Cricket South Africa head Lawson Naidoo acknowledges challenges in board's functioning

Cape Town: Newly-elected Cricket South Africa board chair Lawson Naidoo said on Wednesday that his first priority would be to tackle how the organisation is run.

Naidoo, 58, was elected at the first meeting of the new board, which has a majority of independent directors, on Tuesday.

The establishment of a new board ends more than a year of conflict and controversy in South African cricket, which culminated in the resignation of the previous board in October last year.

In a statement released by CSA, Naidoo said, “We are well aware of the challenges facing us in making CSA a world-class sporting organisation both on and off the field of play.”

Naidoo, an expert on constitutional affairs, told AFP that the board needed to resolve the governance issues revealed by a report and which led to the dismissal of former chief executive Thabang Moroe.

CSA’s administration is currently led by its third acting chief executive since Moroe was suspended in December 2019.

“There is a leadership vacuum. We urgently need to appoint a new chief executive and other senior staff,” said Naidoo.

Naidoo also indicated that there might be a new approach to the thorny issue of racial transformation.

“It is too early for me to comment on what needs to be done but there needs to be a fundamental structural change,” he said. “It is not just a matter of counting the number of black players on the field.”