Miller graduates from basher to batsman

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Melbourne

SOUTH Africans might be surprised to learn that David Miller has faced as many as 4007 balls in first-class cricket. Or even that he has already played 64 one-day internationals.

Miller? The T20 basher? A proper cricketer? Really? Damn straight. In fact, after he and fellow centurion JP Duminy guided SA from 83/4 to 339/4 against Zimbabwe in Hamilton on Sunday, Miller could get away with calling himself the king of Albania.

But he will settle for being taken more seriously as a batsman, not a basher.

“I haven’t played as much first-class cricket as I would have liked to, but I’ve tried to work with what I’ve got,” Miller said. “I’ve tried to play at much T20 as I can in the off-season, which is the only cricket I’ve been given a chance to play.

“I’ve been working really hard in the last two years to try and rotate the strike and build an innings. To try and take that into four-day cricket would be ideal. These are the things I’ve been working on in the last year, year-and-a-half for Yorkshire and Durham and in the IPL (Indian Premier League).”

The mad reality of modern cricket is that players who have talent, skill and temperament are more likely to make their name bashing balls as mercenaries in some circus of gratuitousness than proving they can survive and prosper at international level.

Miller has walked those crooked miles. Now he wants to get onto the straight and narrow of performing for SA where it counts: in the World Cup.

He first made that intention public when he scored his maiden ODI century, 130 not out, against West Indies at St George’s Park last month. On Sunday, none of SA’s remaining batmen besides Miller, who made an undefeated 138, would have been able to stay with Duminy for long enough to dig SA out of trouble as effectively as they did in their unbroken stand of 256.

Both of Miller’s centuries were founded on maturity rather than the muscle that has hitherto earned his keep. He batted with the power and aggression he has always wielded, but his strokes have been polished to a new, grown-up sheen. He is a significantly better batsman for that.

“To score my first hundred a couple of games ago and follow up with this one, to come out and do it in my first game in the World Cup, is really satisfying,” Miller said.

Miller’s new approach was evident even in a 46th over that he described as “very fun” and in which he hammered Solomon Mire for 30 runs. Previously, he might have been rampant. This time, he was respectful - and his reward was the licence to be rampant.

“I hit the first one for six and the second for four, and then I said to JP, ‘I’m going to get you on strike’, because he was sitting on 90 with two overs to go.

“He said, ‘No, just keep going; just go with it’. So, if it was in the area, I was trying to hit boundaries.”

All good, but the World Cup is an insatiable monster that demands to be fed continuously by a sushi belt of the spectacular. What did Miller plan to serve up when SA clash with an Indian team he will be oddly familiar with from his involvement in the IPL?

“It’s international cricket now. I will try my best to start fresh, to build on what we’ve got. It’s a new game.”