Markram the new AB?
The two tests in Sri Lanka will hopefully see talents emerge
● Welcome to the test series that never should have been: South Africa’s two matches in Sri Lanka, the first in Galle on Friday.
What are teams doing mucking about playing tests with a World Cup looming 265 days in the future?
Never mind. Once these irrelevancies are done with the sides will play five one-day internationals.
That’s more like it. Except it isn’t.
The dead, dry pitches of Sri Lanka and the lively, juicy surfaces in England, where the World Cup will be staged, are about as far apart as Venus and Mars.
Or are they? In ODIs played in England in the past 10 years, batsmen have averaged 33.51 and scored at 5.52 runs an over. In Sri Lanka, runs have come at 5.20 to the over and batsmen have averaged 30.69.
But there’s more daylight between South Africa’s performance in ODIs in England compared to those in Sri Lanka.
In England, they’ve won 18 of their 44 games and lost 22. Only eight of South Africa’s 24 matches in Sri Lanka have ended in victory for them, and 15 in defeat. So South Africa have won 40.91% of their ODIs in England and exactly a third in Sri Lanka.
It’s bad enough that the tour starts with the wrong format. Then it moves to the right format but is stuck in the wrong place. And then, just for fun, we have to put up with a random T20.
But it is what it is, and South Africa will have 16 other ODIs at home — against Zimbabwe, Pakistan and the Lankans — and in Australia to tighten the nuts and bolts before England and all that.
Besides, the sooner they get used to having to win without the shimmering talent of AB de Villiers, the better.
“It’s never nice to lose a player of the quality of AB, and it will be a massive hole to fill,” Aiden Markram told reporters in Colombo, where the visitors have a two-day warm-up game before the test series.
“But, having said that, we have plenty of talent back at home, and we have got guys on the tour who can do similar sorts of things.
“There might be a bit more pressure on the batters, but at the end of the day you try to do the best you can.”
He’s a good kid, Markram, but he’s not fooling anyone. The only sense in which the unarguably great De Villiers can be replaced is by scribbling someone else’s name where his used to be on the team sheet.
For the rest, it’s about South Africa relearning how to play white-ball cricket. AB might as well stand for After Brilliance.
Markram is among the candidates to step into the De Villiers breach in the one-day side. Another is Heinrich Klaasen, who has a touch of the wizard of innovation’s daring about him.
But Markram’s reliable technique and temperament, and the fact that he has played 10 more games in a South Africa shirt than Klaasen, should help him crack the nod.
Expect Temba Bavuma to inherit De Villiers’s spot at No 4 in the test order. There can be no doubt that Bavuma has the commitment to alloy to his talent and skill and make a fist of things in his likely new role.
But he will know that he needs to add what in rugby circles used to be called goforward if he is to hold down that place. Bavuma looks like a scrumhalf but he will have to bat like the cricket equivalent of a flyhalf — similar to a No 10, the job of a No 4 is to make things happen — if he is to exploit his opportunity to the fullest.
That promises to be a process.
For now, South Africans are eagerly awaiting the almost instant gratification of the freshly repaired Dale Steyn taking three wickets to become South Africa’s champion test bowler.
“He hasn’t mentioned it, no one has mentioned it,” Markram said.
Don’t worry, boet. They will.
We’ve got guys on tour who can do similar things Aidan Markram
Key batsman