Wanderers debacle: Since when did criticism become a punishable offence?

By Klaus Bauer

The scrap currently playing out between the Gauteng Cricket Board (GCB) and Cricket South Africa (CSA) is childish and futile to say the least. In case you haven’t heard about this untimely melee, CSA has decided to take all planned international fixtures during the upcoming tour by England away from Wanderers. This is due to apparent “unwarranted criticism” by the GCB of the way in which CSA hosted the recent DLF Indian Premier League (IPL).

The cricket board believed the CSA president had acted “improperly” in his dealings with the IPL and that all hosting affiliates involved in the IPL were not properly consulted. After handing these grievances over to CSA’s audit team, the GCB were handed a strong ultimatum demanding an apology or risk having all international cricket taken away from the Wanderers cricket ground. Along with their apology, the cricket board had to provide the terms and conditions of hosting international matches at their ground.

The GCB duly did not offer an apology or offer their terms and conditions, which brings us to the current situation of no international cricket at Wanderers during the upcoming English tour.

While I am not be in a position to offer a conclusive view of wrongdoing by either the GCB or CSA, I wonder if there may not have been a more cordial way of sorting out these grievances, without the apparent punishment for insolence that CSA has dished out to the GCB. I for one would have to strongly oppose any criticism of the recent hosting of the IPL, and am sure many would agree that it was a top-class event successfully hosted on South African soil. However, as much as the cricket board was offering “unconstructive criticism”, since when did offering one’s opinion, no matter how abhorrent, become a crime?

CSA might be looking at it from the point of view that the cricket board is being ungrateful, but CSA’s way of making them see the light is nothing short of a public-relations disaster in my opinion. It could be viewed as something tantamount to the headmaster giving an unruly student detention for back-chatting. How can two administrative bodies such as the CSA and GCB have a slanging match and allow it to spill into the public domain? Furthermore, CSA is not punishing an already wealthy provincial affiliate by preventing international cricket from being hosted at its ground. In no uncertain terms, I believe that the only people truly suffering at the hands of this punishment are the cricket fans living in and around Johannesburg that will now have to travel a fair distance to get their fix of live international cricket.

The question, however, is not who is right or wrong in this little spat of bruised egos, but rather which organisation will prove to be the “bigger man” and decide that this is not about them, but the fans. In essence though, one must wonder what the two bodies were thinking by allowing something like this to happen. They should have dealt with the matter internally and not aired their dirty laundry in public.

All I’ll say is that I hope this matter is resolved with the utmost urgency for the sake of our image in international cricket.

Klaus Bauer works as a video journalist for Zoopy and is a passionate sports fanatic