Elgar is fixed in the South African imagination as a symbol of excellence.
Telford Vice / Cape Town
RICKY Ponting said through a veil of near-tears that the match would be the last of his 168 Tests, and walked to the middle to begin his final innings through a guard of honour formed by the applauding South Africans.
In the same match Hashim Amla made 196 and AB de Villiers 169 in a second innings of 569 that featured three century stands. South Africa won by 309 runs to seal their second consecutive series win in Australia.
Only four more Tests would be played at one of the game’s great grounds before big cricket moved across the Swan River to the vast monument to grandiose nondescriptness called Perth Stadium.
Reasons to remember the Waca Test of November and December 2012 are in rich supply, not the least of them that the match was Dean Elgar’s debut. And that he became the 38th man to record a pair on the august occasion. That kind of thing slips under the radar when your team win by 309 runs, but resurfaces when you announce the end of your career. Especially a career as significant as Elgar’s.
A CSA release on Friday said South Africa’s two Tests against India, starting in Centurion on Tuesday, would be Elgar’s last. He will step over the boundary for the final time at Newlands, where — the release noted with neat diplomacy — “he scored his first Test runs”; 21 of them in his only innings in the January 2013 Test against New Zealand. The next time Elgar took guard, at St George’s Park in the next match of that series, he made the first of his 13 centuries: an unbeaten 103.
Elgar opened the batting for the first time in a Test in his eighth match, against Australia at St George’s Park in February 2014, with Graeme Smith. From there, the only instance in Elgar’s 140 other innings when he didn’t walk out at the start of the innings was against Australia at Newlands in March 2014, when he batted at No. 3. Smith announced his retirement during the same match.
No leap of faith is required to link Elgar with Smith. Both bat in a fashion that exposes as a myth the theory that all left-handers are elegant at the crease. Both bowl a surprisingly effective brand of finger spin, though not using the same arm. Both captained South Africa. Both would, in a less careful age, be labelled hard bastards.
But Smith and Elgar played only nine Tests together — all with Smith as captain — and were an opening pair in just four innings. When Smith called it quits, dramatically and probably prematurely, South African cricket looked around for a reasonable facsimile to serve as a ready replacement. Elgar fitted the bill.
Still, it took him 67 Tests to succeed Smith as the permanent captain, what with South Africa first wending their way through Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis and Quinton de Kock. Long before he was appointed Elgar had stood in for Du Plessis in two Tests, and he was in charge for 15 more before being replaced by Temba Bavuma in February. Under Elgar South Africa won series in West Indies and at home against India before drawing in New Zealand and beating Bangladesh at home. Losses at home to England and in Australia, and a change of direction under new Test coach Shukri Conrad, cost him his job.
Even so, among the 16 captains who led South Africa in at least 10 Tests, Elgar is one of only six who presided over more victories than defeats. But it’s more as a player and a person that he will be remembered and appreciated. Determined, pugnacious, belligerent, loyal, bluecollar, workmanlike, a fighter are some of the descriptors applied to him. All are apt. Some could spark trouble.
There was a murmur of the latter in April 2022 during the home series against Bangladesh, when Elgar defended his team’s aggressive approach by saying: “It’s a man’s environment when it comes to playing at this level, and I intend to play the game hard.” It was an alarming assertion considering women also play Test cricket. And more so in an era when toxic masculinity cannot be glibly excused, regardless of the intention involved.
But, mostly, Elgar’s unvarnished honesty has been a welcome relief compared to the media-trained nothingness that too many players trot out relentlessly in their desperation to avoid saying anything interesting. For instance, during South Africa’s November 2016 series in Australia, it was put — albeit informally — to Elgar that, in day/night Tests, batting orders should be reversed. Nos. 10 and 11 should open and the regular openers would bat last. Or maybe in the middle order. That way players who had better techniques would be at the crease at sunset, when the pink ball starts swinging wildly. Elgar took it all in, thought for no longer than it would take him to decide whether to play or leave, and said: “That’s a fucking stupid idea.”
He has walked that kind of talk. No South Africa player has scored more runs during Elgar’s career than his 5,146. Of the 13 players worldwide who have made more runs, eight have also had more innings. Among the eight, only David Warner and Dimuth Karunaratne have opened regularly. Alastair Cook and Tom Latham are the only openers who have scored more runs in fewer innings than Elgar during his career.
Beyond the numbers, it’s what Elgar represents that wins him supporters. When he made his first-class debut, in February 2006, South Africa’s now abolished franchise system was in its second season. Elgar had played 74 first-class matches before he took guard that day at the Waca in November 2012. South Africa had prised the Test mace from England that August. Had they lost in Australia the mace would have stayed there. Instead, Smith’s team brought it back to South Africa — where it stayed until May 2014. Elgar was key to that happening, thus he is fixed in the South African imagination as a symbol of excellence; part of the golden generation that included Smith, Amla, Jacques Kallis, De Villiers, Dale Steyn and Vernon Philander.
“He’s going to leave a massive hole,” Tabraiz Shamsi told Cricbuzz. “Dean’s been an integral part especially of the Test team. With less and less Test cricket being played, to lose that sort of experience isn’t good. It will take a lot more years to have someone with that much experience. His experience in the changeroom — to be able to help the guys who are there — is going to be a big loss.”
What about the impression Elgar will leave, for some, and unfairly so, as an old-fashioned grinder-outer of runs with little or no regard for entertaining those who had paid good money to watch him bat? “World cricket thinks it can move on from players like that, but at the end of the day it’s about playing good cricket,” Shamsi said. “People may think it’s all about slogging, even in white-ball cricket. But if conditions are tough you can’t just slog. When times and conditions are tough you have to knuckle down, and Dean’s that sort of player.”
Elgar is also the sort of player who rises to a challenge. Here’s one: the 45 players — 10 of them South Africans — who have suffered a pair on Test debut include Graham Gooch, Ken Rutherford, Saeed Anwar and Marvan Atapattu. But, among all 45, only Anwar also scored a century in his last Test. How stupid is the idea that Elgar could join that elite club?
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