts about Molale’s fitness to sit on the local organising committee for the 2027 Cricket World Cup.

The judge was particularly scathing of January, better known in Kimberley circles as a deejay, saying he did not meet the minimum advertised requirements for the CEO’s position. “It remains a mystery as to how the disciplinary [convened to look into why January got the job when he shouldn’t have] was aborted,” she said.

Bitterbosch was part of the first interview panel for the CEO’s job and did not recommend January. That panel’s choice was disregarded. A later panel subsequently gave January the job.

Meanwhile for more than a year, video analyst Malan says he tried to get redress from NCC over the dagga-laced sweets incident but has been rebuffed

Last year there was a “brawl” between Molale and Engelbrecht, named as one of the other two delinquent directors in Mamosebo’s report. Several NCC board members believe that the “brawl” was designed with an ulterior motive: to lead to the postponement of the important meeting it preceded.

Such shenanigans are all in a day’s work at NCC. The union’s previous financial manager, JP van Niekerk, was convicted of fraud and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. Van Niekerk wouldn’t process two invoices totalling R600,000 but January and Molale put pressure on him to sign, a fact highlighted in Mamosebo’s report.

Despite CSA’s interventions via the placement of Chellan, it will be tough to turn the culture around. It has grown under CSA’s nose, so it is complicit in the very thing it is now trying to solve at the worst cricket union in the world.