Ex-SA skipper Dean Elgar blames head coach for 'Test career being cut short' | Here's Why

Former South Africa skipper Dean Elgar has blamed head coach Shukri Conrad for his career being cut short. Elgar, who played 86 Tests for the Proteas, retired after the two-Test series against India in January earlier this year. Elgar currently plays for the English county team Essex.

"Shukri Conrad is the reason why my Test career was cut short," said Elgar in an interview to newspaper Rapport.

Also Read:IPL 2024: VIDEO | MS Dhoni bowled for duck by Harshal Patel in CSK vs PBKS

"It felt as though they did not recognise all my hard work over the previous year-and-a-half, that they didn’t realise how much we had improved as a team," he added on being replaced as the Test skipper with Temba Bavuma.

Elgar also said that the environment wasn't conducive and hence his form took a dive as well. Elgar captained South Africa in 18 Tests and scored 849 runs at an average of 26 against his all time average of 38.

"I became a part-time cricketer and full-time politician, something that I never want to go through again. I am a sportsman, not a politician or a cricket administrator, but I was thrown into a cauldron in which I had to be all three. If I had known that before, I would never have accepted the captaincy."

"I tried to make the best of a bad job, to control the things I could control. But my own form took a dive," he said.

He also noted that there was no acknowledgement for his efforts as skipper despite his team "from being sixth or seventh in the world we became a team with the potential to play in the World Test championship final".

Elgar ended his career with 5,347 runs in whites to go with 14 hundreds and 23 fifties. He, however, could not manage to score even a single double hundred in his career with 199 being his best score in an innings.