Graeme Smith and Mark Boucher reiterated that they understand what South African cricket needs regarding transformation, but admitted that they will seek more clarity regarding the finer details of the expected policies, writes Naeemah Benjamin.

Interim Director of Cricket Graeme Smith announced Mark Boucher as the Team Director of the Proteas at a Media briefing in Cape Town on Saturday.

The former Proteas wicketkeeper batsman is undoubtedly one of South Africa’s finest, but is he the right man to take the Proteas forward?

Only time will tell.

What I can say is, the face of South African cricket certainly does look much stronger than it did a few weeks back and England will surely be wary of a reaction from a wounded Proteas side.

One of my major concerns was how the new leadership group would handle the sensitive topic of transformation.

Both Smith and Boucher gave a careful answer when asked about how they would handle the policies expected regarding the topic.

“Transformation is there, I’ve been involved with it when I was playing cricket, and now as a coach as well,” said Boucher.

“To be honest with you, I still have to find out exactly what the policies are – Graeme is probably going to have to look after that space as well, but I understand what our country needs.

“I understand we need the guys to come through but within reason as well, I’m not going to be a coach to throw a guy into a viper’s nest if he’s struggling a bit, I’d like to look after that space and try to help him rebuild his confidence and get him back onto the field.

“It’s all about me looking after the players. I understand that transformation needs to take place, but we want to look after the players as well and ultimately give them the best chance to perform.”

I know there are many like me, who are eager to see what work will go into making our domestic circuit great again.

Transformation is an important part of our cricket and I personally feel more needs to be done and more players need to be produced and looked after.

Smith emphasised this with his comments when he highlighted that more work needs to be done at the lower tiers of cricket.

“I’m very aware of transformation. I’ve captained the country for 11 years and it was a big part of the stuff I had to focus on, deal with and be aware of,” said Smith.

“So that’s not different now. I need to obviously get in and understand the policies that are in place, understand the decisions. But the one thing I do want to focus on is bringing back some excellence back into our game.

“Our performances have been below par, I don’t think that at the domestic level we have hit the standards that we need, we’ve lost a number of players as well.

“We need to look at all systems across the board, we need to look at coaching, we need to look at the pipeline, we also need to be producing enough players so that it makes it easy to pick and then transformation is not a topic any more.

“I need to understand from that perspective what’s been done at the bottom levels, what’s been done to bring players through to grow the game and to develop the next tier of talent – that’s the focus.

“That’s where I think the most important discussions on transformation are going to happen.”

Photo: SirCheese/CSA