Lonwabo Tsotsobe accuses Graeme Smith of discriminating on the basis of ethnicity and race

South Africa’s veteran pacer Lonwabo Tsotsobe has brought some serious allegations against former South Africa captain and current Cricket South Africa (CSA) director Graeme Smith. Lonwabo has accused Smith of doing partiality during his tenure as the Proteas captain on the basis of ethnicity and race. 

The 38-year-old Tsotsobe has featured in 61 One Day Internationals and 23 T20 Internationals for South Africa picking 94 and 18 wickets respectively. He also represented the country in five matches in the purest format of the game and ended up with nine wickets at an economy rate of 3.08.

However, Tsotsobe’s career was abruptly put to a halt in 2015 after he was found guilty in the match-fixing scandal. Though till day Lonwabo maintains that he is innocent and has been treated unfairly, he was given an eight-year ban as a punishment in 2015.

The left-arm seamer has now released an official statement stating that Smith practiced discrimination on the basis of caste and colour. Lonwabo gave an example of South Africa’s Test series against England in 2012 stating that the wicketkeeper-batsman Thami Tsolekile was in line to make his debut after the first-choice wicketkeeper Mark Boucher got injured.

Lonwabo Tsotsobe opens up

However, Smith didn’t let Thami make his debut and handed the gloves to part-time keeper AB de Villiers. Lonwabo also revealed that Smith had blackmailed saying that if Thami was handed the debut cap, he would retire from cricket at that instant. According to the decorated pacer, the injustice was done with Thami as Smith wanted to block the selection of a black player.

Lonwabo Tsotsobe said in his statement, “Tsolekile was destined to replace Boucher‚ but suddenly AB de Villiers was made the keeper. The wicketkeeper is a specialist position that needs a specialist, of which De Villiers is not. The idea of assigning keeping duties to De Villiers was to block the selection of a black player in the fold of Tsolekile. This was confirmed by Smith who categorically stated that if Tsolekile was selected he would retire with immediate effect.”

Tsotsobe had submitted his statement for the CSA Social Justice and Nation Building. The hearing against the controversial issue was bound to take place on May 19, Wednesday. However, it has been postponed for an indefinite time.

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