South Africa’s Test skipper Dean Elgar has stressed that the things relating to racial prejudice charges against some of the Proteas legends are not relevant to the team, as they are only focusing on beating India in the upcoming Test series.
He further said that the South African team has become used to the controversies, so his team is not going to be greatly affected by the latest uproar, hence they are just focusing on the upcoming tough three-match Test series against India, starting on December 26.
His comments come in the wake of the decision by Cricket South Africa (CSA) to launch a formal inquiry into the conduct of South Africa's Director of Cricket Graeme Smith and head coach Mark Boucher after a report by the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) commission accused them and others, including AB de Villiers, of unfairly discriminating against players on the basis of race.
Team India and South Africa are all set to play in a three-match Test series and as many ODIs with the tour starting with the Boxing Day Test in Centurion from Sunday, December 26.
Elgar said in a virtual media interaction arranged by CSA: “No, it hasn’t really been too tough for us. As players, we’ve kind of gotten used to some bad news around us the last year and a half. We try to adapt to it accordingly. It’s not ideal, obviously, to have these headlines coming up though.”
The southpaw added, “We just want to focus on our cricket. We want to focus on playing a really tough series against India. It’s great to have them in South Africa again. So yeah, for us, it’s all about focusing on cricket, focusing on our next few days of preparation, kind of nail down our cricketing skills.”
On being asked how the constant controversies impact the team environment, he said: “What happens off the field for me is irrelevant now. As a playing unit, we have been through such crappy times (amid the COVID-19 pandemic) that we have formulated such a good bond within our group; it’s not an excuse for us. We must be mindful that if things are worse off the field, we can’t use that as a cop-out for us.”
Elgar continued, “We are a professional team and professional players. If it happened in the first month of this bad kind of scenarios, then maybe it might be that but we’ve been there. We’ve formulated something that works for us as a close group.
We have an extremely strong culture that has been tested and pushed to levels that I don’t think it will be pushed through in my short term of being captain. I think we’ve come out on top of it. We are a professional team, we focus on cricket and hopefully, cricket can look after us.”
However, Elgar has come out in support of his coaches and team management, saying they have not received the backing they deserve from the Proteas people and media.
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The skipper further said, “We haven’t had a lot of stability from an administrative point of view. We’ve had so many different administrators that we don’t even know who’s there now. Hopefully, sooner than later there is a lot more stability that comes within CSA.”
He signed off by saying, “I think from a player’s point of view, we back our coaches, we need to give them a lot of love. I think sometimes they put in so much work… that’s the biggest thing (that goes unnoticed) because I know what they do behind the scenes. It’s not nice to see our coaches get lambasted for things despite the work they’re putting in behind the scenes.”
(With PTI Inputs)
