Amla’s steady hand steers SA back on course

He delivers third-over innings of efficiency, precision and serenity

HASHIM Amla added far more than his undefeated 118 to SA’s cause on the first day of their Test series against Pakistan at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi yesterday.

He also brought the cool head, steady hand and resoluteness most of his team-mates lacked, and took SA to 245/8 at stumps. It will be up to their bowlers to keep them in the game today on a pitch that will get better for batting.

Amla responded to being summoned in the third over with a perfectly Amla-esque innings of efficiency, precision and serenity.

He reached it soon after the thrust of the day’s play looked set to change in the sixth over of the third session, when Mohammad Irfan pulled up after bowling two deliveries of his 15th over.

Gingerly, the giant bent his 2.16m self in half to stretch both his cramping calves. Then he walked slowly off the field. With the Punjabi pylon went the biggest threat — in every sense — Pakistan posed to SA’s batsmen.

Irfan needed just 20 deliveries to remove both SA’s openers. A fidgety Alviro Petersen blipped a catch to short leg before Graeme Smith was taken behind after edging Irfan for two boundaries.

Another inside edge, this time off Junaid Khan, claimed the wicket of Jacques Kallis to reduce SA to 43/3 after just an hour.

Misbah-ul-Haq introduced debutant left-arm spinner Zulfiqar Babar into the attack as early as the 10th over and Saeed Ajmal was tossed the ball in the fifth over before lunch. But it was Irfan who prowled the park like a man who had come to take wickets — even that of Amla, who was 34 not out when Irfan forced him into a looping leading edge that landed safely in the covers.

Slowly, however, Amla and AB de Villiers, who showed plenty of zest and a silky touch, began to reel the game back in.

They took SA to lunch and had forged midway through the second session when De Villiers did — or rather failed to do — something he will struggle to explain.

Befuddled by a delivery from Zulfiqar that took the edge, hit his pad, and produced an appeal for legbefore, De Villiers did not ensure he was behind the crease. Instead, his back foot was on the line when Younis Khan’s throw from first slip reached Adnan Akmal, who removed the bails smartly but as an afterthought.

De Villiers’s carelessness snuffed out a steadying stand at 61. Another was needed, and JP Duminy helped Amla produce exactly that for the next two hours.

The disappointment of the sturdy, composed Duminy sweeping Zulfiqar into the hands of a slightly deeper square leg to end his innings for 57 and the partnership at 95 was followed by Irfan’s exit and Amla reaching his 20th Test century with an almost languid punch to long-off off Zulfiqar.

But Duminy’s dismissal was the first of four wickets to fall in the next hour, three of them to Zulfiqar.

Irfan returned in time to take the new ball in the fourth over before the close. This time, he was not quite so threatening.