No-confidence vote for South African selectors

If coach Graham Ford isn't sacked before August, the first casualties of South Africa's disastrous campaign against Australia this summer will be Rushdi Magiet's panel of national selectors.

Originally appointed to serve until after next year's World Cup, the national selection panel will come up for re-election at the United Cricket Board's annual meeting in August, following a decision taken by the UCB's General Council at the weekend.

In a surprisingly blunt media release issued on Tuesday, the UCB says: "The decision to appoint the national selection panel until the 2003 Cricket World Cup was rescinded and a new national selection panel is to be elected at the UCB AGM in August. It is possible that the size of the panel may be reduced."

One of the members of the current panel, Mike Procter, has already indicated that he will step down at the end of the current Australian tour to take up a position as an ICC Match Referee, but the remaining five, Magiet, Graeme Pollock, Haroon Lorgat, Morris Garda and Peter Bacela will have to seek re-election if they wish to continue as selectors.

This unexpected decision can only be taken as a vote of no-confidence in the panel by the General Council and it follows a summer of confusion, acrimony and, often, straightforward bungling by the selectors.

The most public eruption took place before the New Year Test match in Sydney when UCB president Percy Sonn rejected the team presented to him and insisted on the replacement of Jacques Rudolph with Justin Ontong.

Sonn's intervention divided South African down racial lines, but the row could have been avoided had the selectors chosen both Rudolph and Ontong to play in what had already become a "dead" Test match.

All through the season, though, routine selection announcements have been bungled by incorrect team sheets, and implausible and incoherent explanations; dropped players have learned of their fates through newspaper and radio reports and an almost complete breakdown of communication between Magiet and the South African coach Graham Ford has evolved.

It is possible, of course, that some of the selectors, including Magiet, could win re-election. This, though, would beg the question of why the UCB has chosen to terminate the current panel's tenure in the first place.

In another announcement, the UCB said it regarded the Daryll Cullinan affair as now closed. Cullinan was selected for the second Test match against Australia at Newlands, but walked out on the team after failing to agree contractual terms with the UCB.

According to the media release: "The General Council reiterated the position of the CEO, Gerald Majola, that the issue of Daryll Cullinan's departure from the team selected to play against Australia in the second Castle Lager/MTN Test match at Newlands, is closed. The Council decided not to take the matter further as the UCB has no contract with Mr Cullinan."

This would seem to indicate that Cullinan's international career is over.