Johannesburg:Former captain and South Africa's director of cricket Graeme Smith on Friday confirmed that Quinton de Kock would not be elevated to the Test captaincy.The 39-year-old Smith said the risk of overburdening de Kock has resulted in ruling him out of leadership role in all three formats.
"The one thing I can confirm is that Quinton will be our white-ball captain and he won't be the Test captain going forward," ESPN Cricinfo quoted Smith as saying.
"We want to keep Quinton fresh and playing well. I've always believed, having been in the job myself, that captaining all three formats is challenging. We've seen a number of nations trying to figure out what's best and I think across three formats, it probably doesn't work," he added.
The Cricket South Africa (CSA) on Friday extended Smith's contract as its director of cricket for two years. He will now remain with the Proteas until the end of April 2022.
Smith said burdening De Kock by giving him the captaincy in all three formats will not be beneficial for the team."From a workload and mental capacity, we felt that to burden him with all three formats wouldn't be beneficial for us. And with the style of personality and player that he is, we want to keep him as expressive as possible," Smith said.
Smith gave no indication of the likely replacement following the decision of Faf du Plessis in February to step down from the job."There's no one person you can pinpoint," he said. "There are a lot of players on a similar level."
South Africa's next scheduled Test series is in the West Indies in July but Smith said that it had not been finalised due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Proteas are also due to go to Sri Lanka for a limited-overs tour in June but Smith said both tours could be postponed."We are in discussion with the boards of those countries and decisions will have to be made pretty soon," he said.(UNI)