Ashwell Prince never won a trophy with the Cobras. Mark Boucher won five with the Titans. What does that say about coaching credentials?
Telford Vice | Cape Town
WHAT does a cricket coach do? Not the kind of coach who teaches beginners how to play a forward defensive, bowl an off-break or take a slip catch, but those who work at first-class and international level. Every player there already knows how to play a forward defensive, bowl an off-break and take a slip catch. So, what do their coaches do?
Correct technical flaws and change techniques, no doubt. Also, make sure the gameplan is adhered to while players focus on their own roles. And, in the particular case of Gary Kirsten, find a way to make giants like Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni stay on the same page long enough and well enough to win a World Cup.
The perennial question of what elite coaches do returned, with a twist, last week when Ashwell Prince told CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-building (SJN) project of being asked, by director of cricket Graeme Smith shortly after his appointment in December 2019, to join South Africa’s backroom.
Smith, Prince said, told him Jacques Kallis was being lined up as the team’s batting coach. “If Kallis is going to be the batting coach, what am I going to do,” Prince said. “What is my role in the coaching staff? I’ve only ever been a batsman. Since I was a reasonable fielder, fielding coach came to mind. But there already was a fielding coach [Justin Ontong]. With Kallis there as the batting coach, I again asked as to what my position will be. [Smith] then said, ‘We’ll see where we can fit you in’.”
It’s not difficult to understand why that wouldn’t have sat well with Prince: “If you want a certain amount of black or non-white faces on your staff, don’t call me. If there’s one thing [Smith] should have known about me, having captained me, is that I want to be treated with respect. If you’re going to put me in a position, put me in a position instead of [me] sitting on the balcony with the Proteas staff without a role.”
This week Prince was appointed to the properly defined role of Bangladesh batting coach. He will thus leave Newlands, where he has been head coach since replacing Paul Adams in December 2016. The Bangladeshis will gain a forthright team man who does not suffer fools. Or, as a cricket-loving Australian shouted after spotting Prince in Hobart in November 2016, when he was commentating on South Africa’s Test series: “Ashwell Prince! You were a mean motherfucker!” Indeed. Prince was the toughest of players. So what will South African cricket lose?
Not a successful coach, in trophy terms. In four-and-a-half seasons in charge of the Cobras, and, concurrently, two Mzansi Super League campaigns with the Cape Town Blitz, Prince never won a title. His one-day team finished last in 2016/17, as did his first-class and one-day sides in 2019/20. His only trip to a final was with the Blitz in 2018/19, when they were beaten by the Jozi Stars. From January 2019 to March 2021 — more than two years — the Cobras failed to win any of their 15 first-class matches.
But it would be unfair to write Prince off on the basis of the unimpressive record of his teams. It’s the job of franchise coaches to produce players for South Africa, and he guided Zubayr Hamza, George Linde, Pieter Malan, Dane Paterson, Kyle Verreynne and Janneman Malan to international honours.
More importantly, Prince has served as the conscience of cricket in his country. Unafraid and unapologetic — his critics would call him unhelpfully dogmatic — he has yet to duck a bouncer on transformation, social issues, politics, or anything else. The quieting of his voice at least until after the 2022 T20I World Cup, when his contract with Bangladesh expires, is the highest price South Africa will pay.
Prince is not the only South African coach in the news. Mark Boucher came home last month not to applause for his team’s successful series in the Caribbean and Ireland, but to outrage over allegations made against him at the SJN. Boucher is known to have made a written submission to the project to respond to claims implicating him that stem from his playing days.
The affidavit’s contents should provide balance to a narrative that has been overtly one-sided. But how Boucher’s version will find its way into the public domain is unclear. Should he release it and risk the ire of the SJN for, it could be argued, disrespecting the process? Or does the responsibility of shedding light on Boucher’s submission lay with the SJN? Cricbuzz has asked the SJN for a copy, but has not received a response.
Boucher could outflank all that by appearing at the SJN hearings in person. Like Prince, he is among the hardest people yet to pull on a pair of whites. It took a flying bail to the eye to end his playing career. What harm could be done to him by testifying to a body that has shown respect even to AfriForum, the execrable white supremacist mob that made an SJN submission amounting to a defence of systemic racism.
There may be more to this than that. Boucher won five titles across the formats as head coach of the Titans from 2016/17 to 2018/19. It’s a salient fact, because much has been made of his appointment to his current position despite holding only a level two coaching certificate.
Do his detractors want to obsess over credentialism, or do they want a coach whose teams win? South Africa lost seven of their first nine series under Boucher, at least in part as a consequence of the damaging chaos in CSA’s boardrooms and offices. But they have since won three of four rubbers and drawn the other.
A cynical view would be that Boucher’s haters are coming after him over racism claims now that they can no longer say his teams are losing and he is out of his depth as a level two coach. But the more pressing issue is whether he has been party, as has been alleged, to a team culture that included, excused and did not eradicate racist behaviour.
Seemingly forgotten in the haste to hang Boucher is that other people would have been part of building that toxic culture, that some of them would have been black and brown, and that the team dynamic has evolved to the extent that Black Lives Matter is now part of dressingroom conversation. Boucher is part of that changing culture, too. As South Africa’s coach, he is surely instrumental in forging change.
What does a cricket coach do? Much more than we might think. It’s time we, in South Africa in particular, answered the question properly.
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 
Thank you for an enlightening and thought provoking article Telford.