Legal Action Taken Against Cricket South Africa (CSA) By Former Player Vernon Philander

Former South African pace bowling all-rounder Vernon Philander has taken legal action against Cricket South Africa (CSA) due to a breach of contract.

Philander played 64 Tests for South Africa, has picked 224 wickets and has scored 1779 runs. Also, he has played 30 One Day Internationals and 7 T20Is and has picked 41 and 4 wickets respectively. In December 2019 Philander announced that the Test series against England would be his last international series before his retirement and in January 2020 he played his last Test against England at the Wanderers.

Meanwhile, Philander’s complaints with Cricket South Africa are related to contract disputes during the latter half of his career.

Vernon Philander’s contract was upgraded because he was available for selection for South Africa during the time when several players were leaving the national team to take up Kolpak contracts in England.

“It was during the 2018 tour of Sri Lanka when Cricket SA was very concerned about players leaving the national team and taking up Kolpak contracts in England. We had just lost a host of bowlers like Kyle (Abbott), Marchant (de Lange), Parny (Wayne Parnell) to Kolpak and Morne Morkel also retired to join Surrey. CSA were worried about losing more and they were aware that I had plenty of offers from a number of English counties,” Philander exclusively told IOL Sport.

“It was at this stage that Corrie van Zyl (CSA’s former acting director of cricket and head of pathways and development) flew to Colombo to discuss my future with the Proteas. Firstly, my agent, Arthur Turner should have been present in those meetings but obviously wasn’t because we were in Sri Lanka.

“It was during these meetings that it was discussed that my contract would be upgraded if I remained eligible for the Proteas. After the meetings, I immediately called Arthur and told him I was happy with the proposal and that I would continue playing for the Proteas in terms of the new agreements.”

However, Philander has revealed that he was provided with the amount of the new contract only for one season.

“I was paid the new amount for the next season, but not the following year. I was told that due to me not playing franchise cricket they could not pay me what was previously agreed upon. This has no bearing on my national contract. They presented their ‘ranking system’ which made no sense as I had actually gone up in the ICC Test rankings.”

Vernon Philander signed a Kolpak deal with English county Somerset after his retirement.

I have spoken to SACA about what’s happened to me – Vernon Philander

Former Proteas pacer has now approached the South African Cricketers Association (SACA) for assistance in this matter.

“I have spoken to SACA about what’s happened to me as they are the players’ workers union, but their message has been that it is between me and CSA,” Philander said.

Meanwhile, Saca chief executive Andrew Breetzke has opened up on the Vernon Philander matter and explained their perspective on this entire issue.

“In negotiating the 2018 MOU Agreement, we introduced a number of measures to ensure that we were able to retain our best players in the face of other playing opportunities around the world,” Breetzke said.

“In negotiating the 2018 MOU Agreement, we introduced several measures to ensure that we were able to retain our best players in the face of other playing opportunities around the world,” Breetzke said.

“Key to this was introducing ‘red-ball’ payments linked to ICC events – this was to compensate Proteas players who were not selected for the financially lucrative ICC events.

“Vernon benefitted from this ‘red-ball’ payment in 2019 (ICC World Cup). Saca and CSA also agreed to work towards establishing a Retention Fund – to retain players in the system, and reward them for years of service. Saca set aside R10 Million towards this initiative.

“Unfortunately the initiative never materialised, due primarily to CSA’s financial challenges and the CSA turmoil of 2019, when individuals working on the initiative were suspended and dismissed. In so far as Vernon is in dispute on the issue of his contract negotiation with CSA, Saca were not a party to this negotiation and cannot therefore comment.”

“CSA won’t be making a public pronouncement on the status of the negotiations until the two (legal) parties have concluded the current round(s) of engagements” but that CSA “view all our players both current and former as critical stakeholders and the true ambassadors of the game,” CSA’s Head of Media Thami Mthembu.

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