BIRMINGHAM, May 3: Boeta Dippenaar has criticised South Africa’s racial quota system and urged his country to revamp the policy or risk losing more top players like Kevin Pietersen.

Dippenaar, who retired from internationals in January and is now playing for English county Leicestershire, was elected president of the South African Cricketers’ Association last month.

He has appealed to the administrators to govern the sport with a focus on cricket, not politics.

“They need to make sure we, as sportsmen, are judged on our skill,” Dippenaar said. “We are on dangerous ground as soon as we start saying ‘x’ amount of players have to be white and ‘x’ amount of players have to be of colour.

“We don’t mind if the whole team is black if that’s the best team. Throughout the whole transformation process a lot of patriotism has been lost.”

Cricket South Africa is now committed to a racial transformation policy “aimed at ensuring the imbalances of the past are redressed as soon as possible”.

But Dippenaar expressed the policy may discourage aspiring youngsters. “Unfortunately, if people had an aspiration to play for South Africa they will now think twice about doing so.

“I have always said the game should be surrounded by people with cricketing interests at heart and not people with political interests at heart. There’s a distinct difference.”—Reuters