MIKE PROCTER lost his job as the South African team cricket coach last weekend because he had failed to rekindle South Africa’s famed fighting spirit on the recent tour to England, according to Krish Mackerdhuj.
The side ended up losing the third Test, as well as the two one-day internationals, and was humiliated by Holland in a one-day contest. “We found nothing was being done,” said the UCB president.
“The very thing that made us good as a team was lacking, and we had people there who could not motivate that back.”
Concern within the UCB was also expressed about an apparent failure either to detect early, or to deal with, Andrew Hudson’s batting woes.
The key criterion for the new coach, to be selected today or tomorrow, would be his ability to stimulate spirited team morale and resistance. “We hope we can get someone who can bring that motivation back to the side: a lot of heart, a lot of grit, playing as a team and not giving up hope,” said Mackerdhuj.
Procter had also angered former anti-apartheid campaigners, and ex-SACB executives, through his recently published book.
Apparently unauthorised by the UCB executive as a whole, it had strongly criticised the alleged intransigence and extremism of the Sacos-linked cricket administration, while condemning advocates of the cricket boycott in the 1980s as hypocrites.
“Procter’s book was a complete distortion of what happened,” Mackerdhuj said. “He seemed to misinterpret events and facts.” But the reason for Procter’s removal, he said, lay elsewhere. — Paul Martin