Why alcohol’s Amla connection will help his captaincy

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

Hashim Amla does not drink alcohol and those who indulge too freely have no chance of cutting it in the increasingly athletic world of cricket, but Amla and alcoholics have more in common than they think.

That connection should help Amla make a success of his new position as SA’s test captain.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference,” is a prayer written by an American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, that is recited at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Amla knows better than to bother God with matters merely cricket, but the logic of Niebuhr’s prayer informed Amla’s approach when he was dropped after scraping together 62 runs in his first six test innings.

With a chorus of criticism ringing in his ears - his backlift was crooked, he did not keep his head still - Amla went back to the nets to think again.

Among those who helped him iron out the kinks was Phil Russell, then the Dolphins coach.

“I advised him to keep the backlift, and we went along from there,” Russell said yesterday. “If you keep your right foot parallel to the crease, point your left foot down the pitch, and bring the bat down straight, you’ve got a good, strong base to work from.

“Hashim has always had that. You can see it in the fact that he doesn’t miss many deliveries on his legs; maybe a couple in the last 10 years.

“It was a case of getting the mind right and making sure the bat came down nice and straight.”

Besides, what was good enough for Donald Bradman is good enough for Hashim Amla.

“People forget that Bradman picked the bat up towards gully,” Russell said. “I don’t know why more people don’t copy Bradman - he averaged twice as much as anyone else.”

Amla was out in the cold for 15 tests. On his return, in the second test against New Zealand at Newlands in April, 2006, he scored 149.

The rest is the history of 20 more centuries, an average that has floated above 50 for his last dozen tests and has dipped below 40 just once in the last 46 of Amla’s 76 tests, and becoming the first batsman to be simultaneously ranked No. 1 in both tests and one-day internationals.

More importantly, Amla had learnt what needed to change, what should be left alone, and how to know the difference - skills that will serve him well as captain.

Long gone is the “podgy little chap” Andrew Shedlock remembers coaching as a teenager in KwaZulu-Natal’s age group teams. But Amla’s hard-wired strengths were already apparent.

“In terms of ability was right up there and always willing to listen and learn,” Shedlock said. “Technically, Ahmed (Amla’s older brother and a former Dolphins captain) was probably better than Hashim, but Hashim had the mind. He was very quiet and he absorbed everything around him.”

But it was a chance meeting Shedlock had with Amla at Kingsmead long after he had established himself as a test player that said more about SA’s new captain than some tidy technical tweak.

“He thanked me,” Shedlock said. “He’s moved on from me as a coach, but it’s good to know that he still remembers what role I played, minuscule though it was, early in his career.”

As Amla looks to cement his position as captain, nothing needs to change about that perspective.