- Ashwell Prince and Vernon Philander have raised their voices on the injustices at play in the South African cricket system.
- Prince opens up on his label as a "trouble-maker" in the Proteas dressing room, calling for honest, open conversations and an acknowledgment of past wrongdoings.
- Philander reveals how the backlash to losing the 2015 World Cup semi-final had impacted him.
Former Proteas Ashwell Prince and Vernon Philander have called for further constructive conversations to take place into the divisive history of South African cricket.
The pair says that there first needs to be an acknowledgement from those who have performed wrongs over a period of what has now been 28 years since the formation of the Proteas post-isolation in 1992.
South African cricket has dominated the country's sporting headlines over the last six weeks with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement sparking conversations of the isolation and exclusion that former players and coaches in the system felt.
A group of 40 former players and coaches of colour – including Prince and Philander – have taken a stance on the issue with Cricket South Africa (CSA) over a way forward that has resulted in the formation of a Social Justice and Nation Building (SJN) committee. The players in and around the Proteas set-up are also currently engaged in a squad culture camp in Skukuza in an effort to identify a new team culture of inclusivity.
Director of Cricket Graeme Smith has been heavily criticised during this period, with players having spoken of a racial insensitivity in culture and even team selections under his leadership. Smith and CSA have also been criticised for the appointments of Mark Boucher as head coach and Jacques Kallis and Paul Harris as coaching consultants for the England Test series over December and January.
Prince has been vocal on social media in recent weeks on his views on what he called a "broken" system, highlighting one instance of black Proteas players being victims of racism on a tour to Australia back in 2005. According to Prince, the incident was dismissed by the leadership.
In a video chat hosted by Heart FM breakfast show host Aden Thomas, Philander and Prince were also joined by former cricket administrator Richard Noor as they opened up on a range of issues currently at play in South African cricket.
The messages were powerful and both players confirmed that while they were keen to engage on the issue with CSA and former players, there needed to be acknowledgement.
"People must take ownership and come and apologise for things that they've done and then we can move forward," Prince said.
On July 18, in the aftermath of Lungi Ngidi's comments that he would be a champion for the BLM movement within the Proteas camp and also Makhaya Ntini's accounts of loneliness during his playing days, everyone involved in the Solidarity Cup took a knee in support of BLM before the first ball was bowled that day.
For Prince, that was just the beginnings of a conversation that needs to go to some uncomfortable places.
"The biggest problem in cricket at the moment, and what I found during my time, is that there is no trust," he said.
"I'm doubting whether that action was taken for genuine reasons ... that's my feeling. If it is anything ... it's only a start from people saying they want to move in the right direction.
"There has got to be a lot of action, discussion and implementation that takes place of new policies and different ways, because the ways that we've been having in the past doesn't work.
"It's so deep. We're talking about the oppressor and we're talking about the oppressed. What have we done for the liberation of the oppressed?
"I see comments on Facebook and people tell me I wanted so-and-so's job. I don't want anyone's job. I want people to live the quality of life of those living under the mountain and by the sea-side. I want the life that my parents have been robbed of ... I want the next generation to not live like that.
"When we're talking about transformation, people have got to change from the inside. There are people from this country that have been robbed of a life and that needs to change."
Prince brought up a story from the 2007 World Cup when he resigned from his role as president of the South African Cricketers' Association (SACA) following a leak to the media from within the Proteas dressing room.
He recalls how his statement in resigning was "softened", but that there was never any investigation into where the leak originated from.
Saying that he was viewed as a "troublemaker" during his playing days, Prince said he was not surprised that he had not been contacted by anyone at CSA to further discuss his experiences.
"I can live with that and I sleep easy at night. I was labelled as a troublemaker because I could see certain things going on [in the Proteas dressing-room] and I would question it," he said.
"Because people couldn't deal with themselves and the things that they were doing, I was then labelled as the troublemaker because I wanted clarity on 'how have we come to this decision, how have we come to that decision'?
"I'm talking about people determining your salary. Your own salary, your team-mates are determining these kinds of things.
"You come back from one season to the next and you then hear that you've dropped down from one salary category to the next.
"Then you ask, okay, I've been dropped down a category … who decided this? You then get labelled a troublemaker, just because you want clarity regarding your own life."
Philander, meanwhile, spoke passionately about needing to identify and then nurture talent in the townships.
He also addressed his controversial selection at the 2015 World Cup, when he was picked ahead ok Kyle Abbott to play in the semi-final against New Zealand in Auckland.
The scenes that unfolded when South African-born Grant Elliott smashed Dale Steyn for six off the second-last ball of the match to send the Black Caps into the final and the Proteas home will forever remain a source of anguish for South African cricket lovers.
While the result left the Proteas in tears on the Auckland turf, it didn't take long for the knives to come out.
In one of the most controversial selections in South African cricket history, Philander returned from injury to play while Kyle Abbott, arguably South Africa's best bowler at the tournament up until that point, was dropped.
Five years later, there are still more questions than answers when it comes to exactly what transpired in the hours before the final team was selected, with Philander using the story to highlight the issue of transformation in South African cricket.
There have been reports of late-night SMSs and phone calls, political interference in selection at a government level and a captain in AB de Villiers who is understood to have not been given the team he had wanted for the match.
"We all lost the World Cup, so my hurt is exactly the same as your hurt, whether you are a white, black, coloured or Indian player," said Philander.
"You've got no right or entitlement to put further hurt upon an individual. This is what we get to when we talk about inequality and it starts by taking accountability and responsibility and saying 'Yes, we lost the World Cup. We'll go back to the drawing board and start working on it again.'
"Only when we reach such a stage can we go to a World Cup and [players] feel fully deserving of their place and feel like the guy next to them has their back.
"I think for far too long we go into World Cup and tournaments and there is always doubt within the team. You either get picked on a transformation policy, which some players still feel, or you get picked on pure merit. If we get to a level where we can set certain standards that need to be achieved in order to be eligible for selection, only then can we say we have the best XV there, irrespective of colour."
Prince, too, lent his voice to the conversation.
"My personal opinion is that the captain of the men's team is the most powerful person in our game - more powerful than the CEO and president," he said.
"99% of the time, they do and get what they want. What hasn't happened is ownership being taken when the results haven't gone their way.
"They always want to get what they want, sometimes against what the selectors might feel, but they don't ever take responsibility when things don't go their way.
"At the time, I was just a fan. I wasn't a selector, I was playing cricket in England and I was following the World Cup and Vernon had obviously proved his fitness.
"Everyone is saying that Kyle Abbott was the form player, which was probably right, but we don't make the tough decisions.
"AB de Villiers had to go knock on the door of Dale Steyn and tell him that he was being dropped because he is out of form.
"You can put all the names of those bowlers at the time - Steyn, Morkel, Abbott - next to Vernon Philander and there is not a lot to choose between them. But if I'm the coach of that team and I'm going into a World Cup semi-final, and we need 70 runs to win with one recognised batsman left ... I want to know that one of my bowlers can bat.
"The best batsman of all those names I gave you now is Vernon Philander, so he plays. You then choose the rest of your bowlers.
"Have the balls to make the tough decision and go and say to one of your premier fast bowlers: 'You are the one that is not in form'.
"Let's be prepared to make the difficult, right decisions versus the easy, wrong decisions."
Both Philander and Prince agreed that the conversation needed to continue, but that there needed to be an acknowledgement that the system had not always been fair.
"There is a lot of pain and hurt that players have felt," Philander said.
"I can't sit still and when I see something wrong, I speak up about it. For some reason, that is deemed to be wrong. I don't know why.
"I would like to have this conversation if they [CSA] do decide to have it with us because we need to turn this tide.
"If I'm going to forgive someone, I need to know what it is I need to forgive. It needs to be accepted on the other side and admitted.
"It's a respect thing too. We need to respect each other enough to have this conversation and, ultimately, come to a stage where we can implement policies that include everyone whether it be at a coaching level, the board and at provinces.
"It's not just about including all races, but it's about giving them a voice to speak up at any time without having the fear that they might lose their job."