After South Africa witnessed a dismal run in the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup, former spinner Pat Symcox opined that there was not enough time for coach Ottis Gibson to prepare the team for the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup.
"You appoint a coach and he's got 18 months to create a culture... do a whole lot of things in preparation for the World Cup. And I'm not sure that there's enough time to build a culture in South African cricket 18 months before a World Cup," Sport24.co.za quoted Symcox as saying.
South Africa finished on the seventh position in the World Cup's point table as they only had seven points from nine games.
Symcox also called Gibson, who is a West Indian, a 'total outsider'.
"The guy is a total outsider... and we've got a very diverse team... there's religious divides, racial divides, there's English and Afrikaans... it's a very tough thing to unite a team in a very short space of time. At the end of the World Cup, Ottis was saying he now fully realises how important the World Cup was. So maybe we didn't do that job properly," he said.
Gibson was earlier England's bowling coach before he took the new role as head coach of the Proteas in August 2017.
Despite praising Gibson for his bowling abilities, Symcox said that building a culture is a totally different aspect.
"I'm not knocking him as a coach... I know how good he is, I played with him (at Griquas) and was his captain at one stage. He was a great bowler and he did all the right things. He's had coaching experience as a bowling coach. But building a culture in a team is a totally different aspect to teaching a guy how to bowl to off-stump on a length," Symcox said.
( With inputs from ANI )
