Is Amla excited? Yes. How much? Enough.

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Galle

Most of us would have been advised to “just be yourself” and to “keep it real” by people who mean well but perhaps do not have a proper grasp of the challenges we face.

However, Hashim Amla is not like most of us, and we have not had the benefit of someone as perceptive as Gary Kirsten cast a light into our lives.

When SA’s former coach was asked how the Proteas’ new test captain - who begins his tenure against Sri Lanka in Galle today - should tailor himself to fit the demands of leading a modern cricket team, his answer was a more insightful, better expressed version of what we have all heard and many of us have said to others: just be yourself, and don’t forget to keep it real.

“I don’t believe he should change anything,” Kirsten said. “The strength of his leadership will be determined by his authenticity.”

If anything, instead of being changed by the captaincy Amla could change the way the SA team is captained.

“Hashim is a principled man with a deep faith,” Kirsten said. “Who he is as a person will play a huge role in how the team deals with the highs and lows of performance.”

Amla is not just another cricketer, even in the rarefied ranks of test players. His powers of concentration, his discipline and his ability to absorb pressure, bounced off his gift for making even the most outrageously sublime stroke seem simple, have earned the kind of respect and admiration from his peers that they tend to receive from their adoring public.

And he does it all with humility and good manners and without having to change his gloves, even when he bats for three days during Ramadan to score 311 not out against the then No. 1 ranked team, England, at the Oval, which he did in July, 2012.

We know what Amla is about as a player and, a little less so, as a person. But how will what we know translate in Amla as a captain? Will his relationship with his players be helped or hindered by the impossibly impressive examples he sets?

“I believe that every leader brings certain characteristics that are unique to themselves,” Kirsten said. “By doing this they impart their value system on the team environment.

“I believe that successful leaders have a presence that is often difficult to define but always there. Hashim has a determination around performance that I have not often seen in a player. This will inspire the players he works with.

“He also has a good understanding of the game and I have no doubt his calm demeanour will rub off positively on the test side.”

Amla looked and sounded entirely himself when he presided over his first press conference as a test captain in Galle yesterday. Was he excited?

“Yes, very much,” he said with a polite nod.

And that was that. There was no waffling, no exaggeration, no nonsense. It was an answer straight out of the Hashim Amla book of cricket and life: be yourself and keep it real.