South Africa’s high performance coach Mike Horn has said he believes the Proteas team was changed for the World Cup semi-final match against New Zealand last month to meet race quota requirements, a move that left the team disbalanced.
Motivational speaker Horn has been working with the Proteas team since 2011 as a ‘high performance coach’ and was part of their World Cup team to provide inspiration as they chased the title in Australia and New Zealand.
Controversy erupted after the team was changed to include injured Vernon Philander ahead of the in-form Kyle Abbott — South Africa were beaten at the semi-finals stage by New Zealand.
Philander’s selection raised the number of ‘players of colour’ to four, the same quota number that was previously implemented until it was abolished in 2007.
“We’re not going into any politics, but it had a role to play. I had to do a little bit of talk to the guys after the team was selected and a little bit of energy was taken away,” Horn was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au on Friday.
ClARKE returns to T20
Melbourne: Australia Test skipper Michael Clarke will captain the Melbourne Stars in Australia’s Big Bash league for the next two seasons after not playing T20 for three years.
He’ll be available to the Stars in early January 2016 when the Australian Test season ends. One of his Melbourne teammates will be another 34-year-old player, Kevin Pietersen.
Clarke reckons they might be playing each other ahead of the T20 tournament if Pietersen gets a recall to the England side for Ashes series in England.
Clarke’s last T20 match was with the Pune Warriors in the 2012 IPl.