As the South African public waits to find out who is going to replace outgoing Proteas coach Mark Boucher, Geoffrey Toyana has once again confirmed his interest in the job.
The Proteas top job will be up for grabs at the end of the 2022 T20 Cricket World Cup underway in Australia.
Boucher has signed a contract with Indian Premier League (IPL) side Mumbai Indians.
Toyana, one of the highly-rated coaches in the country, has been linked with the job before but has always been overlooked, with Ottis Gibson and Boucher being preferred to him.
“I’ve never taken my hand down,” Toyana told the Sunday Times.
“My hand is still raised until now, since 2018 my hand has been up and my hand is still up.”
After Gibson made his exit as head coach after an unsuccessful 2019 World Cup, Boucher took the reins at the back of an successful tenure with the Titans.
But that has not deterred the spirit of the 48-year-old Soweto-born coach, who is the assistant coach at the Titans.
“As I’m now coaching at this (provincial) level, the big dream for me is to coach the national team,” Toyana said.
I think every coach that is working at a franchise or provincial, their dream is to coach the national team. My dream is that as well, I want to coach my country one day
— Geoffrey Toyana
“I think every coach that is working at a franchise or provincial, their dream is to coach the national team. My dream is that as well, I want to coach my country one day.”
When Toyana was appointed as the first black African coach for the Lions in 2012, his side achieved huge success including winning four titles in as many seasons.
There’s a strong possibility that Cricket SA (CSA) might go the route of having two separate coaches for white ball and red ball cricket formats.
Toyana plans to raise his hand on both sides.
“England has done that successfully,” Toyana said. “It’s tough for players and coaches to play all formats and be away from families for almost a year sometimes if you are coaching all the formats.
“The thinking about that is just to free up time for coaches and staff. How CSA goes about it is going to be interesting.”
However, England Cricket Board and CSA financial situations are vastly different, with the latter running at a R200m loss since the 2018/19 season.
“Maybe now with this SA20, there’s going to be money in the CSA coffers that can ensure they can afford to pay for two coaches,” Toyana said.
CSA director of cricket Enoch Nkwe said they were planning to advertise for two positions next month, but still needed to jump through a few hoops, including the money issue.
“There’s just one or two things to sign off on and we should be in a better space to advertise the positions,” Nkwe said.
“It has not been approved yet, that’s why I say there’s one or two things that need to get signed off in terms of the approval process and we should be good to go by the first week of November.”
CSA’s high-performance members could be used as staff for the new technical teams.
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