Mike Selvey in The Guardian
It may be unusual to change captains at the midpoint of a series but Hashim Amla has chosen a good moment to concede his position and drop back into the ranks. A resignation after the massive defeat in Durban would have represented capitulation even if he had been contemplating it for a while.
Now though he has done so on the back of a stirring fightback from the side he led, and an emphatic return not so much to form (he had not looked out of touch in the second innings in Durban) as to relentless run-gathering. It is a little too strong to describe the outcome of a Test that had yet to complete its third innings as a “winning draw” for South Africa. With the conditions finally giving the bowlers some lateral movement on the final day, we can only surmise what the England bowlers might have managed had they been defending, say, 200 and their colleagues rediscovered the art of catching but at least we know there will be an almighty scrap now up on the highveld.
Sometimes it is only in the aftermath of such a decision that the extent of the burden is revealed. Those who were there in the dining room at Edgbaston remember the red eyes of Nasser Hussain, that most passionate of England captains. There were Michael Vaughan’s tears at the ECB centre of excellence at Loughborough. Such is the responsibility, beyond simply a job, that comes with captaining one’s country or even just playing. It is only around nine months since Jonathan Trott, a man whose implacable demeanour hid inner turmoil, was lbw in what was to prove his final innings for England. He positively skipped from the field and sprinted up the pavilion steps, a man clearly content it was finally over. So there should be no surprise that in Amla’s case, he conducted a press conference that was a long way from the soul-searching of others and simply that of a man happy in the decision at which he had arrived and itching to get on with the job at which he truly excels.
There is absolutely no question of Amla being coerced into applying for the job in the first place on account of his ethnicity. With Graeme Smith’s retirement, he, as a senior player, put his name forward with others, including AB de Villiers. He did so because he believed he could make a difference, and after due process, was installed. It would also be wrong though to assume that, all things being equal, this was not the choice that would be made, convenient for South African cricket that he had applied.
It would also be erroneous to deduce that after the strong rumours in Durban that things were in some disarray on and off the field that he had been pushed out of the job. There was some fierce external criticism, most prominently from Smith in his role as media pundit, to which the response of Cricket South Africa was to invite him into the camp. But Smith’s remarks, while trenchant, would surely have been taken on board by Amla, a trusted colleague in Smith’s teams: there is a difference between being pushed and being encouraged.
A decade ago, when England were in India, I went to stay with their then coachGreg Chappell, and conducted an interview with him, which in part resonates now with the situation in which Amla found himself. At the time, Chappell had been dividing opinion in the country because of his fractious relationship with the former captain Sourav Ganguly, who had been struggling desperately for batting form with one Test hundred, in Bulawayo, in two-and-a-half years. He had been replaced as the captain by Rahul Dravid and the coach was portrayed as the man who sacked him, which was far from the truth.
“We clashed,” Chappell told me, “because his needs as a struggling player and captain and those of the team were different. I’m not the hard-nosed control freak that I have been portrayed. I’m thorough, a realist, a pragmatist and I’m honest. Much has been written and said, a lot of it misleading, but in essence I told Sourav that if he wanted to save his career he should consider giving up the captaincy. He was just hanging in there. Modest innings were draining him. He had no energy to give to the team, which was helping neither him nor us. It was in his own interest to give himself mind space to work on his batting so that it could be resurrected.”
Here we have in Ganguly and Amla two captains at opposite ends of the spectrum: the one desperate to hang on to his position at all costs; the other understanding his leadership may not be in the best interests either of the side or himself. Serene and understated, Amla had taken over a side who were in inevitable transition after the loss of some of the greatest players the game has seen. So a downturn in performance was not entirely unexpected. But he has nonetheless presided over the longest winless streak, eight matches, in South Africa’s Test history, mitigation coming only in the state of the Bangladesh weather and the pitches in India. Certainly in this, Amla has seen the broader picture.
Where they share a common theme is the impact, as Chappell said of Ganguly, that it was having on his batting and the team. Until his redemptive double hundred in Cape Town, Amla’s previous 13 matches as captain had brought him an average of 40.76 against a career average 10 points or so higher. Since the start of the tour of India that preceded the current series, nine innings had brought him five single figure scores and a top score of 43.
Whether, like Ganguly, his tribulations with the bat were impacting on the team in a manner other than simply the lack of runs is doubtful. If the captaincy itself, and all that it entailed, was affecting the capacity to do the job at which he truly excelled, then Amla is understanding enough to be able to arrive at the conclusion he has. It is an honourable thing to have done, which may well be to the detriment of England. That he has been able to do so on the back of a momentous innings, played perhaps with the release that comes with already having made a decision, merely serves to highlight it.
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