Mark Boucher, the South Africa head coach feels that limited-overs skipper wicket-keeper Quinton de Kock has too many tasks to handle and believes the management will look for a fresh face to lead the Test side.
Proteas former Test skipper Faf du Plessis stepped down as South Africa’s T20 and Test skipper in February 2020. His place is yet to be filled and according to the head coach, Quinton De Kock will not lead the Proteas red-ball team.
Mark Boucher. (Photo Credit: Getty Images.)
Mark Boucher Believes Quinton De Kock Has A High Workload
Faf Du Plessis was appointed as South Africa’s full-time T20I captain in February 2013, before he took over the Test captaincy from AB de Villiers in 2016. In September 2017, he was named the ODI captain. Under him, South Africa made the semi-finals of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in 2014.
The last 12 months, however, were not as expected for the 35-year-old. During the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, South Africa was knocked out of birth in semi-final early. Faf Du Plessis was later dropped for the ODI series against England, with Quinton De Kock taking over the reins.
“I think Quinny’s (Quinton de Kock) workload is pretty high. He showed good results in the T20s and the One-Dayers that he’s taken over. The last conversation I had with Quinny around this topic was in India where he felt that the workload was going to be a little high for him. Whoever is the captain will probably use Quinny’s brain to good effect as a keeper, you see things from probably the best angle. I’m sure he’ll add a lot of value just being Quinton de Kock within the Test team,” Boucher was quoted a saying in the Cricket South Africa (CSA) release.
Faf du Plessis. Credits: Photo by Deepak Malik / SPORTZPICS for BCCI
“We will look to select someone else for the Test role. One of the things that we’ve learned from a side like England is a guy like Eoin Morgan comes in, and he’s got a lot of time to plan because he’s not involved in the Test team. So, when he goes away from white-ball cricket, he’s got an opportunity to sit down and plan, so when they sit down as a white ball team again, there’s an obvious direction of where they want to go,” the former wicketkeeper said.
Quinton De Kock, 27, had replaced Faf du Plessis as ODI skipper in January 2020 with South Africa’s director of cricket Graeme Smith announcing in April that the wicket-keeper batsman would not be appointed as Test captain.Quinton De Kock had a discussion regarding the said matter with coach Mark Boucher.
Mark Boucher Feels Appointing Different Skipper For Each Format Gives Freshness
Mark Boucher also said that appointing a different Test skipper will bring freshness in the side. There is not a lot of time in between to switch from one format to another in case a captain is involved in each of the three formats according to Mark Boucher.
“Sometimes when a player and especially the captain is involved in all three formats, it can be an automatic swap from format to the other because there’s not a lot of time in between. So that’s positive, you get a captain who can sit down and really plan what he wants, and he can try to drive that vision to the players, and it gives you some freshness when there’s a short turnaround time between the formats,” Boucher said.
Quinton de Kock. Photo Credit: Getty Images.
The 2019-20 campaign prematurely ended in March when the corona-virus forced the South African team to cut short their limited-overs tour to India, while local cricket in the nation also ended abruptly a few days later.
There has been a lot of dilemma within the CSA as the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) asked the country’s cricketing board to step aside. However, the SASCOC had clarified that they are just abiding the law in the country and there is no government interference of any regard whatsoever.
