TELFORD VICE, Centurion | Wednesday 5.00pm.
HANSIE Cronje may have lost the final Test of the series and seen his 14-match unbeaten run come to an end, but South Africa’s captain was unrepentant at the contrived finish yesterday and threatened to quit if the International Cricket Council intervenes.
”If the ICC are unhappy then I want to get out of the game,” he said. ”What cricket is all about is having a full house and guys playing and entertaining. This was Test cricket at its best in my opinion.
”I spent a lot of time last night thinking about it. It needs to be seen that 22 players want to play Test cricket and this morning when I arrived at the ground the feeling I got was that all the players wanted to play. Both sides could have won the Test match right at the end and that’s what it’s all about.”
England’s captain Nasser Hussain was delighted with the victory but insisted that he did not want to set a precedent for future matches. ”The last thing I want to do is devalue Test cricket. We don’t want any lob-ups or false declarations, things like that,” he said.
”We just wanted one declaration and a good ending, and I think we got that. We’re not hiding the fact we still have a lot of work to do. We’ve lost another series and certainly won’t be cracking open the champagne. But I think a lot of people out here will agree there are a few England people who can play some cricket.”
”We’ve got areas to improve and areas we must look elsewhere in, but we also have areas I’m very pleased with. Now we need to be more consistent.”– The Guardian.