‘I missed the team more than they missed me’ - Duminy

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

MORE than once during the one-day series in Australia in November, South Africans saw the worry in each others’ eyes and tried not to miss JP Duminy. Four times out of five, they failed.

How different might that 4-1 scoreline in the Aussies’ favour have panned out had Duminy not been at home nursing his troublesome knee. Without him, SA’s middle order had all the structure and shape of an untouched lump of clay on a potter’s wheel.

In the first match, they lost their last six wickets for 66 runs. Then followed collapses of 4/40, 6/32 and 5/63. SA needed Duminy’s steadying hand, heart and mind. And how.

Which was not the way he saw things. “I missed them more than they missed me,” Duminy said. “There were moments in games where I thought I could probably have contributed. But that was the way I looked at it - I didn’t look at it from the point of view that they missed me.”

That hunger to get back to where he belonged saw Duminy return a game ahead of schedule in the last match of SA’s T20 series against West Indies at Kingsmead on January 14. He has since played in all three of the one-day internationals against the Windies.

What’s the rush? It is that another lump-of-clay performance from SA’s middle order in Australasia next month will mean another World Cup dream becomes a nightmare. Duminy alone will not be able to prevent that happening, but he is an important part of the strategy for South Africans not to have to wonder where it all went wrong this time.

“We’re human beings,” Duminy said. “The fear of not doing well at a World Cup is in everybody. But we will rely on the team culture that we’ve depended on for so many years.

“We draw from each other when someone is going through a tough battle. You want to rally behind him and make sure he knows we support him. We all want to feel that. We all have insecurities and our vulnerable moments.

“You want to know that your teammates are behind you. You want to know you have the support of everyone at home. We’re not only playing for ourselves; we’re playing for 50 or 60 million people.”

That’s the spirit. But, going into Sunday’s fourth ODI against West Indies at St George’s Park, Duminy had batted only once in the series: he faced 17 balls for his 12 at Kingsmead on January 16.

Was he concerned about his lack of game time going into the World Cup?

“Not at all. If I look back to two years ago when I came back off that Achilles injury (he tore his tendon in November, 2012), I fitted in right from the start. You can draw confidence from something like that - being out of the game for seven months and coming back and feeling like you’ve played a game two days ago.”

In his first innings for SA after that injury, Duminy hammered an undefeated 150 against the willing but wanting Netherlands.

As an omen, that will do nicely for South Africans desperate for the World Cup hoodoo to be broken. But, thanks to the valuable lessons he has learnt through injury, Duminy is not desperate: “Cricket is not my life; it’s a part of my life.”

And if he cures SA of their feet of clay at the World Cup, that life will never be the same.