Former South African cricket coach Ray Jennings has taken a swipe at Proteas coach Mickey Arthur’s plan to dump several senior players and start building for the 2011 World Cup.
After the dismal performance against England in the one-day series, where the Proteas lost 4-0, Jennings said Arthur would be making a mistake to dump some of the team’s senior players.
“You can never throw away experience and you rather need to ask why the more experienced players are not performing at the moment,”Jennings told Afrikaans Sunday newspaper Sondag.
“It is not the solution to throw away older players and replace them with young players. Age has nothing to do with the performances and the real question is if you want to play and if you want to perform at this level.”
Jennings believes a happier squad would perform a lot better, and singled out the unhappy Jacques Kallis, who had a tour of England he would rather forget.
“I believe a happier Kallis is a Kallis who will perform. Something was wrong with him on tour, or am I missing the point. If he had a technical problem in his batting, I’d also have loved to have it, because with it he became the best batsman in the world. A happier Kallis would be putting runs on the board and something was definitely wrong with him on this tour.”
South Africa’s players are now resting before preparing to face World Champions Australia at the end of the year.
