NEIL MANTHORP, Cape Town | Wednesday 5.00pm.
TWO of the men in line for the job of convenor of South Africa’s cricket selectors have slammed the United Cricket Board’s decision not to appoint and name the new chief as planned on Monday.
Rushdi Magiet and Morris Garda have both spoken out against the unprecedented decision to interview the four or five selectors prepared to make themselves available for the position.
Only Eastern Province newcomer Gerald Majola has declined an interview while Kepler Wessels will decide on Friday whether to make himself available.
Magiet made no attempt to disguise his disappointment at not being appointed following the retirement of Peter Pollock.
Magiet has served as a national selector since unity eight years ago and was also an SACB selector for two years before that.
Garda said: “The next in line after Rushdi in terms of the number of years served, are Clive (Rice), Mike (Procter) and myself, all appointed about three years ago,” he said on Wednesday.
Magiet was understandably smarting in Cape Town: “I haven’t made up my mind (about applying for the post). After what I read in the media about Ali (Bacher) persuading Kepler Wessels to make himself available on the night before the meeting to choose the selectors I must be convinced that I must remain in the system,” he said.
Garda has agreed to sit for an interview “because Ali asked us all to make ourselves available” although he obviously sees Magiet as the front-runner. “He must have a very, very good chance of getting the job. He’ll have my full support, and everyone’s full support in fact, if he is appointed.”
One man currenty enjoying very little, if any, support from the Western Cape is Bacher. WP general manager Peter Heeger said before last week’s UCB meeting that “now people will see whether he (Bacher) is genuine about transformation” after WP had nominated Percy Sonn as a challenger to Ray White as president of the Board as well as Magiet as convenor of selectors.
Sonn, as expected, was defeated by White which caused some disquiet in the Western Cape but little in the rest of the country where he is regarded – with something of a track record to prove it – as a loose cannon.
However the snubbing of the nationally respected Magiet has not gone down well at all in Cape Town, where the unarguable point is continually made that the UCB is still heavily white-dominated after eight years of unity.
Heeger said on Wednesday that he had been asked not to make any further comment on the subject…for the moment. But he is not alone in believing that Bacher’s enormous influence precluded Sonn from having any chance of a ‘fair’ election and that Bacher’s plan is to install Wessels – who never sought the position – as selection convenor.
Western Province’s administrators are very, very unlikely to keep quiet if that does, indeed, happen. — MWP