CSA brief parliament on SJN recommendations, and why Mark Boucher isn’t suspended

Johannesburg — The chairman of Cricket South Africa’s Board, Lawson Naidoo told the Parliamentary portfolio committee on sports, arts and recreation that a detailed plan to implement the recommendations of the Social Justice and Nation Building report will be presented next month.

Senior administrative officials from CSA appeared before the committee on Tuesday to outline how the organisation was dealing with various issues related to the SJN’s findings, including the legal proceedings related to Proteas coach Mark Boucher.

Cricket SA informed the committee, chaired by Beauty Dlulane that the Board of Directors had assigned various topics highlighted in the report to different sub-committees. The organisation’s cricket committee will deal with player remuneration and selection, the social and ethics committee with allegations of racism and racial slurs and the nominations committee with women’s cricket with an emphasis on creating a Women’s Committee.

Naidoo said a “consolidated view” from all the committees will be shared with the Board by the end of February. “We don’t want to pay lip service to this process, and we were careful not to provide a knee jerk response to the SJN report. We want to ensure we take a broader, considered and holistic view and how do we incorporate the lessons from that report into our five year strategy.”

Given all the publicity its received lately, the issues around Boucher, who is due to face a disciplinary process in May related to his part in singing a racist song targeting former teammate Paul Adams, were also scrutinised, with Democratic Alliance member Tsepo Mhlongo wanting to know why Boucher was not suspended.

“The Board took legal advice as to whether it was possible (to suspend