Tough road for SA coach

CONGRATULATIONS to Ottis Gibson on his appointment as South Africa cricket head coach.

His appointment did not come as a surprise to me because his name came to the surface towards the end of last year and I immediately knew that Russell Domingo had overstayed his welcome.

He did not do a bad job either; he was marvellous in his work and his only failure was not to win the World Cup.

I had the name of Geoffrey Toyana in my mind and I thought he was going to be Russell’s successor because of his good track record. Jeff has won every trophy in all the formats of the game for Gauteng Lions in our domestic league, and has produced a couple of Proteas stars. As a person who strongly believes in transformation, I was hoping that he was going get a chance because we have assisted him to be where he is today.

People should understand that by transformation we mean that we are appointing a person from the underprivileged group by a form of merit, not to take someone from other countries with the same colour, and I think I should spell that out.

Ottis has to understand that he is not going to have an easy road to travel because he will be coaching the most unreliable team in the world.

SA want to win the World Cup very badly, and in order for him to do that he needs a powerful support system in place. In future, we should be given a chance to vote for, or motivate our choice among, all the short-listed coaches so that the appointing panel can look at the balance of forces before they appoint the successful candidate.

I will preach about transformation until it is rooted in everybody’s minds because there are those people who want to make sure that transformation is not happening the way we would like it. — Mzwandile aka Pepe Nkomombini, via e-mail