V Ramnarayan in Cricinfo
It was a cool December evening in the early 1980s. Flute maestro Hariprasad Chourasia was about to enter the iconic Kalakshetra auditorium in Chennai to perform in a concert when a young enthusiast asked him, "Will you please play the raga Hemant for me?" His reply was quick - and surprising, coming as it did from a leading classical musician of several years' standing. He said, "Sorry, I haven't learnt the raga yet." Some years later, I had a similar conversation with TV Vasan, a percussionist who played the mridangam, a south Indian drum. He spoke about a conversation he once had with the doyen of Carnatic music, Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar. Vasan, who had watched Iyengar practise a particular song some 500 times during the month, was eager to hear it in concert on the morrow. That was not to be. "I haven't mastered it," said the singer.
More recently I read about another old master's advice to young musicians. Semmangudi Srinivasier, grand old patriarch of Carnatic music, said to his disciples: "Practise every song at least a thousand times before you take it to the concert platform." MS Subbulakshmi, perhaps the best known south Indian voice, was famous for doing just that. She knew every lyric of every song backwards, regardless of language or complexity, and still had butterflies in her stomach before every concert. The rigour extended even to studio recordings, where she could well have resorted to external aids with nobody the wiser for it.
The situation is different today. Without criticising or condemning modern musicians, it can be said truthfully of most that they do not match the older generation in their preparation for performances. Many look into their iPads or cell phones while performing on stage, possibly because their song repertoires are far larger than those of their gurus were. It is not unusual for a song learnt in the morning to debut in the evening.
What has all this to do with cricket? It is that I find some parallels between the two. For instance, I remember watching Erapalli Prasanna, during his last Ranji Trophy match, I think, bowl in the nets a delivery that looked similar to the doosra of a later era. Bowling in an adjacent net, and fascinated by the new variation, I asked him how come I never saw the delivery in a match. "Haven't mastered it," was his reply.
In my experience, experiments were frowned upon in matches. You were sure to get a tongue-lashing from your seniors if you tried something novel in a game. Mumtaz Hussain, a successful left-arm spinner in first-class cricket, might have been even more successful if he had continued to bowl the chinaman and the googly as he had done in his university days, instead of turning into an orthodox spinner and serving his side in a risk-free manner. Though Bhagwath Chandrasekhar and Anil Kumble were unorthodox wrist spinners, much quicker than the norm, neither added variations - like a slower ball - to his armoury before he was well into his career. Similarly, most international bowlers were reluctant to try reverse swing until long after the Pakistanis unfurled it.
The second decade of this century has been a watershed in this regard, with both bowlers and batsmen increasingly ready to take risks. To the reverse sweep has been added the switch hit, and the likes of offspinner R Ashwin (among those whose actions have not been questioned) have been attempting numerous variations, including the legbreak, whose destructive potential is as yet unknown.
I shudder to think what choice French my captain might have resorted to had I resorted to such experimentation in my day. As a result of such a mindset - which most of my contemporaries shared - I was so cautious that once, after hitting Tamil Nadu batsman P Mukund's off stump in a Ranji Trophy match (by sheer fluke) with a delivery I bowled from round the wicket, gripping the ball with my palm, I never tried the variation in all 15 years of cricket that followed. However, lest I be misunderstood to be an advocate of the current trend of launching untested or insufficiently tested products, let me stress that I am indeed an admirer of the perfectionism of the old guard.
Monday, 18 January 2016
Sunday, 17 January 2016
Britain Stronger In Europe
Extracts from a pro EU campaign
Stronger Economy
Being part of Europe makes our economy stronger, helping British businesses small and large, creating jobs for British people, and delivering lower prices for British families.
Half of everything we sell to the rest of the world we sell to Europe - and we get an average of £26.5 billion of investment into Britain per year from Europe.
That's why the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) estimates that 3 million jobs in Britain are linked to trade with the rest of Europe.
Being part of Europe also means cheaper prices in our supermarkets, cheaper flights to Europe and lower phone charges when traveling.
The average person in Britain saves around £450 every year because trading with Europe drives down the price of goods and services.
And we get out more than we put in. Our annual contribution is equivalent to £340 for each household and yet the CBI says that all the trade, investment, jobs and lower prices that come from our economic partnership with Europe is worth £3000 per year to every household.
That’s a return on investment of almost ten to one. British families are better off being in Europe.
Negotiating as part of a 500 million-strong economy also gives us clout we could never have on our own. Thanks to our membership of the European Union, we benefit from free trade agreements with 50 countries around the world.
So why would we risk our economic security by turning our backs on Europe? There will be no going back if we vote to leave. And if we do leave, we will be cut off from automatic access to the economic benefits that the EU brings – hitting businesses, risking jobs and threatening families’ financial security.
Why are we looking on helplessly as markets crash all over the world?
Will Hutton in The Guardian
The imminent collapse of the Chinese Ponzi-scheme economy shows that we need to bring control to the international economy
The story is similar if less marked in continental Europe and Japan. Demand has only been sustained across all these countries since the mid-1980s because of the relentless willingness of banks to pump credit into the hands of consumers at rates much faster than the rate of economic growth to compensate for squeezed wages. It was a trend only interrupted by the credit crunch and which has now resumed with a vengeance. The result is a mountain of mortgage and personal debt but with ever-lower pay packets to service it, creating a banking system that is fundamentally precarious. The country that has taken this further than any other is China. The Chinese economy is a giant Ponzi scheme. Tens of trillions of dollars are owed to essentially bankrupt banks – and worse, bankrupt near-banks that operate in the murky shadowlands of a deeply dysfunctional mix of Leninism and rapacious capitalism. The Chinese Communist party has bought itself temporary legitimacy by its shameless willingness to direct state-owned banks to lend to consumers and businesses with little attention to their creditworthiness. Thus it has lifted growth and created millions of jobs.
It is an edifice waiting to implode. Chinese business habitually bribes Communist officials to put pressure on their bankers to forgive loans or commute interest; most loans only receive interest payments haphazardly or not at all. If the losses were crystallised, the banking system would be bust overnight. On top, huge loans have been made to China’s vast oil, gas and chemical industries on the basis of oil being above $60 a barrel, so more losses are in prospect.
Investors in China’s stock market took fright in the new year, with falling share prices only another turn of the screw. The only surprise is that nobody saw through it all earlier. China’s leaders are visibly frightened and at a loss, clamping down on any possible source of dissent as they flail to keep their Ponzi economy alive. As consumer demand falters in Europe, North America and Asia, so the demand for oil falls, even as Saudi Arabia, waging economic war against Iran and US shale producers, pumps oil out of the ground without limit. The whole structure of banking that was predicated upon higher oil prices gets more rickety still.
At just this crucially sensitive moment, the US Federal Reserve last month raised interest rates from their extraordinary lows, more concerned to signal its ardent desire to return to the normality of business as usual than to face the reality we live in abnormal times. There is no danger of inflation. If credit growth is out of hand, the tool central banks must use, as the Bank of England recognises intellectually by equipping itself with such tools but as yet not bold enough to use them, is direct quantitative controls to constrain the growth of credit. The system is not robust enough to withstand a rise in interest rates.
Indeed, further evidence of global disorder, as the Fed must have known when it raised interest rates, was the resulting acceleration of the flight of capital out of the so-called emerging economies in Africa and Latin America. Brazil, for example, is now in its worst recession since 1901. But the US central bank accepts no responsibilities for global economic management. Nor does anybody else.
It’s clear what needs to happen. There needs to be wholesale change in economic thinking. Forces in world labour markets – new forms of 21st-century trade unionism – need to be strengthened. The power of financial markets needs to be constrained. Credit growth needs to be managed by direct controls on the growth of bank balance sheets and banks need to be weaned off the financial casino they have built. Great companies need to be allowed to purpose themselves around creating value rather than dancing to the interests of disengaged shareholders.
There needs to be parallel change in how countries think of the international order: it has to be built and sustained rather than assumed to be someone else’s responsibility. We need to keep the EU together around open trade, open movement of peoples (notwithstanding the refugee crisis) and respect for political pluralism so menaced by new forces in eastern Europe. To keep the world open, there has to be international agreement on deepening and extending a framework for trade, and a new system of managed exchange rates to replace the tyranny of floating rates. Shia Muslims need to be befriended; Sunni Muslim helped to weed out poisonous Jihadism. Israel needs to be a genuine peace-seeker. China must be allowed to be convulsed by the coming regime change, vital to depoliticise its economy, without fearing foreigners are going to exploit the turmoil.
All this requires a new generation of political leaders prepared to throw off the categories in which thinking has been cast since 1980 – and remake our world rather as the world was remade in the years after 1945. Prosperity, peace, co-existence and recognition of mutual interdependencies are too easily taken for granted. The financial markets are signalling deep unease, not least at the world they themselves have helped build. It is a message that should be heeded.
The imminent collapse of the Chinese Ponzi-scheme economy shows that we need to bring control to the international economy
Chinese investors watch stock prices as a brokerage house in Beijing on 14 January, as prices continue to fall. Photograph: How Hwee Young/EPA
There has always been a tension at the heart of capitalism. Although it is the best wealth-creating mechanism we’ve made, it can’t be left to its own devices. Its self-regulating properties, contrary to the efforts of generations of economists trying to prove otherwise, are weak.
It needs embedded countervailing power – effective trade unions, law and public action – to keep it honest and sustain the demand off which it feeds. Above all, it needs an ordered international framework of law, finance and trade in which it can do deals and business. It certainly can’t invent one itself. The mayhem in the financial markets over the last fortnight is the result of confronting this tension. The oil price collapse should be good news. It makes everything cheaper. It puts purchasing power in the hands of business and consumers elsewhere in the world who have a greater propensity to spend than most oil-producing countries. A low oil price historically presages economic good times. Instead, the markets are panicking.
They are panicking because what is driving the lower oil price is global disorder, which capitalism is powerless to correct. Indeed, it is capitalism running amok that is one of the reasons for the disorder. Profits as a share of national income in Britain and the US touch all-time highs; wages touch an all-time low as the power of organised labour diminishes and the gig economy of short-term contracts takes hold. The excesses of the rich, digging underground basements to house swimming pools, cinemas and lavish gyms, sit alongside the travails of the new middle-class poor. These are no longer able to secure themselves decent pensions and their gig-economy children defer starting families because of the financial pressures.
There has always been a tension at the heart of capitalism. Although it is the best wealth-creating mechanism we’ve made, it can’t be left to its own devices. Its self-regulating properties, contrary to the efforts of generations of economists trying to prove otherwise, are weak.
It needs embedded countervailing power – effective trade unions, law and public action – to keep it honest and sustain the demand off which it feeds. Above all, it needs an ordered international framework of law, finance and trade in which it can do deals and business. It certainly can’t invent one itself. The mayhem in the financial markets over the last fortnight is the result of confronting this tension. The oil price collapse should be good news. It makes everything cheaper. It puts purchasing power in the hands of business and consumers elsewhere in the world who have a greater propensity to spend than most oil-producing countries. A low oil price historically presages economic good times. Instead, the markets are panicking.
They are panicking because what is driving the lower oil price is global disorder, which capitalism is powerless to correct. Indeed, it is capitalism running amok that is one of the reasons for the disorder. Profits as a share of national income in Britain and the US touch all-time highs; wages touch an all-time low as the power of organised labour diminishes and the gig economy of short-term contracts takes hold. The excesses of the rich, digging underground basements to house swimming pools, cinemas and lavish gyms, sit alongside the travails of the new middle-class poor. These are no longer able to secure themselves decent pensions and their gig-economy children defer starting families because of the financial pressures.
The story is similar if less marked in continental Europe and Japan. Demand has only been sustained across all these countries since the mid-1980s because of the relentless willingness of banks to pump credit into the hands of consumers at rates much faster than the rate of economic growth to compensate for squeezed wages. It was a trend only interrupted by the credit crunch and which has now resumed with a vengeance. The result is a mountain of mortgage and personal debt but with ever-lower pay packets to service it, creating a banking system that is fundamentally precarious. The country that has taken this further than any other is China. The Chinese economy is a giant Ponzi scheme. Tens of trillions of dollars are owed to essentially bankrupt banks – and worse, bankrupt near-banks that operate in the murky shadowlands of a deeply dysfunctional mix of Leninism and rapacious capitalism. The Chinese Communist party has bought itself temporary legitimacy by its shameless willingness to direct state-owned banks to lend to consumers and businesses with little attention to their creditworthiness. Thus it has lifted growth and created millions of jobs.
It is an edifice waiting to implode. Chinese business habitually bribes Communist officials to put pressure on their bankers to forgive loans or commute interest; most loans only receive interest payments haphazardly or not at all. If the losses were crystallised, the banking system would be bust overnight. On top, huge loans have been made to China’s vast oil, gas and chemical industries on the basis of oil being above $60 a barrel, so more losses are in prospect.
Investors in China’s stock market took fright in the new year, with falling share prices only another turn of the screw. The only surprise is that nobody saw through it all earlier. China’s leaders are visibly frightened and at a loss, clamping down on any possible source of dissent as they flail to keep their Ponzi economy alive. As consumer demand falters in Europe, North America and Asia, so the demand for oil falls, even as Saudi Arabia, waging economic war against Iran and US shale producers, pumps oil out of the ground without limit. The whole structure of banking that was predicated upon higher oil prices gets more rickety still.
At just this crucially sensitive moment, the US Federal Reserve last month raised interest rates from their extraordinary lows, more concerned to signal its ardent desire to return to the normality of business as usual than to face the reality we live in abnormal times. There is no danger of inflation. If credit growth is out of hand, the tool central banks must use, as the Bank of England recognises intellectually by equipping itself with such tools but as yet not bold enough to use them, is direct quantitative controls to constrain the growth of credit. The system is not robust enough to withstand a rise in interest rates.
Indeed, further evidence of global disorder, as the Fed must have known when it raised interest rates, was the resulting acceleration of the flight of capital out of the so-called emerging economies in Africa and Latin America. Brazil, for example, is now in its worst recession since 1901. But the US central bank accepts no responsibilities for global economic management. Nor does anybody else.
It’s clear what needs to happen. There needs to be wholesale change in economic thinking. Forces in world labour markets – new forms of 21st-century trade unionism – need to be strengthened. The power of financial markets needs to be constrained. Credit growth needs to be managed by direct controls on the growth of bank balance sheets and banks need to be weaned off the financial casino they have built. Great companies need to be allowed to purpose themselves around creating value rather than dancing to the interests of disengaged shareholders.
There needs to be parallel change in how countries think of the international order: it has to be built and sustained rather than assumed to be someone else’s responsibility. We need to keep the EU together around open trade, open movement of peoples (notwithstanding the refugee crisis) and respect for political pluralism so menaced by new forces in eastern Europe. To keep the world open, there has to be international agreement on deepening and extending a framework for trade, and a new system of managed exchange rates to replace the tyranny of floating rates. Shia Muslims need to be befriended; Sunni Muslim helped to weed out poisonous Jihadism. Israel needs to be a genuine peace-seeker. China must be allowed to be convulsed by the coming regime change, vital to depoliticise its economy, without fearing foreigners are going to exploit the turmoil.
All this requires a new generation of political leaders prepared to throw off the categories in which thinking has been cast since 1980 – and remake our world rather as the world was remade in the years after 1945. Prosperity, peace, co-existence and recognition of mutual interdependencies are too easily taken for granted. The financial markets are signalling deep unease, not least at the world they themselves have helped build. It is a message that should be heeded.
Thursday, 14 January 2016
Amla's ideal
Mark Nicholas in Cricinfo
"I thought I could add value and I'd like to believe I have added value. I'm really surprised some people have suggested it was not my choice. You don't look like me in this world without being firm on what you want to do." - Hashim Amla, one week ago
There was something almost chilling about it: "In this world." An unfair world. A world where Muslims are mistrusted because a radical few threaten the perception of a beautiful faith. Amla's journey has long been challenged. The beard. The objection to wearing a beer sponsor's endorsement. Apartheid. That backlift! And more. Yes, a singular man.
To relinquish the cricket captaincy of your country is a painful thing. Many have shed tears. Many more have felt the sweat from their neck and the quiver of their lip. A lifetime's ambition tossed away out of choice.
But neither the many, nor the many more, have had as much at stake as Amla. He stands for an ideal. He speaks for the marginalised. He is hope. He is strength. He is faith. His elevation made all things possible. But he chose to give it away. He confirmed this invasive and weighty position was not for him.
Of course he added value. Each moment spent with Amla is valuable. His calm is an ever- present, a blessing. He speaks wisely and on an even keel. Amla will tell you that it is never as good as you think it is and it is never as bad as you think it is. In the age of confident youth, his counsel is worth its weight in runs.
The trouble was, no runs. A period of famine at a time of defeats withers the mind. For South Africa, the runs mattered most. Thus, on top of the sheer overload of responsibility came the fear of failure. It is a captain's bad dream. Silly, really. Years of dreams to get you there and then night after night with dreams that examine your ability to cope.
Probably - and this notion comes without evidence - Amla was the choice for a nation that needed his background to make a statement. Transformation comes in many forms but if the leader represents its credentials, the on-sell is more straightforward. AB de Villiers was one choice, Amla the other. If the choice is too difficult to call, go with the better messenger. Better still go with Amla, who is the message. In his heart he must have known this. What a burden.
He did just fine, representing his people with honour and commitment. He had some bowlers, though not the depth of attack given to his predecessors. He won some series and then came badly undone in India, a spill that cost his country the treasured record of not having lost away from home since 2006.
The clue to his mind was in the way it applied itself to batting. In India, all he could dare was frozen defence. Set free, few men have used a bat to express themselves so accurately. Amla has an untroubled rhythm and flow. He plays thoughtful innings that reach crescendos and then return to their foundations so that each part is rebuilt in the anticipation of overwhelming performance. These innings adapt to their environment and to the format for which they are intended. In them he unites South African discipline with Asian flair, and vice versa - the perfect hybrid. But in India there was none of this. Indeed, he appeared broken. Against the spinning ball on pitches of wretched bounce, block after rigid block tortured his soul.
He might have survived his own assessment had the first Test against England, in Durban, been less stressful, or simply had a better result. But no. He was back in India, fighting to survive something he knew was lost. And that something was his conviction that he could do the job better than the next man. Without it, the game was up. At the press conference announcing closure, he said as much.
It might seem odd that he stood down having made 200 in Cape Town and saved the game. But he made 200 because he had already released his mind. In a single decision he had come from unbearable weight to the lightness of being. No mask, no message, just an innings with clear purpose and a rewarding conclusion.
Much is asked of international captains. Some treat these questions lightly; Brendon McCullum for example. Others wear them better than imagined; Misbah-ul-Haq for sure. One or two close shop: MS Dhoni is a man of smoke and mirrors. A few bunker down and later emerge rebooted: Alastair Cook. Occasionally a heart is worn magnificently on its sleeve: think Graeme Smith.
Smith's part in the new age of South African cricket is a remarkable sporting story. By his own estimation, it took five years to be any good at the job. In that time he learned more about himself than he thought was there. He was utterly without prejudice and therefore above suspicion. He was able to separate political issues from performance; to forgive if not forget; to rally and to cry. He spoke comfortably of shortcomings and shrewdly of ambition. Perhaps most notably, he converted a suspect and awkward batting technique into a mechanism for sustainable and substantial run-making.
Amla must have wondered how on earth he did it all. But there was a difference. Smith represented something already there. Amla was the chosen face of something long fought for but still not achieved. About that there remains great bitterness. So much so that cricketers of the past - those who represented South Africa before and during isolation - are not recognised by the regime of the present. I'll wager Amla hates that every bit as much as Smith mourns it. In the world occupied by the two most recent out-going South African cricket captains, all men are equal.
While Haroon Lorgat, the CEO of Cricket South Africa, resolutely denies quotas at international level, the agenda is clear. But it is not organic. In a Machiavellian way, Amla was a ticket. De Villiers is not. South African cricket is at the crossroads. The next route taken may define its place at the top table of the game. Amla simply could not reconcile such a responsibility alongside the need to win tosses and take a gamble; give speeches; make life-changing decisions for and about players; hold catches; stop boundaries; score runs and sleep tight.
His decision was made for the greater good and for personal harmony. It is a brave thing to abandon a dream. And a smart thing. His stock has risen and his impression will hold firm. De Villiers is a wonderful alternative and his voice must be heard. South African cricket is lucky to have such men in their ranks. It would be wise to give them equal standing and a decisive say in the future.
Meanwhile, the former captain's resilience and clarity have made South Africa stronger than a week ago. England will be more than aware of this.
"I thought I could add value and I'd like to believe I have added value. I'm really surprised some people have suggested it was not my choice. You don't look like me in this world without being firm on what you want to do." - Hashim Amla, one week ago
There was something almost chilling about it: "In this world." An unfair world. A world where Muslims are mistrusted because a radical few threaten the perception of a beautiful faith. Amla's journey has long been challenged. The beard. The objection to wearing a beer sponsor's endorsement. Apartheid. That backlift! And more. Yes, a singular man.
To relinquish the cricket captaincy of your country is a painful thing. Many have shed tears. Many more have felt the sweat from their neck and the quiver of their lip. A lifetime's ambition tossed away out of choice.
But neither the many, nor the many more, have had as much at stake as Amla. He stands for an ideal. He speaks for the marginalised. He is hope. He is strength. He is faith. His elevation made all things possible. But he chose to give it away. He confirmed this invasive and weighty position was not for him.
Of course he added value. Each moment spent with Amla is valuable. His calm is an ever- present, a blessing. He speaks wisely and on an even keel. Amla will tell you that it is never as good as you think it is and it is never as bad as you think it is. In the age of confident youth, his counsel is worth its weight in runs.
The trouble was, no runs. A period of famine at a time of defeats withers the mind. For South Africa, the runs mattered most. Thus, on top of the sheer overload of responsibility came the fear of failure. It is a captain's bad dream. Silly, really. Years of dreams to get you there and then night after night with dreams that examine your ability to cope.
Probably - and this notion comes without evidence - Amla was the choice for a nation that needed his background to make a statement. Transformation comes in many forms but if the leader represents its credentials, the on-sell is more straightforward. AB de Villiers was one choice, Amla the other. If the choice is too difficult to call, go with the better messenger. Better still go with Amla, who is the message. In his heart he must have known this. What a burden.
He did just fine, representing his people with honour and commitment. He had some bowlers, though not the depth of attack given to his predecessors. He won some series and then came badly undone in India, a spill that cost his country the treasured record of not having lost away from home since 2006.
The clue to his mind was in the way it applied itself to batting. In India, all he could dare was frozen defence. Set free, few men have used a bat to express themselves so accurately. Amla has an untroubled rhythm and flow. He plays thoughtful innings that reach crescendos and then return to their foundations so that each part is rebuilt in the anticipation of overwhelming performance. These innings adapt to their environment and to the format for which they are intended. In them he unites South African discipline with Asian flair, and vice versa - the perfect hybrid. But in India there was none of this. Indeed, he appeared broken. Against the spinning ball on pitches of wretched bounce, block after rigid block tortured his soul.
He might have survived his own assessment had the first Test against England, in Durban, been less stressful, or simply had a better result. But no. He was back in India, fighting to survive something he knew was lost. And that something was his conviction that he could do the job better than the next man. Without it, the game was up. At the press conference announcing closure, he said as much.
It might seem odd that he stood down having made 200 in Cape Town and saved the game. But he made 200 because he had already released his mind. In a single decision he had come from unbearable weight to the lightness of being. No mask, no message, just an innings with clear purpose and a rewarding conclusion.
Much is asked of international captains. Some treat these questions lightly; Brendon McCullum for example. Others wear them better than imagined; Misbah-ul-Haq for sure. One or two close shop: MS Dhoni is a man of smoke and mirrors. A few bunker down and later emerge rebooted: Alastair Cook. Occasionally a heart is worn magnificently on its sleeve: think Graeme Smith.
Smith's part in the new age of South African cricket is a remarkable sporting story. By his own estimation, it took five years to be any good at the job. In that time he learned more about himself than he thought was there. He was utterly without prejudice and therefore above suspicion. He was able to separate political issues from performance; to forgive if not forget; to rally and to cry. He spoke comfortably of shortcomings and shrewdly of ambition. Perhaps most notably, he converted a suspect and awkward batting technique into a mechanism for sustainable and substantial run-making.
Amla must have wondered how on earth he did it all. But there was a difference. Smith represented something already there. Amla was the chosen face of something long fought for but still not achieved. About that there remains great bitterness. So much so that cricketers of the past - those who represented South Africa before and during isolation - are not recognised by the regime of the present. I'll wager Amla hates that every bit as much as Smith mourns it. In the world occupied by the two most recent out-going South African cricket captains, all men are equal.
While Haroon Lorgat, the CEO of Cricket South Africa, resolutely denies quotas at international level, the agenda is clear. But it is not organic. In a Machiavellian way, Amla was a ticket. De Villiers is not. South African cricket is at the crossroads. The next route taken may define its place at the top table of the game. Amla simply could not reconcile such a responsibility alongside the need to win tosses and take a gamble; give speeches; make life-changing decisions for and about players; hold catches; stop boundaries; score runs and sleep tight.
His decision was made for the greater good and for personal harmony. It is a brave thing to abandon a dream. And a smart thing. His stock has risen and his impression will hold firm. De Villiers is a wonderful alternative and his voice must be heard. South African cricket is lucky to have such men in their ranks. It would be wise to give them equal standing and a decisive say in the future.
Meanwhile, the former captain's resilience and clarity have made South Africa stronger than a week ago. England will be more than aware of this.
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