Beyond the beard could lurk South Africa’s next Test captain

www.GOcricket.com - http://www.gocricket.com/columns/telford-vice/South-African-cricket--Is-Hashim-Amla-South-Africas-next-Test-captain/articleshow/35373657.cms

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

Is Hashim Amla a Test captain? As with much about this magnificent player for whom cricket is not everything, how can we tell? But we know this: he has put up the hand that shall not sweat and made himself available for the position.

For days, whispers swirled that Amla had reconsidered his previous stance - that anything that put itself in the way of him being the best batsman he could be, captaincy included, was not part of his plan.

Then, on Monday, his agent confirmed that Amla had tossed his topi into a ring that had previously contained only AB de Villiers’ cowboy hat and, perhaps, Faf du Plessis’ designer baseball cap.

By some measures, Amla is cut from the correct cloth to captain South Africa, a country that harbours a cricket culture in which talking a good game raises suspicion. Instead, what players do on the field is the sole criterion for judging their worth.

Around these parts, it is believed, people talk too much and too glibly when they try to hide their ignorance of whence they speak. Performance does not talk. It performs. It is to be trusted.

Graeme Smith’s habit of talking as good a game as he played did him no good in the minds of many of his compatriots. Had he shut up and batted like he did, support for him would have been unanimous. Hansie Cronje’s matchfixing madness means less to many South Africans than the fact that he kept his mouth closed and got the job done. Shaun Pollock would rather have bowled a session unchanged than spend 10 minutes with the press. Kepler Wessels never said much beyond yes, no or wait, but there was no doubting who was in charge of his team. That Pollock and Wessels are now television commentators is evidence of cricket’s odd sense of humour.

Amla, too, is happier playing than pontificating. However, times have changed since Wessels, Pollock and even Cronje led South Africa, when terms like “man management” were used only by people unfortunate enough to have to work in an office to pay the bills.

But, with cricket having cast off all pretence at falling somewhere between a pastime and a vocation and embraced its inner pinstripes, skippers are now captains of industry: the cricket industry.

That means they spend a significant amount of their time talking, managing men, marketing their sponsors’ products and services, studying the latest trends for running a business, and making sure they do not say or do the wrong thing in public.

What they do on the field still carries the burden of proof as to whether they are any good or not, but less than previously. In this era, Keith Miller, Ian Botham and Viv Richards would never have been given the job - too carefree, too rebellious, too headstrong.

Not that Amla himself is the very picture of the modern cricket captain, particularly in a country like South Africa. We like to call ourselves Christian, but tend to behave like heathens. On average, only Russians and Australians drink more alcohol than we do. For all Cricket SA’s (CSA) worthy and ongoing attempts to darken the game, white South Africans still think it belongs to them.

How do those factors stack up against the chances of a devout Muslim, teetotalling player of Indian descent being named South Africa’s next Test captain?

The last issue could complicate matters significantly. What with South Africa’s minister of sport, Fikile Mbalula, having decreed - then retracted, go figure - that 60% of the country’s national teams would in future be black or face being banned from competition and having their funding withdrawn, CSA will know that the appointment of a black captain would strengthen cricket’s commitment to the transformation cause.

However, to do so would be to risk alienating the constituency that thinks cricket needs them to survive and prosper. That is patent nonsense - South Africa’s future is black, undeniably and in every sense - but the white section of our society is decades away from accepting that as the truth. They also have the money and the influence to say so loudly and unpleasantly, and they would do exactly that.

Why would Amla want to put up with all of the above? Like Jacques Kallis, he gives his best when he is left alone in his bubble. Captaincy would burst that bubble.

But let us not assume we know what goes on beyond the beard. Amla has proved that difference does not mean deficiency, that otherness does not put him outside the boundaries of what is good for South African cricket - from his once crooked backlift to his strict and admirable adherence to his faith to his reluctance to give us a good quote.

Amla has found a way through all that to be who he wants to be. Could that include making a success of being South Africa’s Test captain? Who, besides him, can tell?