New Delhi. During the Test series against Team India, South Africa’s Head Coach Shukri Conrad had made a comment for which he has been criticized. In the press conference, Shukri Conrad used the word ‘grovel’ for India, which means ‘to bring someone to his knees’. Now he himself has broken his silence on this and regrets using this word, but he is not ready to apologize to the Indian team.
England behind by 17 runs
Speaking at the press conference after the third ODI played in Visakhapatnam on Saturday, he said, “My intention was never to be bad towards anyone or to be arrogant about anything. On reflection, I felt that I could have chosen a better word than this, because it gave people the opportunity to interpret it as per their own. All I meant was that India should spend more time (on the field) and make it very difficult for them. Now I have to be careful about which word I use here. Because context can be added to that too!”
On 25 November, on the fourth evening of the Guwahati Test, Conrad was asked why his team batted for five hours and four minutes before taking a lead of 549 runs. This was 161 runs more than the score successfully chased in any Test in India. Conrad then said, “We wanted the Indian players to spend as much time on the field as possible. We wanted them to be really nervous, as the saying goes. Take them out of the game completely, and then say come and stay for an hour and a half on the last day this evening.”
chaos over one word
Out of those 48 word statements, 47 words are absolutely correct. There was a word growl, that is not good at all. It is linked to slavery, colonialism and racism and when Tony Greig used it in May 1976 to explain what he wanted his England team to do to the West Indies, it caused quite an uproar, leading to the West Indies becoming so enraged that they won the series 3–0. Conrad further said on Saturday, “It’s really sad. Maybe it would have made the ODI series more fun and especially with India having now won that series, the T20 series will be even more exciting.”
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