UCBSA boss hits out at Bacher

Fakir Hassen

South Africa's cricket board chief has hit out at Ali Bacher, executive director of the 2003 cricket World Cup, over a controversy regarding the allocation of the matches.

In a national radio interview, newly re-elected president of United Cricket Board of South Africa, Percy Sonn, said: "Listen, Ali Bacher doesn't decide on these things, the United Cricket Board of South Africa does."

He was reacting to a question about how he would deal with complaints by the mainly South African Indian community of Chatsworth, near Durban, that Bacher had reneged on a promise that a CWC game would be hosted at the stadium there.

"Everybody that keeps on saying Ali Bacher did this or did that, I think they're misguided. They must understand they are creating this misconceived perception that one man is running South African cricket, he said in the interview with national public broadcast radio SAFM.

"Ali Bacher doesn't decide. We have formed the World Cup Policy Committee, which is a sub-committee of the UCBSA's general council and the general council will take the responsibility of deciding where games are played."

In recent months, there has been a great deal of controversy on the issue after Bacher told the community during a game by visiting Sri Lanka three years ago that a CWC game would definitely be hosted in Chatsworth, which was created in the apartheid era to forcibly resettle descendants of the first Indians who arrived in Durban in 1860.

Bacher subsequently said facilities at Chatsworth Oval were not up to world-class standards. Community organizations have been mobilized to organize protests, including calls on India to cancel their tour here later this year.

Sonn said objections and submission by any people, for whatever reason, would be taken into consideration when the final allocations of games are decided and announced.

He said: "If people are disappointed because we cannot play in all venues in South Africa, then they must be so because we cannot play in all venues in South Africa. I, however, expect everybody to work through the affiliates of the UCBSA and not to shoot their mouths off all over the place.

"We have no jurisdiction whatsoever over Chatsworth, unless it is a cricket club which belongs to the KwaZulu-Natal (provincial) Cricket Union. If the representations come through our organizations over which we have jurisdiction, proper attention can be given to it.

"But you know if I have to give attention to every newspaper article, and every individual -- all 44 million of them -- I'll go mad."

Sonn said the World Cup Committee would discuss the issue next May. It would send recommendations to the UCBSA after which Sonn and the council would take decisions.

Indo-Asian News Service