Westville Old Boy's Mickey Arthur: The Mercury, Editorial “Coaches being fired or resigning under pressure is nothing new in the cauldron that is top-level sport in South Africa. But for the national cricket coach to quit immediately after his team got the better of a drawn, enthralling Test series against England is surely setting the bar at an unprecedented height. Indeed, during his five-year term in charge of the Proteas, Mickey Arthur saw his team scale truly Olympian heights, beating Australia in their own backyard for the first time in the history of South African cricket, scoring other memorable victories both home and away, and seeing the team being rated the best in the world in both Test and 50-overs cricket. They had slipped a little from those highs of 2008, but under Arthur and Graeme Smith, the Proteas have remained one of the best teams in the world. Yet Arthur is out, as is the national selection panel which was fired this week following the coach’s resignation. Clearly the brooms are sweeping clean at Cricket South Africa, but why? The reason given at a press conference yesterday by CSA chief executive Gerald Majola was that it had been decided Arthur would no longer appoint his own “structure” – presumably his assistant coaches-as in the past. Faced with this bouncer from his bosses, Arthur had decided that he and they no longer were of one mind on how to progress the common cause, so he decided to walk. Both Arthur and Smith strongly denied suggestions that tensions between the two had led to Arthur’s departure. Their denials had the ring of truth, but as always in South African, but as always in South African sport, politics cast a shadow, with claims that Arthur had angered his employers by not doing enough to transform the team (which featured between three and four players of colour throughout the England series). No matter what the backroom machinations, five years is a fair tenure for an international coach, and an old adage comes to mind: it matters not who won or lost, but how you played the game. Arthur excelled both as a gentleman of the sport, and as a coach who took his team to new heights and we wish him well.” Westville Boys' High School salutes Mickey and also wishes him well.

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