De Villiers’ tricky toothpaste tactics

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

AB de Villiers has learnt enough about being a public figure to know when he has said the wrong thing into a microphone. Try as he does, sometimes he cannot get the toothpaste back into the tube. Other times he does.

Like he did on Friday when he was asked for his thoughts on Michael Clarke’s dodgy hamstring - which had flared up while the Australian captain was batting in the first one-day international in Perth and is likely to rule him out of the second match of the series at the WACA on Sunday.

“I felt a bit injured, too, during my innings,” De Villiers told the gathered reporters. Clearly, he spoke with too straight a face: a hasty disclaimer was required.

“I saw you starting to write that down,” he said pointedly. “Just relax - there’s nothing wrong with my back.”

Considering the strange day he had presided over as SA’s captain, such levity was remarkable. De Villiers’ team had struggled before finding their feet, but only to fall flat on their faces.

They could not buy a wicket, then they took five in 15 overs. They lurched to 4/76, then they added 126 in a single stand. They dropped four catches offered by George Bailey, then they ... no - there was no comeback that time.

Australia won by 32 runs, a margin that only added to the frustration sparked by SA’s display. By some measures, they had no right to get that close to the home side’s 300/8. By others, they could have won the match: even accounting for the fact that the pressure was off by the time those giants of the batting crease, Morne Morkel and Imran Tahir, took guard, the apparent ease with which they cracked a stand of 46 for the last wicket only made the allegedly proper batsmen above them look sillier still.

To quote millions of bewildered and bemused South Africans on Friday, “WTF?”

De Villiers was among them: “I do feel really bitter because you don’t like losing games. We would like to come back now. I don’t want us to go back home and think of what we could have done differently.”

But De Villiers and his compatriots would have been heartened by the performances of Vernon Philander and David Miller.

Philander took 4/45, only the second time in his 18 ODI bowling innings that he has claimed that many wickets. On the WACA’s lively surface, he was able to bowl something close to the length that has earned 115 scalps in 26 tests and obtained the modicum of movement that has brought him that success.

The jury remains out on Philander’s value in this format, but he moved closer to a verdict in his favour on Friday and should do so again on Sunday. The Australians are clearly wary of him, and they should be.

Miller’s 65 was his first half-century in 11 ODI innings. The only question SA have yet to answer in their World Cup preparations is whether their middle order has the stomach for a fight. Miller, who bestrides the field like a super hero, is the obvious answer in the affirmative. But, like mere mortals, he needs runs and form to make it work. He did on Friday. Another fine innings on Sunday will unfurrow many brows.

De Villiers scored a brilliant 80 on Friday, but that was all in a day’s work for the freshly anointed International Cricket Council “ODI Cricketer of the Year”. Besides, there was a bigger picture to focus on.

“I want us to fix it right now and go 1-1 in this series and still stay in this series; still win this series,” De Villiers said. “There is no such thing as we want to learn from our mistakes. We are here to win.”

With that, the toothpaste was out of the tube again. This time, that was exactly where De Villiers wanted it.