Quinton de Kock removed as captain – New South African Captains announced!

Quinton de Kock has been relieved of his captaincy duties as new South African captains were announced on Thursday, March 4th. 33 year old Dean Elgar was appointed as the Proteas Test captain while the limited overs duties were handed over to 30 year old Temba Bavuma.

Bavuma featured in just 6 ODIs and 8 T20Is for South Africa but has shown promise in the little opportunties that came his way. Meanwhile Dean Elgar has bean a part of 67 Tests for South Africa scoring 4260 runs at an average of 39.81 with 13 centuries and 16 half centuries. He is one of the most prolific Test openers around right now.

Bavuma has recently led his team LIONS to CSA T20 Challenge title. He has been a regular captain for Lions in domestic cricket since October 2018. He was also the architect of their 2018/19 first-class and T20 double triumph, scoring a century in the final of the latter. 

“We want to back them, we want to support them, and we want to empower them to take South African cricket forward; hopefully into a better cricketing space than what we have been in over the last period,” Graeme Smith, CSA’s director of cricket, told a press conference on Thursday.

Since the start of the 2019 World Cup, South Africa have won only 14 of their 40 matches across the formats. CSA’s director Graeme Smith said the burden of captaincy was getting to a quality player like Quinton de Kock and hence the changes.

“It was felt that the burden of leadership was just too much for a person or a player like Quinton. We wanted to free him up. His commitment to South African cricket is there. We want to get the best out of him as a player and as a team man. He’ll certainly form part of our leadership group, but we felt this was the right way to move for South African cricket and back a consistent way forward.” Smith told the reporters.