Cricket South Africa announced their plan to bring the Proteas closer to their governing body on Tuesday.
On Monday, CSA announced that they will be implementing a new structure that will see them do away with the head coach position.
It led to mass confusion among fans, with interim Director of Cricket Corrie van Zyl and CEO Thabang Moroe explaining the union’s plans in more detail.
This is how they would like to have more control over the national team:
Why the change?
Moroe: “We spoke about the national team and what we want to achieve through the national team.
Part of that being: bringing the national team closer to the organisation so that we are seen as one organisation, having better communication lines with the national team and then also the style of play."
"We wanted to influence, or at least adopt, a certain style of play as far as the national team is concerned. To us as a management team it wasn’t really clear.”
How will it work?
Van Zyl: “I am in an acting Director role which looks after all national teams’ matters [and reports to the CEO].
“[Then there is the] Team Director of the national team, that is what we used to call the head coach.
“It’s the person that’s ultimately accountable for the performance of the national team, one of his roles is head coach.
“He also has certain roles as player management, team environment, culture of the team – he is the driver.
“He reports to director of cricket. Under him will be his coaching staff, admin staff and technical staff.”
Team selection
Moroe on board meeting in February where it was suggested that he should sign off on teams: “That policy [where the CEO signs off on the team] has always been there.
“We haven’t managed to hit our transformation targets in the past. We didn’t reach them by game and with us not being able to reach the target that we set for ourselves, it concerned the board.
“As management we have to go back to the minister and explain why. The board then spoke about activating the policy which was in place already.
“The thinking is the selector will have his own team – how that team looks demographically is not my problem as the CEO. I would sign off that team irrespective of how it looks. But I would sign it off based that I would have communicated with him that you need to understand that if you look down the road, this is what you need to do to get to that final mark.”
Style of play
Moroe: “In the past we’ve been a well-balanced team. We haven’t been batting heavy or bowling heavy. But in the past two years batting has taken a backseat and that is something that we want to change. We want to see a more positive style of play, the team taking calculated risks and backing themselves.”
Team culture
Moroe: “We haven’t been happy as management of CSA because we didn’t feel that we were as close as we should have been to the team and we didn’t feel that the team was as close as it should have been to the organisation. There are obviously certain instances that I’m not at liberty to talk about in a public space in terms of what we wanted to influence in a team space…
He adds: “We want to have an organisational culture where the team will be expected to act when representing CSA.”
Leadership
Van Zyl: “We’re having a selection meeting in the next day and half.
“Faf [du Plessis] will be captain of the Test team and will talk about the white-ball strategy to 2023 and how that effects decision-making.”