Six Gun Grills Cobras coach Ashwell Prince has urged CSA to do more to ensure that non-playing national players play domestic cricket, to “speed up the education” of younger players in the franchise setup.
Under Prince’s watch since becoming Cobras coach in 2017, we have seen the likes of Pieter Malan, Janneman Malan, Zubayr Hamza, Kyle Verreynne, George Linde and Dane Paterson all make their debuts in Proteas colours, while Nandre Burger earned a maiden call-up to the national squad in the 2020/21 season.
Prince’s influence on this is undeniable and it’s great to see that he is aiming to create a competitive environment that acts as a pathway to players earning national call-ups. This is exactly what is needed from our coaches at a domestic level.
“Since I started here we had six or seven debutants in the space of three years. When I took over, some of them were playing semi-pro cricket,” said Prince.
“From the time they made their debut [for the Cobras] to the time they played for the Proteas, it’s probably been about 24 months. Those are some of the positives we take away.
“To find another half a dozen, it’s not going to be that easy. When players go away to represent their country, it’s an opportunity for others to step up and stake a claim.”
Prince has the vision to create an environment that breeds great players. But in order to achieve this, he will need some help.
He has urged Cricket South Africa to make sure that the non-playing Proteas players take part in domestic competitions so that the younger players learn from their experience.
“It’s always been a vision of mine to kind of emulate the teams that I represented here as a Western Province player or Cobras player, back in the day,” he explained.
“Everyone was playing for either the national team or at least the SA A team. To represent this organisation, it needs to be your aim or your standard.
“It’s very difficult for players at this level to realise what it is [that makes you a great player],” he added
“That’s why you will read or possibly hear a lot of comments from me saying: ‘we have got to get our top international players or more experienced international players to play more games at the domestic level with our younger more talented players, because we keep saying the gap in the standard of domestic cricket or franchise cricket and international cricket is too big.
“Players are not going to learn if they don’t play alongside our senior international players. CSA for me has got to do more when it comes to ensuring that when these players have no international duty, that they must play.
“That’s CSA’s responsibility to do that if we want our younger generation to speed up their education. There’s no lack of talent, the talent is there, but we need to speed up the education.”
