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Full Quinton de Kock statement:

"I would like to start by saying sorry to my teammates, and the fans back home.

"I never ever wanted to make this a Quinton issue. I understand the importance of standing against racism, and I also understand the responsibility of us as players to set an example.

"If me taking a knee helps to educate others, and makes the lives of others better, I am more than happy to do so.

"I did not, in any way, mean to disrespect anyone by not playing against West Indies, especially the West Indian team themselves. Maybe some people don't understand that we were just hit with this on Tuesday morning, on the way to a game.


"I am deeply sorry for all the hurt, confusion and anger that I have caused.

"I was quiet on this very important issue until now. But I feel I have to explain myself a little bit.


"For those who don't know, I come from a mixed race family. My half-sisters are Coloured and my step mom is Black. For me, Black lives have mattered since I was born. Not just because there was an international movement.

"The rights and equality of all people is more important than any individual.

"I was raised to understand that we all have rights, and they are important.

"I felt like my rights were taken away when I was told what we had to do in the way that we were told.


"Since our chat with the board last night, which was very emotional, I think we all have a better understanding of their intentions as well. I wish this had happened sooner, because what happened on match day could have been avoided.

"I know I have an example to set. We were previously told we had the choice to do what we felt we wanted to do.

"I chose to keep my thoughts to myself, and thought of the pride of playing for my family and my country.

"I didn't understand why I had to prove it with a gesture, when I live and learn and love people from all walks of life every day. When you are told what to do, with no discussion, I felt like it takes away the meaning. If I was racist, I could easily have taken the knee and lied, which is wrong and doesn't build a better society.

"Those who have grown up with me and played with me, know what type of person I am.

"I've been called a lot of things as a cricketer. Doff. Stupid. Selfish. Immature. But those didn't hurt. Being called a racist because of a misunderstanding hurts me deeply.

"It hurts my family. It hurts my pregnant wife.

"I am not a racist. In my heart of hearts, I know that. And I think those who know me know that.

"I know I'm not great with words, but I've tried my best to explain how truly sorry I am for making like this is about me.

"It is not.

"I won't lie, I was shocked that we were told on the way to an important match that there was an instruction that we had to follow, with a perceived 'or else.' I don't think I was the only one.

"We had camps. We had sessions. We had zoom meetings. We know where we all stand. And that is together.

"I love every one of my teammates, and I love nothing more than playing cricket for South Africa.

"I think it would have been better for everyone concerned if we had sorted this out before the tournament started.

"Then we could have focused on our job, to win cricket matches for our country.

"There always seems to be a drama when we go to World Cups. That isn't fair.


"I just want to thank my teammates for their support, especially my captain, Temba. People might not recognise, but he is a flipping amazing leader.

"If he and the team, and South Africa, will have me, I would love nothing more than to play cricket for my country again."
 
All very strange, if I'm honest and extremely badly handled by all parties. Its not like taking the knee suddenly sprung out out of thin air in Cricket and QDK was not participating like other team members who stood before they were given the directive to kneel. So for some reason he chose not to engage with a gesture he apparently agrees with, which is the bit that baffles.

I can understand him having a knee jerk reaction to being told what to do but again he should be smart enough to know it would cause a **** storm. For as stated gesture he states to agree with.

He's apologised and tried to explain so its the end of it. I'm just still confused to his thinking other than child doing the 'I won't do what tell me to', the guy is 28....

That doesn't excuse Cricket SA for not talking to players and the team not talking as a group and agreeing how they'd tackle it before Monday. Which honestly is a shitshow of itself, this didn't spring out the ground magically this world cup they should of been adequately prepared.

Reminds me of England completely ******* up over playing in Zimbabwe back way back in 2003.
 
Yorkshire deep in the mire for not taking a report seriously, the statement from the resigned Chairman is pretty damning. Glad the ECB have taken proper action against Yorkshire for their response.

 
Although also sounds like ECB were less than helpful when original accusations were made although one could argue Yorkshire were instead given ample opportunity to clean their own house.
 
You know how when people speak to the media and it doesn't make things better...


Honestly some of the things here beggar belief.

Hutton admitted the club had offered Ballance a new three-year contract after the internal investigation found he used racist language. How do you offer a new contract to someone who admits racially abusing someone?

Outgoing Yorkshire chairman Roger Hutton says there is no-one at the club he would "personally consider racist" but admitted its culture is "locked in the past". So racial abuse does not make you racist, just stuck in the past? How can they not have known what they were doing was racist and if the culture of the club was one in the past that allowed this to happen, then that does suggest the club was institutionally racist, because it's whole organisation, not individuals in isolation.

Thinks the club should "look forward, not back" in terms of reappointing former chairman Colin Graves. So the solution is to appointed the previous chairman, who was chairman between 2012-2015 when this was happening. How the **** is that moving forwards?
 
Finalists of the world tournament in all three formats isn't too bad an achievement. Just four guys in common across all three formats too.

It helps that we don't feel the same level of pressure as some of the other countries for sure. The opposite of the all blacks in that respect, who have typically struggled with the pressure of world cups. And because we keep doing well (for a small country) in tournaments and have reasonable consistency in selections we have a fair amount of confidence.
 
Nice summation of most British cricket fans views


We like this NZ team, it took an exceptional piece of batting in the 18th over to beat us, that happens in T20, it was a good evenly matched game.


There's a whole bunch of what ifs but there always is after a loss.
 
Urgh, australia. We definitely feel the pressure when playing australia. Its a very hard thing to watch when we lose against Australia.
 
Urgh, australia. We definitely feel the pressure when playing australia. Its a very hard thing to watch when we lose against Australia.
agreed, even at our strongest we've had our arse kicked by aus, they just always step up when playing us
 
Finalists of the world tournament in all three formats isn't too bad an achievement. Just four guys in common across all three formats too.

It helps that we don't feel the same level of pressure as some of the other countries for sure. The opposite of the all blacks in that respect, who have typically struggled with the pressure of world cups. And because we keep doing well (for a small country) in tournaments and have reasonable consistency in selections we have a fair amount of confidence.
Outstanding effort by us to make the ODI, Test Cricket & 20/20 finals - surely that must make us the best all-round cricket team in the world at the moment... very disappointing that Conway won't play in the final because of an injury, bit of keystone Cop stuff how it happened though, when he got stumped by the keeper he was that peeved off he smashed his hand into the bat & broke his finger :rolleyes:

I enjoy test cricket the most, you have battles within battles between bowlers & batsmen etc... white ball cricket is more of a smash bash game.

To be fair one of the main reasons the ABs struggled to win a RWC for ages was because we tried to play too much expansive running rugby... wasn't util we started to play smarter rugby in 2011 that we finally won it again.
 
Outstanding effort by us to make the ODI, Test Cricket & 20/20 finals - surely that must make us the best all-round cricket team in the world at the moment... very disappointing that Conway won't play in the final because of an injury, bit of keystone Cop stuff how it happened though, when he got stumped by the keeper he was that peeved off he smashed his hand into the bat & broke his finger :rolleyes:

I enjoy test cricket the most, you have battles within battles between bowlers & batsmen etc... white ball cricket is more of a smash bash game.

To be fair one of the main reasons the ABs struggled to win a RWC for ages was because we tried to play too much expansive running rugby... wasn't util we started to play smarter rugby in 2011 that we finally won it again.
Hadn't heard about Conway, thats massive. Seifert in I guess. I wonder if we should swap out Milne for de grandhomme too.

I wasn't referring to pressure as the reason we lost rugby world cups, just the reason we performed a lot worse than we could. Actually 2011 was probably the one where we felt the most pressure. Players had tunnel vision in that final due to the pressure and we nearly lost. Actually most of the world thinks we were lucky with ref decisions and should have lost. If we did lose people would recognise the choke, because we won people say we were resilient. Fact is we choked and won despite it. Even 2015, we could easily have lost the semi because we weren't great under pressure.
 
Hadn't heard about Conway, thats massive. Seifert in I guess. I wonder if we should swap out Milne for de grandhomme too.

I wasn't referring to pressure as the reason we lost rugby world cups, just the reason we performed a lot worse than we could. Actually 2011 was probably the one where we felt the most pressure. Players had tunnel vision in that final due to the pressure and we nearly lost. Actually most of the world thinks we were lucky with ref decisions and should have lost. If we did lose people would recognise the choke, because we won people say we were resilient. Fact is we choked and won despite it. Even 2015, we could easily have lost the semi because we weren't great under pressure.
True, Conway will be really missed, his composure is excellent in pressure situations, also he consistently works the ball into gaps, the bloke is a similar type of batsmen to Williamson.
Yeah, Seifert is likely to be his replacement... I'd keep Milne in the 11, with Ferguson out injured we need an express bowler to add more balance to our bowling attack.

There was a lot of pressure in 2011 because we were playing at home & hadn't won the RWC for ages - don't think we had tunnel vision in the match, it was just a very scrappy/ugly sort of game.
Reckon we had it over France in the forwards, what really put big pressure on us was Weepu missing 3 or 4 easy shots at goal, which was very unusual as he was a good goal kicker, after the game we found out Weepu got a groin strain in the warm-up before the Final, when he did finally hobble off, Donald came on who was the 5th 1st-five we'd used in the tournament, where he slotted a pressure kick for us to win it, so for me that was a very good win.
In the knockout stage anything can happen at a RWC - but for me since 2011 we've played more controlled rugby in that knockout, stuff, you have to, get beaten & you're out of the tournament... with a test series, if you lose the first one, you still have a chance to stay in the series by winning the next match.
 
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Disappointed we lost the 20/20 Final, anything can happen in the smash/bash stuff though - we won the one that really counted, the Test Cricket Final... & was top efforts to be in the final in all 3 formats.
 

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