Warriors coach and former Proteas stalwart Robin Peterson has underscored unity as the key ingredient that South Africa has failed to address heading into the T20 World Cup, and which was the direct cause of Quinton de Kock’s “knee-gate” saga.

With De Kock pulling out of the West Indies clash on Tuesday due to “personal reasons”, which later surfaced as his unwillingness to follow CSA’s directive of ‘taking the knee’, the pot was surely stirred in terms of South Africa’s stance on fighting racism.

Peterson remained objective in his approach to assessing the situation from the sidelines, but he strongly believes that the Proteas should have adopted a unified stand before even flying to the UAE.

“I’m not going to judge Quinny on the decisions he makes; he’s a grown man. But with every decision you make in life it comes with consequences,” Peterson told Cricket Fanatics Magazine.

“At the end of the day you must prepare to live with the consequences and he must’ve decided he was willing to live with it, so from that perspective I can’t judge him.”

CSA’s instructions of having forced the Proteas’ hands into ‘taking the knee’ was what had deterred De Kock from obeying, having cited his reasons in his statement Tuesday as being, “I felt like my rights were taken away when I was told what we had to do”.

“To intervene and force their hands is up for another debate – whether that’s right or wrong… but for me, it would’ve been nice if the team left the shores and went to the World Cup with a united stance from the outset,” Peterson said.

“It’s tough enough to win a World Cup with all the distractions around, and I just think they didn’t need another distraction.”

Peterson however was relieved at the transparency that was conveyed from De Kock’s ‘apology’ statement, particularly between CSA and the players.

“I’m glad that after the statement things are clearer, and that the team is going to [adopt] a unified stance.

“We can’t always look back at the past now; it’s happened and people have taken responsibility. Quinny has come out with a statement, which hopefully is authentic and from the heart.

“Let the team get together and have conversations, especially when they come home, so things like this don’t happen at events again where the whole world has eyes on us.

“Now it’s about having a forward focus and strategy that can give us the best chance, not only in this tournament, but in future tournaments.”

Peterson, who played 15 Tests, 79 ODIs and 21 T20Is for the Proteas between 2003 and 2014, hinted that the “culture camp” that the Proteas squad underwent last year should have served as a building block to harnessing unity within the group.

And regarding how CSA could have approached the matter differently, Peterson said the team should have shown the initiative of standing together in whatever stance they chose.

“You’re hoping the team makes those decisions on their own as a collective, so how they got to their decision only the team will know.

“But I’ve always preferred a unified approach from within a team – either you take the knee or you don’t take the knee. In sports teams, you have to have a democratic approach where you vote for it.

“For me, it’s very important that a team does one thing. Cohesion and eliminating dysfunction are probably two of the biggest things to do in a cricket team.”

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