After Cricket South Africa’s weak of upheaval, in which its corruption-tainted CEO Thabang Moroe was suspended and hastily replaced by Titans CEO Jacques Faul on an interim basis, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s release from hospital in Cape Town after recovering from a stubborn infection could not have come at a better time for the problem-stricken CSA.
Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who made his name as the Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, still has more of a contribution to make to cricket.
In fact, The Gentleman’s Game was one of the factors that led to his “slowing down” from public life in October 2010.
“The time has now come to slow down,” Tutu told The Guardian in 2010, “to sip rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to visit my children and grandchildren, and to watch cricket.”
Tutu identifies as a socialist and his thinking could be a great asset to an organization that was just run by Moroe, who appointed his cronies (such as CSA head of legal and company secretary Welsh Gwaza and chief commercial officer Kugandrie Govender) to key positions within the organization and threw out capable members who had been with CSA for years.
Tutu would ensure that no such self-centred figure like Moroe leads CSA again and, like he helped unite the campaign to resolve the problem of apartheid in South Africa, he can help unite the divided CSA.
Australian cricketing great Ricky Ponting (right) meets Tutu at a CSA function
Because Tutu is well-liked in cricketing circles, he was even afforded a standing ovation after he delivered the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture at Lord’s in June 2008.
But there was also nervous laughter and awkward shuffling of feet among the all-ticket 1,500 audience when he relived the day MCC gatemen barred him from the pavilion – because he wasn’t wearing a jacket and tie.
In an interview with Alec Russel of the Financial Times in September 2013, Mpho (the youngest of Tutu’s three daughters), revealed that Tutu is only ever silent around the family table “when there is cricket on …”
In February 2011, Tutu and former England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff have been awarded honorary life membership of the MCC in “recognition of their diverse achievements on and off the cricket field,” the MCC said.
“On Mr. Tutu’s retirement he said that he hoped to watch more cricket,” MCC President Christopher Martin-Jenkins said. “He may now do so at Lord’s whenever he pleases, and he will always be welcomed.”
But it now seems the right time for CSA to also open their doors to Tutu.
South African Cricket 