SA selectors add confusion to team selection policy
Confusion over the future of the national captain Hansie Cronje, national selectorial mismanagement and a heavy defeat in the LG Cup series by India in Nairobi has left an ugly bruise on the face of a South Africa side seeking a new direction
Trevor Chesterfield
28-Sep-1999
Confusion over the future of the national captain Hansie Cronje,
national selectorial mismanagement and a heavy defeat in the LG Cup
series by India in Nairobi has left an ugly bruise on the face of
a South Africa side seeking a new direction.
Cronje's plan to coach Glamorgan for two summers "to protect my future"
is seen as a direct challenge to convener Rushdie Majiet's new
national election panel to define a policy as trace elements all too
familiar with rugby's ugly fall out after the 1995 World Cup gather
momentum. South Africa's team insiders have suggested that Cronje may
yet follow Francois Pienaar into exile as selectors such as Kepler
Wessels write newspaper columns suggesting that either Shaun Pollock
or Dale Benkenstein may take over the leadership role.
This, it has been claimed, is likely to emerge next year when South
Africa tour India in February and March with the new captain's place
being secured during the tour of Sri Lanka next August and September.
Dr Ali Bacher, managing-director of the United Cricket Board, has
flown to Nairobi, to talk with Cronje and minimise the "damage control"
of South Africa's selection policy plans before the Tests against
Zimbabwe next month and November followed by those against England.
Along with the philosophy that Cronje's time has come and just about
gone in the wake of the World Cup failure in England this year,
younger, more promising material it has been claimed by insiders
sit biting their nails in the wings of hope.
It is an all too familiar sporing scenario: barely had Pienaar led
South Africa to success in the rugby version of the World Cup final
against New Zealand at Ellis Park in July 1995 than snipiing to
replace him with someone else had begun. Only six days ago Cronje
made an impressive, impassioned address to an audience which
included Majiet, the new selection convener, at the launch of the
South Africa cricket annual, drawing on the sayings on Conrad Hunte,
the former West Indies star opening batsman. Hunte was also passed
over as a captain and went into a lengthy exile in the United States.
What is taking place at present is that Glamorgan, anxious to lift
their profile in the English county scene in 2000 and 2001, and
having lost former South African A coach Duncan Fletcher to England,
have just about been presented "on a plate" as it were, the
South African captain as a viable alternative. With the selectors
sending mixed signals it is not surprising that Cronje has decided
to look overseas for a career with long-term prospects.
It was, say the insiders, Fletcher, who suggested that Cronje be
approached to see if he was ready to take on the responsibility.