Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg
That Hashim Amla has a Wikipedia page might raise the eyebrows of those who think of him as an intensely private man. They should put their surprise on hold.
The content on the page amounts to 1921 words. Just 48 of them deal with Amla’s personal life, and 26 of those are spent on the fact that his older brother, Ahmed, also played cricket to a high standard.
Amla himself is reduced to 22 words in a document of almost 2000. There is no mention of his wife and two children, and not much fuss is made of the fact that, since Tuesday, he has been SA’s test captain.
Asked at the press conference where his appointment was announced how he would handle what is sure to be a spike of intrusion into his private life, Amla acknowledged that “time is precious” but also that “I have a responsibility and I would like to embrace it”.
Once the conference broke up, selection convenor Andrew Hudson, SA coach Russell Domingo and Cricket SA chief executive Haroon Lorgat stayed to give individual interviews. Amla, however, was on his way immediately - perhaps to Surrey, where he has replaced his predecessor, Graeme Smith.
Might they have met at the airport, where Smith, his county season ended by a fractured knee, would have been on his way home for surgery? “Just landed in Jhb ...” Smith tweeted. “Congrats my bud and excited to watch you shape Proteas’ test future.”
South Africans know the national team’s shape will shift under Amla. For one thing, Amla will not leap once more unto the breach with the same dramatic intent that fuelled Smith’s heroics. For another, he is more his own man than any SA captain who has gone before him. For still another, the constants of so many years represented by Smith, Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher are gone. In their place are the magnificently mad Dale Steyn, the pyrotechnic polymath called AB de Villiers and the scarily serene Amla.
“He was all about being calm - there was an aura of good sense and respect about him, even when things weren’t going according to plan,” Stephen Cook, who batted ahead of Amla in the SA team that Amla captained all the way to the 2002 under-19 World Cup final, said.
“He was never a rah-rah ‘come on boys’ kind of captain. He was more, ‘Follow me and we’ll be OK’.”
Cook was mindful of Amla’s development as a batsman in all three formats - “He just seems to be getting better” - but the new captain had not built himself on a mountain of elegantly scored runs: “Sometimes people forget that there’s more to cricketers than ability. There’s also character.”
Davy Jacobs, who followed Amla to the crease in that under-19 World Cup final, also reached for the C-word: “If anything, Hashim has become more calm. That’s his biggest strength. Ever since I met him that’s been consistent.
“We’ve played against each other plenty since then, and you can see he’s a very smart cricketer who is very good with plans. He works well with bowlers and captains even when he isn’t the captain.”
Cook and Jacobs grew from their under-19 roots to captain the Lions and the Warriors respectively, and you would have to talk to a lot of cricketers to find any who would contradict their opinions of Amla.
But it was left to Amla’s agent, Ismail Kajee, to draw that picture on a civilian scale. Yes, Kajee said, he expected Amla’s already busy life to become busier still as media demands rose and endorsement offers poured in.
Then he paused to capture the essence of a man he thinks of as a brother: “We all wish we were like him. I’m older than Hashim, but even I wanted to be like him when I was growing up.”
Imagine that - us, Amlaesque. It is among the sillier thoughts we could have. Nevermind trying to bat for the best part of three days against Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann at The Oval, how would we keep calm when all about us are making jokes about beards? Or when some idiot calls us a terrorist? And how would we not write about ourselves for more than 22 words on our Wikipedia page?
Amla’s biggest tests
1. Communication: A man who does not seem like he likes to talk much had better get used to doing so much more - to his players, the media, the sponsors, and the public.
2. Taking over: Russell Domingo has discovered that people do not trust him to take over from Gary Kirsten. Amla could be up against the same prejudice.
3. Otherness: No previous SA captain has been anything like Amla. He must ensure his otherness is not a disadvantage.
4. AB de Villiers: Amla and his vice-captain have a strong relationship. Considering De Villiers is the one-day captain, was in the running for the test leadership, and is SA’s only other world class test batsman, best they remain on good terms.
5. Sri Lanka: The best way for Amla to make his mark would be to win next month’s test series there. Thing is, SA have not won a test series in Sri Lanka since 1993 ...
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