Six of the best, and worst, years for Aiden Markram

“I’ve doubted my abilities, especially when I’ve been out of form. At the top level you’re just a few bad knocks from people wanting you out of the team.” – Aiden Markram

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

A lot can happen in six years of a top player’s career, especially in their 20s. They can find their way, lose it, rediscover it, never stray from it, or struggle to settle and fade, leaving only questions of what might have been. 

Six years ago Aiden Markram was freshly famous. Before Valentine’s Day in 2014 few cricket followers beyond those who keep track of the schools and junior provincial game in South Africa knew his name. After March 1 that year he was everybody’s darling. Not only had he captained his team to the only World Cup triumph South Africa have yet celebrated — men, women, under-19s, whatever — he had scored two centuries and a half-century, all of them unbeaten, in six innings in that cause. This kid could play, the schools and juniors anoraks told us. And lead. He’ll go far.

Half a dozen years on from that under-19 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates much has indeed happened in Markram’s career. He has scored four centuries in 37 Test innings in which he averages 38.48 and played 26 ODIs, making two 50s, and two T20Is, with a best effort of 15. That doesn’t seem special until you consider that two of those Test hundreds were against Australia, and that he has had all but seven of his innings in the format on some of the most challenging pitches yet seen in this country. No current South Africa batter has maintained a higher Test average over the course of Markram’s career, and only Dean Elgar has scored more runs — 171 more, but in nine additional innings.   

But the statistic that matters most is that Markram has played in little more than half of South Africa’s matches from his debut: 48 out of a possible 92. That’s too few for someone who is supposed to be a dominating batter and an inspirational leader. Graeme Smith was the last South African cast from that mould, and of his team’s first 92 games from his debut he featured in 79.

The circumstances were different. Smith was already the captain in his ninth Test and his 23rd ODI. He came on the scene near the end of Shaun Pollock’s tenure, which was prematurely kiboshed by South Africa’s first-round crash out of the 2003 World Cup. And there was no expectation that Smith would become a world class leader: he had only five captaincies of any sort under his belt, none of them first-class, when he took charge of South Africa for the first time. Faf du Plessis has been the captain in 36 of Markram’s 48 international matches. When Markram made his debut in September 2017 few would have predicted that, less than three years later, Du Plessis would have given up the leadership in all formats.

In short, it’s complicated. Markram is a purer batting talent than Smith or Du Plessis, and his unprecedented — and unemulated — World Cup achievement is evidence he could match or surpass them as a captain. But first he needs to make himself indispensable. That means, in part, staying healthy.

A fractured finger Markram sustained on the second day of the Test series against England in December required surgery and took him out of the other 15 matches South Africa played at home last summer. Before that, in Pune in October, he removed himself from the equation by punching, in release-speak, “a solid object” in the dressingroom after realising he could have avoided succumbing to a pair in the second Test against India had he reviewed his leg-before decision. Injuries happen. Self-inflicted injuries should not, especially not to players who have designs on the high office of captaincy.

Markram, who returned to action for the Titans in February and made two centuries in six list A innings before the season was curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic, has had time to think about all that. Maybe too much time. “The most challenging part about being injured is not letting your mind run off,” he said in an audio file released by Cricket South Africa on Monday. “You’ve got so much time on your hands you tend to not just overthink things but you delve deep into things, which is often quite unnecessary. Trying to keep your mind at bay, and calm and strong, when you have time off is the biggest challenge I struggled with.”

But cricketers and ballooning thoughts are not easily separated, especially when they have gone 37 Test and ODI innings in the top four without scoring a century and have passed 50 only four times. “The mental side of cricket probably becomes the difference between the great and the good,” Markram said. “It’s really difficult to keep a positive frame of mind. If you think from a batter’s perspective, you fail more times than you succeed. That’s something you have to learn to deal with. You need to remain positive throughout those failures, which happen more than your successes.”

And that’s enough to darken the thoughts of even the strongest among us: “I’ve never thought about giving up, but I’ve certainly doubted myself. I’ve doubted my abilities, especially when I’ve been out of form. At the top level you’re just a few bad knocks from people wanting you out of the team. Then people stop backing you. I’ve doubted myself quite a bit this last year since it was quite a struggle for me. It’s a tough space to be in but it comes with the territory. If you want to be a top performer at a high level you’ve got to find ways to deal with it. This time off has been good for coming up with ways to not blow it out of proportion in your own mind, and just crack on with what needs to be done.”

It’s almost unfair that Markram should have to dedicate so much of his energies to sorting out his game when there’s a major vacancy for that other thing he’s good at. Quinton de Kock has been appointed to succeed Du Plessis as South Africa’s white-ball captain. But the position remains up for grabs in the Test side. Markram’s name is firmly in the mix but so are those of Temba Bavuma and Rassie van der Dussen, with Elgar also a candidate. That was the longish shortlist until May 7, when Keshav Maharaj made a bold bid for a job few would have thought he coveted. Suddenly, almost half South Africa’s Test XI are vying for the leadership.

Unlike Maharaj, whose presentation was powerpoint slick, Markram struggled to get out of the starting blocks: “The captaincy … chat and debacle or however you want to see it … I really, really enjoy captaincy. I enjoy the responsibilities that come with it. It’s something I would love to do.”

So noted, and good to hear. Not least because of the names above only Elgar, who has led teams 50 times, including twice in Tests, has more captaincies to his credit than Markram’s 40. None of the others have, of course, gone anywhere near World Cup glory. Markram would be the sensible person’s choice, but South African cricket has never been sensible — not when it excluded the vast majority of talent from selection for the so-called national team on the spurious grounds of race and not now, when what still matters most for too many people is a player’s ethnicity.

Markram might well be the sanest person in this room: “I’ve never given captaining my country too much thought. It’s always been a bit of a shot in the dark for me. But now that the name is in the hat, so to speak, for people writing news … It’s just nice to be considered. I do really love it and would give an absolute arm and a leg to be able to do it. But it’s not the be all and end all, so I don’t want to become desperate about it. If it were to happen it would be amazing, but if not there are plenty of good leaders within the environment who will definitely take the team forward, along with the management. My main focus is trying to get back into the side and staying on the field.”

Keep your eye on the ball, son. The rest will surely follow.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Cometh the hour, but who cometh as captain?

“Leadership has come naturally to me. I have done it before, I definitely can do it. Why I haven’t I’m not sure. But who knows what’s going to happen going forward.” – Rassie van der Dussen

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

YOU look like a captain, play like a captain, talk like a captain, even walk like a captain. So how come you haven’t captained much? Our question to Rassie van der Dussen, delivered during an online interview conducted by his agent, Chris Cardoso, seemed to grip, rip and zip square past his outside edge. At least, Cricbuzz would like to think so.

Van der Dussen took a moment. To think. To consider his answer. Maybe to ask himself the same thing, perhaps not for the first time.

“I don’t know if I walk like a captain, but I’ll take it,” Van der Dussen said. He is among the most unvarnished of cricketers. What you see really is what you get: a splendid splinter of a player who hits the ball with visceral violence. You don’t need to see Van der Dussen play a stroke to know it’s his. You can hear his authorship. The alto gunshot crack hits you, the hearer, in the chest and leaves its mark. He is a lean machine: 1.88 metres of torque and toughness. And a straight up fella.

Van der Dussen is cast from the same cultural mould as AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis — they’re all from Pretoria — but he couldn’t be more different. Like everyone else he doesn’t have De Villiers’ outrageous talent. Unlike Du Plessis he isn’t as slick as his own hair in front of the cameras and behind the microphones. He also doesn’t have De Villiers’ apparent inability to make up his mind about whether he wants to play for South Africa. Nor is he concerned with sculpting his answers quite as immaculately as Du Plessis, who pauses his press conferences to ask the reporters in attendance if he has used the correct term. These are not criticisms: few people on earth are pestered about their plans for the future as often and as tediously as De Villiers, and you won’t find any reporters complaining about their press conference victims trying to improve their replies to questions.

But it is a joy to encounter someone whose authenticity has not faded under the multiple coats of varnish that are applied, inevitably, to cope with the level of scrutiny Van der Dussen evaded until the 2019 World Cup, where his performance — 311 runs in nine innings, three half-centuries and an average of 62.60 — was one of South Africa’s few reasons to be cheerful. 

“From the time I made my first-class debut at Northerns I’ve been very lucky to play under ridiculously good captains.” — Rassie van der Dussen

His apprenticeship was long, and started when he was pitched into senior club cricket while still at high school: “As a kid playing with men you learn pretty quickly, and you learn the hard lessons very quickly.” The benefit of all that early and ongoing study is a solid grip on his own game: “I would say cover drive, straight drive, on the legs, that’s where I score. Short ball I can take on. I’m not a big cutter of the ball. I don’t play late to third man. I don’t hit well over extra cover. It’s not that I can’t do it, but it’s not my plan A. I think you only get to know that when you train a lot and put yourself in difficult situations. Anyone can go and hit a thousand underarms and think they’re training well and hard. But putting the bowling machine at 145, 150 [kilometres per hour] coming straight at your head, that’s the challenge you’re going to face out there. You’ve got to train under pressure and really yourself in terms of what you can and can’t do.”

Van der Dussen has played 117 first-class matches, 110 list A games and 114 senior T20s, among them 30 internationals across the formats. He is more than a dozen years past his first-class debut and two months into his 32nd year. Yet, despite all that experience, and the way he looks, plays, talks and walks — in essence, with authority — he has captained in only one first-class match and a list A game, and never in a significant T20. Why?

“From the time I made my first-class debut at Northerns [on Valentines Day in 2008] I’ve been very lucky to play under ridiculously good captains. Aaron Phangiso was the captain when I made my debut and he was still captain of the Lions last season. In terms of South African captains he’s right up there with the best. Then I moved to North West [featuring in his first match for them in February 2012] and played under one of the greatest captains I’ve ever had, Brett Pelser. When I started at the Lions, Alviro Petersen was one of the great cricketing minds of the last 20 years in South Africa. And after him, another two of the great cricketing minds in South Africa, Neil McKenzie and Stephen Cook. Maybe when the time came for me to take over as captain at the Lions I started playing for the national team [regularly from January 2019], and availability played a role. You can’t have a captain who’s not there for half the games.”

Fair points, but it’s a surprising list of role models. Not least because your freshest memory of Petersen might be from December 2016, when he was banned for two years for his role in the fixing scandal than blighted South Africa’s domestic T20 competition the previous year. Phangiso? McKenzie? Cook? Excellent players. But, as captains, are they capable of shaping the next generation of leaders? And who, exactly, is Brett Pelser?

In 2007 Durban-born, England-based batting allrounder Pelser blagged his way onto a North West development project for nine players from England to turn out for clubs in Potchefstroom. Pelser proved such a hit with the locals that he played 153 matches for the province, captaining them 123 times. The original gig was supposed to last six months, but Pelser’s last game for North West was in January 2015.

“I’d look at the way he was playing, and think, ‘I look like a tailender next to him’.” – Brett Pelser on batting with Van der Dussen.

Among the captains Van der Dussen named, Pelser had the highest winning percentage at provincial level. Only Cook has a lower losing percentage. Van der Dussen played 69 games for North West. Pelser was the captain in 56 of those matches — ample time for his approach to influence his players’ idea of good leadership. And for Pelser to be able to offer an informed view of what kind of captain Van der Dussen might make.

“I think he’d be brilliant, and I don’t think not having done the job much will hinder him,” Pelser told Cricbuzz from his home in Bolton. “He does what needs doing for the team. That’s what comes first for him. He knows when to talk. And he knows when to keep quiet. He doesn’t betray his emotions, he just shuts things out and engages when he has to. He has so much maturity and an unshakeable belief in his own ability. I leant on him heavily.” Van der Dussen wasn’t always so high in Pelser’s estimation: “I was quite taken aback when I played against him. He looked really sullen and not interested. He didn’t seem to be about anything. But that’s what he does, he just zones out. That’s his greatest strength. It’s only when I played with him that I understood him better, and discovered he had a wonderful dry sense of humour.”

Pelser and Dussen shared four century stands for North West, two of which soared past 200. “We had some good partnerships together, and he forced me to better,” Pelser said. “I’d look at the way he was playing, and think, ‘I look like a tailender next to him’.”

Why the focus on Van der Dussen’s potential as a captain? Because of what Graeme Smith, South Africa’s director of cricket, said during an online press conference on Friday when Cricbuzz asked him who the Test team’s new leader might be: “The one definitive answer that I can give you is that it’s not going to be Quinton. I can’t tell you who it’s going to be.”

Du Plessis gave up all forms of captaincy in February and Quinton de Kock has been installed as the white-ball boss. South Africa’s next Test series is in the Caribbean in July and August, so even if the rubber isn’t derailed by the coronavirus pandemic there is time to mull over the question of who might replace him. But none of the available options are a perfect fit, not that many teams have that luxury when they need a new skipper.

Dean Elgar has 50 games as captain to his credit, nine at the helm of South Africa A, 11 of them first-class and two of those Tests. He was also in charge at the 2006 under-19 World Cup. Elgar is four months short of two years older than Van der Dussen, and he has played 59 more Tests. Temba Bavuma, who turns 30 on May 17, has 40 Test caps. He has led teams 39 times, 23 of those occasions at first-class level, and five involving South Africa A. Aiden Markram captained South Africa all the way to triumph at the 2014 under-19 World Cup, a fact that sticks out in a cricket culture where no other team has won a global prize since Hansie Cronjé took his side all the way at the 1988 ICC Knockout Trophy — which became the Champions Trophy — in Bangladesh in October and November 1988. Markram has held the reins 50 times, including 11 of first-class stature, and seven of them with South Africa A.

Elgar’s elevation would reflect the importance of appointing a tough leader at a difficult stage of the team’s development. It can only help his cause that Smith and Mark Boucher are cut from the same hard, uncompromising cloth. Making Bavuma captain would satisfy a growing — and justified — push for a black leader of a team that purports to represent an overwhelmingly black nation, and in which most people who play and follow cricket are black. Of the 36 men who have led South Africa’s Test team only two, Ashwell Prince and Hashim Amla, have not been white. Markram’s age, a tender 25, allied to his playing role — of the dozen players who have captained South Africa in Tests since readmission in 1991, only Shaun Pollock, Boucher and Jacques Kallis have not been out-and-out batters — give him an edge. 

Elgar has been part of the Test set-up since November 2012, when Smith was captain. If he wasn’t the man to succeed Smith or Amla, what makes him the preferred candidate now? That smacks of unfairness: circumstances don’t remain the same and players change accordingly. But it will be a factor.

Bavuma faces almost the opposite challenge: unlike Elgar he has not nailed down his place in the team, and players need a captain they can trust to do his own job properly before he tells them how to do theirs. That disregards the difficult situations Bavuma has guided South Africa through. But it is nonetheless a matter for discussion.

Patchy form and injuries have stalled Markram’s progress. He broke a finger during the first Test against England at Centurion in December, and despite returning to action with the Titans near the end of February he wasn’t picked for the subsequent ODI series against Australia nor the aborted white-ball tour to India. No centuries in his last 38 completed innings for South Africa, regardless of format, helps explains his omission. Questions about his temperament were raised when he injured a wrist with a punch to what a release euphemised as “a solid object” after he made a pair in the second Test against India in Pune in October.

But Markram is a higher calibre talent than any of the other candidates, and despite having had 30 fewer innings than Bavuma and doing the toughest job, opening the batting in all his trips to the Test crease, he has scored three more centuries. That said, Bavuma has made 421 more runs than Markram even though he has been shunted up and down the order, batting in five places in the top seven including as an opener.

And then there’s Van der Dussen and his four Test caps and a solitary first-class captaincy. But there’s more than that: burgeoning respect in the dressingroom and in the more sensible corridors of power, appreciation for his lack of flash and dash, and recognition of his bedrock confidence in doing what he does better than most. There’s also this, from Smith: “Maybe take a risk on someone, potentially, and back them, try to understand who’s got some credibility within the environment [from] a leadership perspective and respect. Coming from a person a risk was taken on, it is something that we would certainly consider.” You could say as much in these three words: Van der Dussen.

“I want to be a thinking cricketer, obviously when I’m batting but also in the field — coming up with suggestions to assist the captain,” Van der Dussen said in his online interview. “Whether you’re wearing the captain’s armband or not I’ll always challenge guys to try and do that. Because you’re out there on the field for a long time, you get to study opposition players and the conditions. You can challenge yourself to think as you would if you were captain. I was really fortunate, when I made my Test debut against England, to stand at first slip alongside a guy like Faf — one of the greatest man managers and leaders South Africa has ever seen — and on the other side [of me] was the limited overs captain, ‘Quinny’. Talking to those guys, learning, discussing how plans come together, and coming up with suggestions, even if the captain uses them or not, that was a real learning curve for me.

“Leadership has come naturally to me. I have done it before, I definitely can do it. Why I haven’t I’m not sure. But who knows what’s going to happen going forward.”

Nobody knows, thanks to the coronavirus. Just like nobody knew South Africa would take a chance on Smith until Pollock let slip the name of his successor at the press conference he gave in the wake of his sacking in March 2003. Smith didn’t do something similar on Friday — two days after Van der Dussen spoke — not least because the decision is far from taken. And because he is too canny an operator.

But you can bank on him knowing that someone who looks like a captain, plays like a captain, talks like a captain, even walks like a captain, but hasn’t captained much, could be the right man in the right place at the right time. Just like he was.

First published by Cricbuzz.