SA20 League and India Tours Fuel Financial Turnaround for Cricket South Africa

Cricket South Africa declared a net profit of USD 13,723,600 for the 2024-25 fiscal year at their annual meeting in Johannesburg on Saturday. That's almost three-and-a-half times smaller than the previous year's profit, but a significant improvement on the losses of USD 6,861,800 to USD 12,743,342 - using current exchange rates - they suffered for three years before that.

The game changers have been the SA20, which is partly owned by CSA, and lucrative tours by India's men's team in the past two seasons.

CSA's integrated report said the third edition of the SA20, which was played in January and February, "generated [USD 103,791,923] in direct spend, contributed [USD 305,609,550] to GDP and supported approximately 8,199 jobs". The four T20Is India played in South Africa in November "resulted in an indirect and induced economic impact of approximately [USD 12,570,356] for South Africa.

Total expenses of USD 74,960,833 were recorded. Despite that CSA have reserves of USD 81,880,295 and a "cash and investment balance" of USD 39,786,904.

These successes were mirrored on the field, where South Africa's men's team won the WTC and the men's and women's teams reached the final of the T20 World Cup.

It's a far cry from the bad old days when CSA stumbled from one self-inflicted governance crisis to the next. That era culminated in December 2019 with the suspension of then chief executive Thabang Moroe in the wake of the unwarranted revocation of five senior cricket journalists' accreditation. Moroe was sacked in August 2020.

With him went the dark cloud that had hung over the game. But major sponsors also disappeared and were not replaced. It wasn't until August this year that the men's ODI team again appeared with a company's name and logo on the front of their playing shirts: Suzuki, who were signed in April.

Corporates take a long time, and need a lot of reassurance, to believe in a brand as toxic as CSA's was. Putting their name on those shirts - sullied through no fault of the players who wear them - takes trust.

Under Pholetsi Moseki, Moroe's successor, CSA appear to be rebuilding that precious commodity. No doubt it helps that Moseki is a dispassionate accountant rather than someone steeped in cricket. In the South African experience, many among the latter tend to come with all sorts of damaging strings and agendas attached.

But that's not always true. Andrew Hudson, who batted for almost nine hours and faced 384 balls to score 163 on his Test debut against an attack that bristled with Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and Patrick Patterson in Barbados in April 1992, was one of the good guys.

A sublime stylist at the crease and blessed with a cover drive he must have handed down to Laura Wolvaardt, Hudson played 34 more Tests and scored three more centuries.

He served as selection convenor from May 2010 to April 2015, and joined CSA's board as an independent director in June 2021. Affable and even-tempered, Hudson, now 60, retired from the board on Saturday. With him goes not a dark cloud but a rainbow of solid service to a game he graced, in all his roles, with unshakeable integrity and quiet aplomb.