Cricket South Africa (CSA) has filed a formal complaint to the International Cricket Council (ICC) against Cricket Australia (CA) over their decision to pull out from the Men’s team tour of South Africa this month.
Baffled by the decision of the Australian cricket governing body to pull out of the tour at the last minute, CSA has sought ICC’s intervention in the matter. It is evident that the action by CA has strained the relationship between the two boards.
CSA has reportedly written a letter to the ICC with regard to CA’s decision to indefinitely postpone the three-match Test series between South Africa and Australia slated to start next month.
In the letter, CSA has asked for the monetary compensation from Australia for all the financial loss incurred in the arrangement of the tour.
“Considering all the relevant circumstances, we do not believe that the cancellation of the tour on the part of CA amounted to ‘acceptable non-compliance’ under the World Test Championship [WTC] competition terms. Unfortunately, we have little choice but to formally progress the matter under the provisions of the WTC competition terms and the FTP [future tours programme] agreement,” Pholetsi Moseki, CSA’s acting chief executive, wrote to ICC chief executive Manu Sawhney.
“Hence, we now formally require ICC to proceed to obtain a security report… whereafter we will proceed to have the matter adjudicated upon by a disputes panel under the ICC disputes resolution committee terms of reference.”
The Australian men team was to tour South Africa this month for a three-match Test series. However, given the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the host country, CA decided not to go ahead with the tour as planned to avoid putting the health of the players and staff at risk.
“The relationship is definitely strained at this stage,” CSA director Graeme Smith had said in a virtual press conference on Monday. “There is an effort from our side to engage and set up a meeting at board level. Engagement needs to happen to improve things between South Africa and Australia.”
“We’ve had some engagement with the operations side of Cricket Australia and it hasn’t been positive on trying to find a window but we are working hard,” he said.
