Blueprint for a better future

Tony Irish, the CEO of the South African Cricketers' association and Norman Arendse, the president of South African Cricket at a press conference to announce the new business model © Keith Lane

It is difficult to pinpoint the most important motivation behind the Memorandum of Understanding between Cricket South Africa (CSA) and South African Cricketers' Association (SACA) but, given that I am asked the question so often, my answer is: 'To make the professional players genuine stakeholders in the game'.

The second most frequently asked question is: 'What does that mean?' And it's a good question, too.

'Stakeholding' has two sides to it. The first lies in the benefit to the players when the game does well. The second in responsibility by the players to the game to assist it to do well. From performance on the field to signing autographs and offering genuine return on sponsors' investments, the players must provide value in order to benefit.

Traditional administration models in professional sport do not involve genuine player stakeholding. Players are employees, decisions are made for them (often without their input) and, although all true professionals understand the importance of their performance on the field, they don't see themselves as taking much responsibility for the game and often aren't expected to.

The Memorandum will now link the players' remuneration to the overall health of the game. So if they lose regularly, or lose popularity, if crowd figures fall, they will feel it in their pockets. And, of course, the converse is true, too.

There are approximately 100 professional cricketers in South Africa and they all stand to benefit - if CSA benefits. But they will not starve if things do happen to take a bad turn, for whatever reason.

They will all receive their normal contract remuneration with minimal inflationary type increases over the next three years. However, if CSA outperforms its revenue projections, players will share in 15% of the surplus revenues.

Another fundamental issue to the creation of the MOU is to find a balance between the long-term interests of cricket (the amount and quality of cricket played) against short-term financial gain. While playing more cricket can increase revenue in the short term, it will lead to market saturation and player overload and this will seriously affect the quality of, and the interest in, the game. It is naïve folly to assume that people will always watch and be passionate about cricket, no matter how much is played and to what intensity. That won't happen. Cricket could kill itself with overkill and dilution of the product.

SACA will also work together with CSA and the six professional franchise teams to optimise cricket's commercial program involving sponsors, broadcasters and licensees and will receive a percentage of what CSA receives from this program.

In return, the players will need to assess their obligations back to the other stakeholders - the fans, the sponsors, licensees etc and perform and conduct themselves, both on and off the field, in a manner which gives those stakeholders maximum value out of the game. It will also involve a concerted effort by the SACA to provide the player education and personal development necessary to achieve this. This will not be an overnight process but we must put or best foot forward and get things going in this direction.

Domestic contracts have now been standardised. We have one contract where we used to have six. Everyone works within the same, clear parameters. But there is also an attempt to preserve the areas of competitive advantage between the franchises.

We have also standardised player contract numbers, basic benefits such as medical and retirement policies, minimum salaries and salary caps in order to help the 'poor' teams remain competitive against the 'rich' teams and to ensure they don't simply lose all their best players to the more 'glamorous' ones. However, we have also introduced a player 'loan-out' system so that talented youngsters don't sit on the sidelines for a couple of years awaiting their turn.

We have not put an end to the Kolpak system - we can't, and we know that. But we have attempted to ensure that South African players who wish to play at home as well as county cricket have their franchise contract as the priority and that they are still available to play for their country if called upon. Many players have already signed contracts with counties, and they won't be affected, but in future we believe it is only right for players to accept that they cannot make lucrative county contracts their priority and still expect to live, work and play in South Africa without making a commitment in return.

We also plan to play an active role in match-scheduling and the volume of cricket played as well as player terms in ICC Events and the acceptance or otherwise of events which are not part of the ICC's Future Tours Programme. Player safety is an issue that we take extremely seriously, not surprisingly, and we are working extremely closely with CSA to ensure mutual understanding and respect.

Like the majority of Test-playing nations, CSA's income fluctuates enormously from year to year, yet costs remain constant. And the greatest cost is the players. Some tours generate ten times the income of others over a similar time period at a similar time of year.

So, by taking a four-year view we hope to enable CSA to budget and plan ahead, ensuring that amateur and grass roots cricket will never go short.

The Australian MOU of 2000 set the standard and we learned much by looking at their model. We also looked at aspects of the New Zealand and English systems. We then brought in what we thought worked well and South Africanised it.

It has been a long road of negotiation but we have shared our vision with CSA and the franchises and they have shared theirs.

Ultimately I hope that we have established something which is a combination of forward thinking and common sense, and works for everyone in South African cricket.