Miller time may never come in SA’s top heavy order

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

DRIVES that hurry high and handsome over the long-off boundary do not evoke poignance in their authors, but David Miller seemed struck by that warm, fuzzy feeling as he watched the target of his stroke fade from white to grey to gone in Mohali’s black velvet sky last Saturday night.

The ball left the building with the grace of an angel on a mercy mission and the haste of a demon rudely exorcised. Miller had dismissed it from his presence with a stroke of never-say-die and nonchalance.

Well might he have gazed long and hard on what his talent, skill and confidence had wrought: with that, the match was won for Kings XI Punjab.

“It was very relieving to hit the winning runs,” Miller said afterwards. “I was fortunate from the beginning of my knock, but I want to take those opportunities.”

Forty-six not out off 34 balls represents a good day-night’s work for a No. 5 batsman coming to the crease after 10 overs in a T20.

Well, too, might Miller have been relieved that, finally, he had been given a decent chance to do his thing. In his previous five innings - one for Punjab and the rest for SA in one-day internationals - he had faced a total of 29 balls. Twice, he was not out. Twice, he was dismissed without scoring. Twice each, in those ODIs, he had batted at Nos. 5 and 6. Twice more in other games, he had not batted at all. Not once in the ODIs did he take guard before the 24th over.

To see Miller bursting at the seams of his will as he scuds about the outfield at speed to make outrageous catches look routine, improbable stops eminently possible, and turn what should be long, looping throws into flat, fired fury is to see a cricketer who does not know how not to give his all, and then some. If leopards played cricket, they would play like Miller does.

But too often he is not given nearly enough of an opportunity to do what he has been selected to do and what we know he can do: bat like hell and win games.

The problem, for Miller, is that SA’s ODI side are top heavy with quality batsmen. Who might he displace among Hashim Amla, Quinton de Kock, Faf du Plessis and AB de Villiers?

Does that mean the shimmering nucleus of Miller’s talent, his sonic boom of a bat, the menace he is to opposing attacks, is in danger of going to waste?

“Sometimes you are born in the wrong era,” Andrew Miller said this week, but he was not talking about his son, whom he has watched “grow into what he always wanted to be”.

Surely Miller did not, as a kid, dream of the days he would sit all padded-up with nowhere to go and watching other players win matches?

“He’s not frustrated,” Miller senior, who played a significant role in his son’s development as a cricketer, said. “He’d be happy to bat at No. 11 - he is at peace with his role in the SA team.

“But he is an out-and-out batsman and that’s a difficult thing to do properly without proper gametime, specially when you’re expected to come in and hit Mitchell Johnson out of the ground when he’s bowling at 150 clicks.

“He either comes in at 60/4 and is expected to get a hundred, or he comes in in the 48th over and is expected to hit everything for six.”

Even so, Miller believed his son had what was needed to stay focused on both the bigger and the smaller picture: “He’s like blotting paper in the way he absorbs knowledge. He comes across as casual, but he has an inner desire; an inner drive to succeed. He doesn’t need accolades.”

Two days earlier, Miller strode to the wicket for Punjab in the third over - and lifted the third ball he faced into the hands of the man at mid-off.

“I played out of my gameplan that night,” he said. “Maybe I thought the wrong thing.

“When I get in in the first six overs I need to hit the ball along the ground. Then, at the end of the innings, it becomes second nature. It’s a see-ball, hit-ball mentality.”

We see. He hits. Bloody hard. But not often enough.