Duminy finally up where he belongs

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

“IS this big news,” one of the reporters shambling about the Newlands nets said to bounce his disbelief off his colleagues.

A few metres away, four camera crews trained their lenses on their solitary target. Here in the ranks of the press, at least five of us waited with questions and notebooks. Away to the left, a multi-media outfit were also in the queue.

Apparently, the news was big. And it was this: JP Duminy will captain SA in three T20s in Australia next month.

Perhaps the significance of that fact was inflated by the lack of oomph in the announcement on the same day of the one-day squad to play eight games in New Zealand and Australia. The only change was Vernon Philander’s return from injury at the expense of Mthokozisi Shezi.

Still, those three T20s will be dwarfed out of significance even more than they would have been in more normal circumstances.

For one thing, they will be played between the series in New Zealand and Australia. For another, that’s not light at the end of the tunnel: it’s the 2015 World Cup and it’s coming ready or not in four months’ time. For still another, Duminy will have at his disposal a squad robbed of regular captain Faf du Plessis, AB de Villiers, Hashim Amla, Dale Steyn or Morne Morkel – all of them too important to bother with three T20s between ODI series with a World Cup looming.

Duminy is also in that league. But, hey, somebody’s got to do the job. Good luck, skipper.

How many times has Duminy – a veteran of 27 tests, 59 other first-class matches, 126 one-day internationals, 58 lesser List A games, 55 T20 internationals, 115 more matches in that format, three under-tests and one under-19 one-dayer, which adds up to 444 games of cricket – captained?

Once. He led the South against the North in a T20 at Newlands on January 4, less a match than a marketing exercise.

So, why was the Duminy news big? Because it was not about three T20s. Instead, it was about the wealth of leadership in SA’s ranks and how best to utilise it. And about recognising Duminy’s intangible value.

“I’ve thought for a long time he was someone you could look to as a captain,” Vinnie Barnes said.

“It’s not just about Faf not being there for these games – a lot of thought has gone into this decision.”

Duminy is a year younger than Amla, a few months De Villiers’ junior, and a month or three older than Du Plessis. They are all 30 or 31.

Having been part of the SA dressingroom for 10 years, Duminy is finally up where he belongs in that rarefied atmosphere. He is not the flashiest of SA’s players and he has had damaging dips in form. But that means he has earned the respect that is now, officially, his.

Barnes, Cricket SA’s high performance manager, returned temporarily to one of his old jobs as SA’s bowling coach on the Abu Dhabi leg of their test series against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates last October. The change he noticed in Duminy only served to confirm his long-standing opinion of him.

“Having been away from the team for a while, I could see how much he had grown in his contributions at team meetings and in the way he was with younger players,” Barnes said. “It was a good thing to see.”

But even by SA standards Duminy’s elevation is unusual. At least Graeme Smith had three one-day games at the helm of SA A and a World Cup warm-up game in which he led Western Province against SA to get used to the buck stopping with him. Speaking of Smith ...

“Captains are either leaders of men or they lead from the front,” Barnes said. “You don’t often get both qualities in one guy.

“‘Biff’ was one of the rare ones who did both, and I think JP could be, too.”

High praise indeed, which was also what Lions coach Geoff Toyana had for a player Duminy will take under his wing in Australia.

“He is ready,” Toyana said of Kagiso Rabada, the 19-year-old fast bowling sensation. “He’s got plenty to learn, but he is always asking questions and he is mature way beyond his years.”

That said, Toyana was happy Rabada would ease into the international arena in the micro format.

“With us, he doesn’t bowl much in the nets when he is preparing for a first-class match. He’s still a baby. But he’s fit and he’s keen.”

And he is already big news.