Graeme Smith to contest for South Africa's first Director of Cricket
Former South African skipper Graeme Smith is in contention to become South Africa's first Director of Cricket after the Proteas had an underwhelming World Cup campaign. After their exit from the group stage, there is a need to revamp the South African Cricket set-up right from the grassroots level.
Arguably the most successful South African skipper ever, Graeme Smith is one of the top contenders for the post of the newly created Director of Cricket for Cricket South Africa. This post was created as a result of the Proteas' dismal World Cup campaign and whoever holds this post is expected to revolutionize South African Cricket and is expected to find young talents and train them in every possible way in order to help South Africa reach the pinnacle of the sport.
South African cricket is going through a period of transition with the likes of greats like AB de Villiers, Hashim Amla, Morne Morkel among others retired. There is very little experience on the domestic circuit to guide the youngsters as the retired players signed the Kolpak deal and chose to play in England. Thus the position of the Director of Cricket becomes very crucial and there are many other names along with Smith that are linked to this post like the suspended interim director of cricket, Corrie van Zyl, and former national selector Hussein Manack.
The South African team has had a dismal 2019 with first a series loss to Sri Lanka at home and then an underwhelming World Cup campaign which saw them lose five of their nine games and end up seventh in the league phase. The Director of Cricket will need to take strong decisions both in domestic cricket and at the international level by monitoring the performance of the players and making the infrastructure better for the domestic setup.
Smith played 117 Tests, 197 ODIs and 33 T20s for South Africa before retiring in 2014. The position is expected to be filled by the end of November.