Champion Proteas will burst straight through every ceiling, insists Ashwell Prince

THROUGHOUT the Proteas’ two-year cycle, including heading into the World Test Championship final, the batting unit came under intense criticism and comparison.

Many looked at Australia’s batting unit and identified their experience, including that of Steve Smith, Usman Khawaja and Travis Head – who are some of the best in the world – and compared that to South Africa’s young line-up.

There were questions and doubts on the unit’s ability to hold their ground against a strong Australia attack, forgetting the centuries that the batters have scored throughout the cycle, be it here at home in South Africa or away from home.

Proteas batting coach Ashwell Prince commented on the batters’ potential upon arriving in South Africa this week, and told the media that they are yet to reach their ceiling and that the comparison should stop.

“I think as South Africans, we obviously had a generation where you had a batting line-up consisting of Smith, Gibbs, Kallis, AB, Amla, and out of all those names, there are about four or five of them in this Hall of Fame,” Prince stated.

“The dangerous thing from a South African point of view is to compare every young player who comes up in the system to Hall of Famers, because not every batsman can be a Hall of Famer.

“It’s really important for people who are working with the young batters to understand that this is actually a good batsman, because if you compare them to Hall of Famers, then everybody is not going to be good enough.

“Then you’re just going to say, well, ‘This guy is not good enough because AB used to do this’, or whoever.

“You just got to take one person at a time, identify what they’re good at, and like every other player, we all have limitations, and we try and brush up on those limitations.”

With such a youthful batting group, as a batting coach, Prince had a job to do, and that entailed being able to show the batters their true potential and encouraging them to push through the ceiling many fans around the world have placed on them.

“Something that I shared with the team beforehand, we spoke about the youthful nature of this batting line-up, which means that because they’re youthful... They haven’t reached their ceiling yet,” said Prince.

“Their ceiling is still coming.

“On top of that, everybody from media, spectators in the ground, people watching the game around the world, any person who watches games from an advantage point will have an opinion about every individual’s ceiling and the team’s ceiling.

“And the message is simple from our side: let them believe what they want to believe.

“We burst straight through the ceiling. That was the message.

“We’ll burst through whatever they feel the ceiling is, and that’s exactly what they did. 

“Aiden Markram played an innings any person never thought he was capable of; he burst straight through the top of that.

“We just want to make them believe that they can do that.

“We don’t talk a lot, but make them believe that they can do that, and they will do it.”