Times Media
TELFORD VICE, Cape Town
HASHIM Amla has played exactly 400 matches across all formats at senior provincial and international level and is among the most prominent of cricket’s firmament of modern stars. But he has yet to swing a bat in a T20 circus.
All seven editions of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the three Big Bash Leagues in Australia have come and gone without Amla’s involvement, and he has not played in any of the five Champions League T20 (CLT20) tournaments.
But that will change in Raipur in India on Friday if Amla is part of the Cobras XI in their first match of the 2014 CLT20.
Where others have chased the millions that come with high profile T20 gigs, and still others the lesser money to be earned in B-grade competitions like the Bangladesh and Caribbean Premier Leagues, Amla has preferred to observe the off-season - bar the odd short jaunt on the English county circuit.
“It’s about more than money,” Amla’s agent, Ismael Kajee, said on Tuesday. “It’s about balancing your life between your work and your family.
“It’s not that Hashim has anything against T20 cricket or the IPL or any of the other competitions, it’s that the guy needs a break.
“No-one can say that money doesn’t mean anything, but it is the least of Hashim’s priorities.”
Kajee said Amla had turned down offers to play in foreign T20 competitions, and doubted whether he would ever make himself available for the IPL auction.
But he did not shut that door: “Who knows - things could change with Hashim, especially if the number of matches IPL teams play decreases.”
Amla has yet to play T20 cricket in India at any level, but he has had 12 of his 26 innings in the format for SA in the similar conditions of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates.
In those trips to the crease he has scored 317 runs at a strike rate of 123.83, slightly better than his overall strike rate of 122.44. He made his only T20 international half-century - 56 off 37 balls - in Chittagong in Bangladesh in March in a World T20 game against New Zealand.
But although Amla has played for SA in a dozen countries spread across six distinct regions of the world in an international career that started almost 10 years ago, in the CLT20 he will have to come to terms with something he has never faced before.
A tournament that is at least as much about frivolous fuss as it is about the game will be new to him. Any chance of cricket’s calmest man being bowled over by all that?
“There’s going to be a lot of peripheral stuff going on, and he’s going to be right in the thick of it,” Jon Kent, who played in Amla’s first-class debut against the touring English team at Kingsmead in December, 1999, said on Tuesday.
“But even when Hashim was Quinton de Kock’s age (21), he was unflappable; he was solid and focused,”
“He’s good at putting things to one side, and he will take all the stress and pizzazz out of it.”
As Shaun Pollock said on Tuesday, “I’m sure Hashim will treat it as just another tournament.”
Come in game No. 401. Your time is almost here.
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