Graeme Smith clarifies his stance on race bias claims made by Thami Tsolekile

Cricket South Africa (CSA) director and former captain Graeme Smith has finally broken his silence on the allegations by the former wicketkeeper Thami Tsolekile. Smith issued a personal statement on his official Twitter handle in which he cleared his stance saying that he has always worked for the betterment of South African cricket.

Thami has played three Test matches for South Africa in 2004-05 scoring 47 runs at an average of 9.4. The cricketer was handed a 12-year ban from the game in 2015 for being found guilty in the match-fixing scandal.

In a recent interview with Robert Marawa on Marawa Sport Worldwide, Tsolekile had accused CSA of doing partiality in the match-fixing scandal on the basis of skin color. He also lashed out at Smith for not being aware of certain issues surrounding the battle to be the Proteas wicketkeeper in a period from 2010.

During that time, current head coach Mark Boucher kept gloves for the Proteas, while Tsolekile was second in line – based on his good domestic performances – but never got the opportunity to play.

Graeme Smith defends his tenure as South African captain

In a note shared on his Twitter handle, Smith cleared his stance saying that he never had an issue with Thami as a person and he was also not aware of the frustrations of his (Thami’s) international career.

Talking about his captaincy, Smith reckoned that he took every decision while keeping in the mind the best interest of the game. Giving examples of players like Lance Klusener, Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini, Graeme said that these players were always cut from the national team at a time when they thought they were still good enough to do the job.

Strongly denying the allegations and insinuations, the 39-year-old argued that he didn’t have much say in the selection of the squad or team. He also cleared that in no way he was associated with the financial pay of the players during his tenure as a captain.

Defending himself on Thami’s claim of not picking him as a wicketkeeper, the veteran cricketer said in his statement ‘Unfortunately, Thami was a wicketkeeper, which meant he was always only fighting for one position. I can understand how frustrating that must have been, and there have been several other excellent wicketkeepers that South African cricket never saw on an international stage, because keepers tend to stay in a team for long periods of time.’

‘Thami was in the squad as reserve keeper to AB de Villiers and this was communicated to him on both the England and Australian tours by Gary Kirsten [head coach at the time], which has been previously acknowledged by Thami,’ he added

At the end of the four-page long statement, Smith concluded that the allegations hurled at him were extremely hurtful and he denied them in the strongest possible sense. Also, standing by his decisions that he made as a captain, the CSA’s director is ready to engage in discussions over that on the right platform.