Like a tough decision for a hard-pressed umpire, cricket in South Africa is difficult to call.
The game is in rude financial health, with Cricket South Africa (CSA) reporting R238m in profits for the 2024/2025 fiscal year and nearly R1bn in the kitty in broadcast rights revenue from the India tour the previous season.
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Such an environment of financial stability and calm is in no small part due to CSA CEO Pholetsi Moseki. He’s brought continuity to what, five years ago, appeared to be a sport on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A succession of relatively stable boards has also helped cricket steer away from the commercial brink.
Critics, however, say that for all CSA’s profits, the domestic format is unsustainable. Much of South Africa’s domestic cricket is without a sponsor. Domestic crowds for live cricket, outside the SA20 — a smash hit — are nonexistent. The domestic game doesn’t appear on TV. Fifteen cricket provinces, in divisions one and two, are too many. Division two contains teams such as Mpumalanga and Limpopo. Mpumalanga’s Rhinos play their home games at a school field in White River.
A senior member of the cricket establishment says cricket is financially overextended. “We have 240 professional cricketers in our system, compared with Australia’s 170 to 180,” he says, “and theirs is the more competitive first-class game. We have far too many cricket-playing provinces. At the top table we continue to make political and not sound economic decisions.
“Women’s cricket is a conspicuous success story, there’s no denying that. At the same time, we have more than 80 paid professional female players. That’s unsustainable.”
Many of the smaller provinces, often in division two, limp along. Northern Cape Cricket and Border were placed under administration by CSA at the beginning of 2025. Both were presided over by weak boards and were bedevilled by internal politics and inefficiency in the rollout of their programmes.
Eventually, after a softly-softly approach, CSA parachuted in Jesse Chellan (Northern Cape) and Greg Fredericks (Border) to wrestle the mess into shape. Chellan has brought Northern Cape back from the brink, but his work isn’t over. His initial year-long contract has been extended by six months.
The financial mess at Northern Cape runs into tens of millions. In one case a state-of-the-art scoreboard has become a folly. “It needs to be replaced, it’s irreparable,” says Chellan. “That will set us back R5m.”
Chellan arrived in Kimberley to empty coffers, so the scoreboard money will have to come from CSA. It’s money better spent on development programmes. Or, for that matter, contracted player salaries. But it won’t be. Similar financial haemorrhaging goes on across the cricket land.
And there’s a darker side to often financially strapped — or technically insolvent — provinces. Take KwaZulu-Natal Inland, with its team, the Tuskers, who have just been relegated to division two.
The Tuskers’ sponsor for the 2025/2026 season was an Umhlanga owner of nightclubs and gyms, Sandesh Moothee Ram, and the Tuskers have been officially known as the Moothee Ram Tuskers. Two weeks ago, Moothee Ram was charged with the attempted murder of his brother-in-law, Reshaan Haripershad, and released on bail.
The KZN Inland president, Goolam Amod, was prevented from operating as a financial services provider for five years by the financial services board in 2015. When Jason Sathiaseelan, the Tuskers CEO, was asked about his president’s past, he denied knowledge, saying: “I will revert with feedback once I have the relevant information.”
That was a month ago. Amod disputes the financial services board’s debarment, claiming it was overturned by a high court ruling. When asked to provide proof of his claim, he failed to do so.
“Part of the problem with the governance of our cricket at the provincial level, often in those places where nobody looks, is that the barrier to entry is so low,” says Jacques Faul, CEO of the Titans.
Faul should know. He has been acting CEO of CSA and is familiar with the system. He says cricket’s economic issues can’t be separated from those of governance. Provincial presidents, the very people who ran some of the smaller provinces into the ground, continue to sit on the CSA members’ council, the second tier of cricket government, and vote at CSA’s annual meetings. They can make decisions out of narrow self-interest. Despite CSA profits, such decisions are costing the game.