With the South African cricket side finally dispensing the dreaded ‘chokers’ tag with their win in the World Test Championship (WTC) final, a new kind of faith will be held in the sport in the Rainbow Nation.
Long the butt of jokes as the much-fancied Proteas failed to deliver silverware on the world stage since their re-admission to international cricket in 1992. That’s of course not counting the 1998 Champions Trophy victory of South Africa.
South Africa beat Australia by five wickets in the WTC final at Lord’s in London on Saturday, highlighted by strong performances from Kagiso Rabada, Temba Bavuma and Aiden Markram.
Cricket SA (CSA) Director of Cricket Enoch Nkwe on Wednesday sang the praises of the Proteas as the side was welcomed back to the country as WTC champions.
Restoring Faith and Inspiring Future Generations in South African Cricket
“This restores a lot of faith, a lot of belief in South African cricket. We always look at this format as a foundation, like coach Shukri [Conrad] said it’s our mission to key fundamentals and to other formats and obviously the growth of cricket, not only in South Africa but globally,” said Nkwe.
“What’s encouraging now is that this is going to motivate a 15-year-old, 11-year-old, 19-year-old who’s about to graduate from high school throwing interest in their cricket.
“And now they’re going to get to see this completely different compared to how they looked at it before. I’m just so happy they were able to lead us to this point, and don’t I want to get emotional but this is huge for South African cricket because of the impact that it will have for generations to come.”
The plan will be to see South Africa play more Test cricket in the future, and CSA would put in the work to achieve that goal said Nkwe.
“This is going to be really, really encouraging and motivating and we’re going to ensure behind the scenes that we continue building blocks through this format.
“We’ve [CSA] taken a lot of punches, but one thing we never, we never bend our backs or break our backs. We just make sure that we stand strong and really believe in what we can achieve as a cricketing system. Today we have to celebrate, and there it is, we brought it to all South Africans.
We are well led by Temba. I’ve known Temba for some time, and we never had any doubts about his leadership. And I can say the same for Shukri.”
@Michael_Sherman
IOL Sport
