Duminy up for a fight to prove his mettle
● In a team of reluctant senior statesmen, one Jean-Paul Duminy has been a stylish drum major whose substance has always been called into question. Next year’s World Cup has never been more important for the talented Duminy — it could be his last international assignment. In the ODI leg of the Sri Lanka tour, he’s been up for the fight. However, Duminy still has a few boxes he needs to tick, especially now that AB de Villiers has called time on his career.
Seasoned campaigner
When Duminy made his international bow against Sri Lanka in 2004, Hashim Amla and Faf du Plessis were still four and eight years away from making their ODI debuts. Whether this experience has been translated into something significant is debatable but Duminy has played in all sorts of conditions. The finishing skills seen in the first two ODIs against Sri Lanka spoke of a man who not only understood the conditions, but also the need to close out a game and not leave it for the inexperienced tails. It was a calculated calmness not always seen in Duminy’s game and one needed in crunch matches.
Steely adaptability
Filling De Villiers’s shoes is not easy and it could be impossible, but Duminy is able to soak up pressure and transfer it if early wickets are lost. Issues about quality spin on conducive surfaces still need to be ironed out. On surfaces that don’t turn, he has the armoury to cash in. He’s never quite done so but Duminy now assumes the heavy lifting in the middle order and will have to convert modest totals into defendable ones.
Must swim against big teams
Duminy has 30 scores of 50-plus but none of his four ODI tons have come against the big teams. Three were against Zimbabwe and one against the Netherlands, but this had more to do with where he batted when SA had a solid middle order. He still has time to rectify this worrying statistic.
Batting at No 4 does allow him to have more time in the middle to build matchdefining innings instead of late-order cameos as a lower-order finisher. SA hasn’t quite seen the best of Duminy as a limitedovers practitioner. His 82 against Australia is his highest score against the major teams.
Zero Test match baggage
Duminy was smart enough to call time on his stagnating Test career, which freed his mind to focus on the shorter formats. That ensures he’ll be readily available for white-ball duty without having to worry about Test-match induced mental fatigue. With England reverting to limited-over specialists, Duminy could easily fulfil the kind of role England captain Eoin Morgan occupies as a multifaceted middle-order batsman who doesn’t have red-ball commitments to worry about.
International curtain call
Duminy will be 35 at the World Cup and surely will not have another International Cricket Council tournament left in him. This also applies to Amla and Du Plessis, who won’t be around for the 2023 edition. However, Du Plessis and Amla have left indelible marks for the Proteas in a manner that Duminy hasn’t, but they’ve also had the benefit of being top-order batsmen. SA’s top order has a formidable look to it with Aiden Markram, Du Plessis and Duminy providing the spine, but it has to deliver consistently. Sri Lanka have become limited-overs lightweights. However, Duminy can’t afford to be a bantamweight presence in a batting unit that has performed sporadically.