“I wouldn’t waste a referral knowing that I’d nicked it.” – Dean Elgar takes aim at electronic umpiring.
TELFORD VICE at Newlands
DEAN Elgar has opened Test innings on 30 grounds around the world, and in the company of a fast bowler, two wicketkeepers and eight batters; three of them medium pacers of varying ability, another a decentish off-spinner for seven years. Including Elgar, that’s a useful squad of 12 with experience in all conditions. But even a dozen Elgars would do well to get South Africa out of Cape Town with their series lead alive.
Elgar and his latest opening partner, debutant Pieter Malan, spent almost two hours together in the middle at Newlands on Monday. They faced 176 balls between them and shared 71 — South Africa’s biggest first-wicket stand in 36 attempts since Elgar and Aiden Markram put on 85 against Pakistan at Centurion two Januaries ago. It was the first time in 15 innings — or in three days more than a year — that South Africa’s openers have managed a half-century stand when they had the opportunity, and it takes the number of consecutive innings in which they have failed to put a hundred runs on the board, again, when they’ve had the chance, to 37. The last time the openers banked three figures was in Bloemfontein in October 2017, when Elgar and Markram piled up 243 against Bangladesh.
South Africa have won 10 of their 19 Tests since then, but how many of the nine they have lost might they have at least drawn had they been able to build on a more stable platform of early runs? And surely they would not have shambled to five consecutive defeats last year had seven of their 10 opening stands not been worth 10 runs or fewer. There is a lot more to fix about this team than steadying the opening partnership, but ticking that box wouldn’t hurt.
Wanted: two blokes who can stand up to fresh bowlers armed with a fresh ball on a fresh pitch for long enough to make all of that stale. Actually, just one bloke. Elgar’s position is not up for discussion. He has made only one century in his last 25 innings, but in a South Africa team in which little is certain at least what you see is what you get from the stocky left-hander with the bulldog spirit at the top of the order.
“If I tell you the truth I might get into trouble,” was all South Africa’s batting consultant, Jacques Kallis, would say about Elgar’s reaction to being given out — earning occasional leg spinner Joe Denly a first Test wicket — because of a snickometre spike so small it might have been the result of a butterfly’s wing brushing a silk thread. Even in Kallis’ non-disclosure, He summed Elgar up.
Elgar himself was bracingly, and typically, undiplomatic in an interview with Sky Sports. Had he hit the ball? “No. I wouldn’t waste a referral knowing that I’d nicked it. I don’t play cricket like that. I like to see myself as someone who takes their outs if they’re out. I wouldn’t waste a referral like that. It’s a bit of an emotional time when those kind of things happen. When I’d simmered down and was watching the footage I could still say that I hadn’t hit it.” What did he think of electronic umpiring? “I don’t know. I’m going to reserve my comments because I don’t want to get into trouble with the ICC. But, as a player, I can say I’m very confident I didn’t nick it.”
Beautiful in his belligerence as Elgar is, an opening partnership cannot stand on one leg. Malan, blessed with the jib of an adolescent labrador and upper arms so knotted with muscle they look like a couple of challah loaves, put up his hand for the vacancy on Monday. Technically the job still belongs to Markram, who played at Centurion but was sidelined for the rest of the series with a broken finger. Thing is, a precedent was set when Temba Bavuma was dropped at Newlands despite passing a fitness test after recovering from the hip injury that, officially, kept him out of the Centurion match. So Markram should not rest easy.
The knowledge and nous the 30-year-old Malan has gathered in his 245 first-class innings before he cracked the nod was evident in the strokes he chose to play — and in those he didn’t. As Kallis said, “It’s not his first roadshow … but it is his first roadshow.” Malan left the ball with such assurance it seemed you could shake him awake at four in the morning and ask him where his off-stump is, and he would know to the nearest hair’s breadth. When he does hit the ball he does so properly and with purpose, and he doesn’t flinch from wearing a few on the body.
Malan came into the match under a swirling cloud of controversy. His selection was welcomed by some and seen as part of the dilution of transformation efforts by others. Had he not been picked, having been included in the squad as a specialist opener to start with, throats would have been cleared in anger. The best way to reward the faith shown in him by his supporters, and build it in his detractors into the bargain, is to do what he did in his almost four hours at the crease on Monday.
“He knows how to switch on and switch off,” Kallis said, a line that will ring bells in the memory of all who saw him bat. Between deliveries, there was so little in Kallis’ eyes you would have sworn you could see clean through his head. That was true even when he scored his first century, at the MCG in December 1997, and in the process drove Shane Warne crazy with his refusal to engage in anything that didn’t have to do with hitting — or leaving — the ball.
Kallis was 22 then, but he was born ready and with an old soul. Malan, eight years older, has accumulated his wisdom rather than arrived with it built-in.
Not unlike Hashim Amla’s bat coming down straight despite his whimsically wayward backlift, whatever winding paths different players take don’t matter as long as they end up in the middle.
Should Malan, who will resume on 63, live up to Kallis’ billing on Tuesday on a pitch the latter called “very much battable”, and on which South Africa need to score 312 more runs to reach the magic number of 438 — a world record that would echo the score they famously made to win a series-deciding one-day international against Australia at the Wanderers in March 2006 — even Elgar might be pleased.
Elgar has opened the batting with, in order, Graeme Smith, Alviro Petersen, Stiaan van Zyl, Vernon Philander, Temba Bavuma, Stephen Cook, Theunis de Bruyn, Heino Kuhn, Markram, Quinton de Kock, and now Malan.
Whether Malan is the best of them doesn’t matter. What does is that he is still batting.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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