Miller, Phangiso, Van Zyl deserve call-ups for Windies tests

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

YOU have scored two centuries - in the same match - and three half-centuries in your last seven first-class innings. That’s right: only twice have you come back from the crease without at least 50 to your name. You average 73.50 in those innings.

JP Duminy is hobbled by a knee injury for at least the first test SA will play against West Indies starting later this month. So there is a vacancy in the middle order - which is where you bat for your franchise.

SA’s selectors meet on Monday to pick the squad. Should you be hopeful? If you are David Miller, for it is he above, perhaps not.

Miller is among the most prominent current members victims of cricket’s lazy habit of stereotyping. Through this imperfect prism, he is only suited to the short formats. Accordingly, he has 58 one-day caps for SA and 29 of the T20 flavour, but no test appearances.

“Miller has had a rough deal,” former selection convenor Mike Procter said. “He scores hundreds in four-day games - he’s as good a test player as he is a one-day player. He plays so straight and he has a sound defence.”

Miller is also a predatory fielder and is possessed of a brand of competitive spirit that almost shimmers off his broad shoulders. If he does not deserve a test cap, no-one does.

Considering the Windies series will be a frustrating speed bump for those on SA’s road to the World Cup why not give him a go, if only to keep him playing?

“There is a school of thought that a test cap is a test cap and you’ve got to do the graft before you can play,” Procter said. “I don’t agree with that. You’ve got to take chances on players.

“The test line-up is pretty sound, and I don’t think they’ll mess around too much. But with Duminy out Miller should be in.”

Dane Piedt does not have Miller’s invisibility issues. Piedt bowled himself into the test arena with a bang in Harare in August, when he became the first SA player to take a wicket with his maiden delivery in test cricket in 108 years and earned the best match figures by a SA spinner on debut with his haul of 8/152.

But, during the Cobras’ Champions League T20 campaign in India in September, he fielded off his own bowling and dislocated his shoulder, chipped a bone in the socket and tore halfway through a tendon in his biceps.

Piedt has been running and he started bowling again last Monday, but only as part of his rehabilitation.

“It would be doing him a disservice to clear him to play against the Windies,” Cobras physiotherapist Shane Jabaar said.

In that case, Aaron Phangiso should be in the mix. He, too, could do with gametime as the World Cup looms.

Stiaan van Zyl deserves to be allowed to show what he’s got after spending SA’s tours to Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe in a reserve’s bib. He is the only member of the squad of 15 selected for those assignments not to have since played for SA in any format.

Van Zyl should earn his chance at the top of the order in place of Alviro Petersen, who has now gone 21 completed innings without scoring a test century.