Ashwell Prince on Australian cricket mindsets
AS a Proteas batsman, current Cape Cobras coach Ashwell Prince was a renowned fighter. He may not have been a silky strokeplayer, like some of his teammates, but if there was a hard contest, he would be in the thick of things.
Little wonder, then, that he likens matches against Australia to “going into war”. And in the wake of the fiery confrontations between the sides in the first Test in Durban at the weekend, Prince (pictured) commented: “I wasn’t there to entertain. This is war! It is your country against my country, and we are both here to defend each other’s country.”
No amount of counselling that is going to undo what happened on that stairwell on Sunday at Kingsmead – especially with it being recorded on tape for the world to see too. Even more so when the respective Australian and South African camps are in open dispute as to what actually set off David Warner’s fuse so much that he needed his teammates to physically restrain him from heading for Quinton de Kock.
With the second Test starting in Port Elizabeth on Friday, it is unlikely that the heat between the teams would have died down. Prince certainly believes the fire will still be burning within both teams.
“At the end of the day, the typical Aussie is a confident guy, some might call it arrogant, but ultimately it is born out of ‘I know I am good. I know what I can bring to the party. I am going to come and knock you over and I am making no bones about that!’
“I think there is always a place for it. It’s a contest... as long as it doesn’t become personal. I am not sure of the content... in Durban, but when the talk revolves around family, guys’ wives, then it does become something that’s not cricket. If it is cricket-related… then that’s fine. I was certainly not only going to take it, (As a payer) I was prepared to give it back. I was a firm believer that ‘why is it only the bowler and fielders that are entitled to say something, why can’t I say something?’”
Prince was known to relish the combat out in the middle. The left-hander who hails from the tough neighbourhood of Gelvandale in Port Elizabeth never allowed the opposition to intimidate him, even when making his Test debut against the “best team in the world” in 2002.
“I suppose where I drew my confidence from was where I came from. I didn’t come through the school system, but rather the club system where if you have a bit of talent, you’re playing 1st XI men’s cricket at 14 or 15. There you face all the same things that you probably hear out in the middle of a Test match against the Aussies. The verbals… the intimidation… all those types of things. I had seen it before, so it was nothing different for me. I had my ways of dealing with it,” said Prince.
“People play the game from different perspectives. If I think of Herschelle Gibbs, he was an entertainer. Maybe because of the way I came into first-class cricket, as a player of colour post-apartheid, it was always all about proving your worth.”
However, for all the sledging that is going on at the moment, Prince wants to see the Proteas back it up with performance, especially with the bat, this week.
“The thing you associate most with SA teams is resilience, and there was simply no fight. In the second innings only when the game was over, players played more freely,” Prince said.