Big boots to fill
SA need a new No 3 batsman, a player to replace the irreplaceable Hashim Amla. Who might the candidates be?
● Too much of what was good about SA didn’t survive the Zuma years, but here’s something that started even before the gormless giggler assumed office.
The first wicket falls. A pregnant pause passes before a man who looks like he is on his way to the shop to buy bread and milk, not face some of the best bowlers in cricket, saunters towards the middle.
He is Hashim Amla, and he has been batting at No 3 for SA since April 29, 2006. In his six innings before then, he took guard at Nos five, six and seven, not once reaching 30 and only once facing 50 or more balls. But, that day, against New Zealand at Newlands, Amla was 50 not out at stumps.
He went on to make 149 and to answer a question. South Africans haven’t had to think about who would come in at first drop for much of the past 13 years, during which Amla has scored 25 centuries and averaged 49.95 in 174 innings at No 3.
Beyond that, he has been an unshakeable part of SA’s team, a redoubtable, intelligent, sane presence in what can be the consuming mad whirl of international cricket. Someone who could too easily be cast as the other in our society, past and present, has become the epitome of what it means to be respected for everything he is. However many matches Amla helps his team win, that will remain his greatest victory.
“But, five weeks from his 36th birthday, he is waning. Amla has made only three centuries in his last 60 innings, and two of them were scored against the lesser likes of Bangladesh.”
Another sign that he is nearing the end came, cruelly, at St George’s Park on Thursday when Vishwa Fernando speared his defence with alarming ease to inflict the only first-baller of Amla’s career.
He will leave the biggest boots to fill, but leave them he will. What will it take to try them on for size?
For one thing, pitches that allow for a more accurate assessment of players’ abilities. SA’s surfaces since last summer make you wonder whether Amla himself would have been forged as far as he has were they the norm early in his career.
Even the brightest batting light in the new
Amla has made only three centuries in his last 60 innings, and two of them were scored against the lesser likes of Bangladesh
generation, opener Aiden Markram, has struggled to make his mark. As he told reporters in Port Elizabeth after surviving for almost three hours and facing 116 deliveries for his 60: “We as batters need to try to find a way to score runs on the challenging wickets. It isn’t easy.
“If you do get three or four bad scores behind your name the pressure’s on you, and [when] you look down the wicket and it looks pretty sporty it does dent your confidence a touch. But there’s a way to score and it’s about each batter finding their own way to put runs on the board.”
One of those batters is Zubayr Hamza, who was not quite 11 years old when Amla walked out, dreamily, like he had been woken from a nap, that day at Newlands in 2006.
Now, one Test into his career, Hamza could be SA’s next No. 3. He has done the job in 33 of his 35 first-class innings for the Cobras, scoring four centuries — including 201 against the Dolphins in Pietermaritzburg last month — and eight 50s.
Better yet, he looks the part: organised, eager, not easily ruffled. So does Theunis de Bruyn, who already owns a Test century at No 3 — a gritty 101 scored in Colombo in July. But he has little else to show for his efforts, not least because he has been bobbing around the top four.
Then there’s Edward Moore, unlike Hamza or De Bruyn a left-hander, who has scored two centuries — as an opener — in his last dozen first-class innings for the Warriors.
Fine players, all. None are Amla, but no one is.