Test of steel still to come for Amla
India, England will show mettle of SA captain
AFTER Hashim Amla’s two cricket tests as SA’s captain, we know he will look for a way to win if the circumstances allow. We also know he is unafraid to work hard not to lose if the door to victory is shut.
But there is much we do not know, and neither does he. For instance, is he enjoying captaincy?
“It’s easy to say you are when you win, but it’s only been one game,” he said after SA beat Sri Lanka by 153 runs in the first test in Galle. “So, I can’t really say.”
Similarly, we are a long way from having a solid idea of what kind of captain Amla will make. For instance, he has yet to deal with the expectation that will come with leading his team at home. Happily for him, this season’s assignment against a mediocre West Indies outfit should stretch neither him nor his team.
Then, in February, it’s off to the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand and all thoughts of test cricket will be shelved. Amla will next have to step up to the plate for two tests in Bangladesh next July. As tours to the sub-continent go, that is not too tough an ask.
The true test of Amla’s captaincy will come in the 2015-2016 season.
South Africa will spend half that summer in India and the other half hosting England in series of four tests each.
Nothing can match a tour to India for sheer frenzy, from dealing with a large, well-informed, critical, at times obsessive media to trying to understand how 1.25 billion people can all be cricket crazy all the time.
The “beyond the boundary” politics that have raged between the two countries’ administrators in recent years, will add a tricky dimension, as will the fact that this will be SA’s first test series against a member of the Big Three – India, England and Australia – since their effective takeover of world cricket in April.
How Amla keeps his team and himself together – or does not – in the throes of all that, will be an important indicator of his skills and aptitude for leadership.
So will how he handles the pressure of South Africans demanding that his team whip the pants off England.
Battles between the colonisers and the colonised hold a special place in cricket, and the intensity will be high.
Putting up with the English media, meanwhile, is no-one’s idea of fun.
But, so far, so good. Amla’s declaration in the first test in Galle, which set Sri Lanka a target of 370 in a minimum of 122 overs, was probably not all his own work. Captains are made to carry the can for their decisions, but the reality is most of those calls are made in committee.
Even so, the declaration showed a keen understanding of opponents who needed to be kept interested if victory was to re- main an option. Moreover, Amla showed a willingness to set attacking fields and to change them when necessary, and he did not need to explain the thinking behind his bowling changes – they made sense.
The second test at the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo was a different animal, a match SA could not win from the moment Angelo Mathews won the toss and chose to bat on a pitch that rolled over and died after one session.
Pragmatism mattered most, as Amla himself epitomised in his 139 not out in the first innings. It was the hard labour of more than eight hours at the crease, and it needed to be exactly what it was.
That kind of clear-eyed realism and readiness to do what is required – and to do it without ego – will serve him well. But the test is yet to come.