Prince quits selection panel

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

ASHWELL Prince has resigned as a national selector, which takes away most of the current panel’s international and first-class playing experience.

“I do want to venture into coaching and ... there’s a conflict of interest with me being a selector and working quite closely with the players,” Prince said.

“I was working on the SA A tour (to Australia last month) as a coach.

“It’s probably not fair to the players that I work with some of them and understand their weaknesses and then take that into a selection meeting.

“On the back of that I thought the best thing to do was to put my energies into where I thought I could make a bigger difference.”

Prince makes a good argument for changing his role, but the 288 first-class matches he played - 66 of them tests - means easily the most qualified member of the panel will no longer be part of selection meetings.

Between them convenor Linda Zondi and Hussein Manack and Errol Stewart hold 153 first class caps.

Stewart, who played six one-day internationals, is now the only member of the committee who represented SA.

Manack played 52 first-class matches, but SA sport was racially segregated for the first four years of his senior career.

The closest he came to earning an international cap was in a list A match for a SA Board President’s XI against the touring Indian in Pietermaritzburg in December 1992.

Zondi played three first-class games.

Prince has been linked with a coaching job at the Cobras, of which he said, “(Cobras head coach Paul Adams) has approached me but I’m still weighing up my options.”

Cricket SA have not announced Prince’s resignation nor said who will replace him.