"It's a very unsatisfactory situation that exists in our cricket at the moment as politicians are running the game," Rice told the Bloomberg news agency.

"The players must get together and revolt."

United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA) president Percy Sonn over-ruled the tour selectors on the eve of the third and final Test in Sydney.

He demanded that black all-rounder Ontong be picked ahead of white top-order specialist Jacques Rudolph in the number six slot.

South African selectors are obliged to choose a team on merit but have a policy of including at least one player of colour. Provincial teams have to include at least three.

Opening batsman Herschelle Gibbs was the only coloured player originally chosen for the match but Sonn argued moving top-order players down the order excluded Ontong.

Rice, who played for South Africa mostly during the apartheid years, now coaches Nottinghamshire.

And he has played a lead role in bringing white players, several of whom are disillusioned with provicial quotas, into county cricket.

"It's easy for Clive Rice to say those things when he is earning his pounds in England," said Graham Abrahams, a spokesman for the Ministry of Sport.

"He is not part of the cricket establishment here. We support the UCB's action 100 percent."

Abrahams was also quoted as saying, "If this was any other player but a black player, would we have had this media frenzy?"

Not compatible

Newspapers in South Africa featured the controversy on their front pages.

"We can forget winning next year's Cricket World Cup - on South African soil - if the UCB continues interfering in the game as it has this week," said the Pretoria News.

"The brutal truth ... is that the goals of transformation and the goals of maintaining a winning national cricket team are not always compatible," an editorial in Durban daily The Mercury said.

"There is little doubt that part of the reason for South Africa's poor showing in Australia is that the players feel that they are being mishandled, misunderstood and under appreciated by South Africa's politically-minded administrators.

But former left-arm spinner Omar Henry, the first coloured player in the South African side following its return from sporting isolation in 1991, blamed the administrators for not helping black cricketers more.