IPL 2 will benefit Cricket South Africa for a decade: Majola
Embattled Cricket South Africa CEO Gerald Majola, who is facing allegations of pocketing irregular IPL bonuses, claims hosting the event here two years ago would continue to benefit CSA for a decade more.
- Press Trust of India
- Updated: December 12, 2011 11:00 AM IST
Embattled Cricket South Africa CEO Gerald Majola, who is facing allegations of pocketing irregular IPL bonuses, claims hosting the event here two years ago would continue to benefit CSA for a decade more.
Majola is currently at the centre of an inquiry instituted by Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula following almost two years of wrangling at CSA after Majola paid himself and other senior staff huge IPL bonuses without informing the board.
Nobody could have arranged the IPL second edition in just three weeks, Majola told a weekly on Sunday.
"We had three weeks to get the tournament and arrange everything and I still believe no other organisation would have got it right," Majola told the Afrikaans weekly 'Rapport'.
Majola and former IPL supremo Lalit Modi jointly announced that IPL 2 would be played in South Africa due to security concerns around elections in India at the time.
England was also being considered as a possible venue before the announcement.
"(IPL 2) was the most successful of all the IPL tournaments so far and CSA will still pluck the fruits from it for 10 years more," Majola said.
But observers are asking what these fruits are, amid growing concern that CSA earnings are not being ploughed back into developmental cricket at grassroots level while executives pay themselves huge bonuses.
"Majola should tell the inquiry exactly where these fruits are, so that we can also pluck some of them, because we are certainly not getting any," said a disgruntled member of the Lenasia Cricket Association, who preferred not to be named for fear of victimisation.
He cited the example of the provincial CSA affiliate Gauteng Cricket Board, from whom international games at the Wanderers were taken away when it queried about the contract between CSA and the IPL.