Times Media
TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg
AB de Villiers wants to be SA’s next test captain, but if he lands the position the gloves will be off - the wicketkeeping gloves, that is.
“I would love to do it,” De Villiers said in an interview conducted in India, where he is playing for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, and posted yesterday on ESPNCricinfo. “I am certainly ready to take over the test captaincy.
“I wouldn’t like to do the keeping job if I am captain; it will be very difficult to juggle all of that. But if I have to do all of it, I have never shied away from a challenge and something that is very difficult to achieve.”
Along with picking the squads to play two tests and three one-day internationals in Sri Lanka in July, SA’s selectors also have to anoint a successor to test cricket’s longest-serving, most successful captain.
Andrew Hudson’s panel was set that task when Graeme Smith retired after the test series against Australia, which ended in March. Cricket SA’s board are expected to discuss the selectors’ recommendation on June 3.
Does De Villiers’ enthusiastic willingness to take on the role end the debate?
“I think so,” former SA batsman Boeta Dippenaar said yesterday. “I can’t see anyone else saying it should be them.”
Dippenaar agreed with De Villiers swapping the gloves for the armband: “It would be very unfair on AB for him to keep wicket, captain and play as a major batsman.”
And batsmen did not come more major than De Villiers.
“With Jacques Kallis out of the way, AB is unquestionably our best batsman,” Dippenaar said. “I would like to see Hashim Amla at No. 3 and AB at No. 4, which is where your best batsman should bat.”
Amla and De Villiers batted at Nos. 3 and 5 respectively in SA’s last test before Kallis’ retirement, against India at Kingsmead in December, and at Nos. 3 and 5 and 4 and 5 in the series against Australia that followed.
De Villiers has been a force in SA’s batting line-up for much of an international career that started in December, 2004.
He captained SA’s one-day side for the first time in January, 2012, when he became the fulltime ODI wicketkeeper. Since July, 2012, De Villiers has been SA’s test wicketkeeper. He was also SA’s appointed T20 skipper for 11 games played between February and October, 2012 - when Faf du Plessis was handed the reins.
Successfully adding the test captaincy to an already weighty workload will take careful thinking by all concerned.
“It’s up to the people above me to decide who will be the best guy to do the job,” De Villiers said. “Whoever gets it, I hope he will have the full support from the team and the staff and from the administrators.”
Among the new captain’s first duties will be to forge a strong relationship with Russell Domingo, who has come under fire for SA’s indifferent form since he succeeded Gary Kirsten as coach in May last year.
“Stepping out of Gary’s shadow and stepping into my own light and my own way of doing things has taken a bit of work,” Domingo told an audience at a function in Johannesburg yesterday.
“Getting the players to see me as not Gary’s assistant but as head coach was a change but we’ve smoothed it out and we’re working well together.”
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