Another spellbinding week in cricket's soap opera has turned up the usual suspects. The most interesting arrival from out of left field is none other than 'Stormin' Norman Arendse. He has tossed his hat into the ring with an offer to play a starring role.
Arendse is the immediate past president of Cricket SA whose tenure did not last long after a fallout with his chief executive Gerald Majola. He quit the job less than a year ago after revealing their relationship had broken down irretrievably.
Arendse's demise brought about the election of Mtutuzeli Nyoka as the new CSA president. Nyoka was the immediate past chairman of the Gauteng Cricket Board who some years before had a well-publicised fallout with Gerald Majola who he accused of paying lip service to transformation.
Nyoka and Majola, old childhood friends in the Eastern Cape, are now bracketed in the CSA vanguard in the fight against the GCB whose "disrespectful" stance on staging matches in the recent Indian Premier League has been punished by CSA pulling all big matches from the GCB-controlled Wanderers stadium.
Arendse, a Senior Counsel, says he is prepared to act as mediator. In the meantime, however, reports suggest he is thinking of suing the national captain Graeme Smith for writing nasty things about him in a book he has just published.
You must wonder who is going to mediate on that one.
Arendse is an interesting personality. Over the years he has been involved in soccer, rugby and cricket. Short of becoming the sports minister, he has sort of done it all. His ambitions, however, have not been stifled by any setbacks.
Only a week ago, he was nominated unopposed for the position of president of the Cape region of the SA Football Association. This itself is an interesting little coterie known for constant in-fighting amongst its members and the suspension earlier this year of its entire executive.
If Arendse does indeed become its president, it will elevate him to Safa's national executive ahead of national elections for the next SA soccer president. You have to admire him for his stamina. Were he a boxer, he would be known as a "come forward fighter".
Still on the boxing theme, CSA have invited the sports minister Makhenkesi Stofile to act as a sort of fight commissioner. You have to wonder why.