The veteran South African batter AB de Villiers has disclosed that there was a significant lack of good bond between the former Proteas captain-coach duo of Graeme Smith and Ray Jennings.
He mentioned that the communication between the two was very less and when they did interact, it frequently resulted in disagreements. This used to create a negative atmosphere within the South African team’s dressing room.
Jennings was the coach of the South African team for a very short period between 2004-05. Smith became the captain of South African in 2003 and he captained Africa for almost a decade.
De Villiers shared this insight about Jennings and Smith while talking at the event where the appointment of Andy Flower as the new head coach for Royal Challengers Bangalore was being done. Flower’s appointment will bring him back together with Faf du Plessis who is the captain of the Bangalore team in the IPL. Faf Du Plessis and Andy Flower worked together for Sant Lucia Kings in 2021.
While sharing his views on this, the former South African legend said,“I saw Andy Flower actually posting about wanting to work with Faf and being very excited to work with him. It’s always a good thing. When the coach and captain work really well together, it feeds off into the team. It’s really important for the players to feel the trust, feel that the captain and the coach are on the same ship, heading in the same direction.”
He further added,“I’ve played in teams before … Ray Jennings, when Graeme Smith used to be captain, the two of them literally didn’t speak to each other. When they did, they were fighting. It was really interesting. I won’t say it really affected the team. We sort of interacted more with Graeme.”
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“Even though I had enjoyed Ray’s approach of coaching so much, Graeme was part of the boys and in the team. But the two of them didn’t talk, and it was a very interesting dynamic back in the day,” De Villiers continued.
