Hashim Amla: South Africa’s Buddha with a bat

Hashim Amla [SOUTH AFRICA] – It is insufficient to illustrate the feats of a player of such aesthetic talents with mere numbers, but Hashim Amla, who became South Africa’s first ever Test triple centurion in his masterly innings of 311* at The Oval, is well accustomed to taking statistical plaudits.

In ODIs in 2010, he scored 1,015 runs @ 75.6, with five centuries and four fifties in just 15 innings. That he scored his runs at a strike rate of 104 makes his form even more remarkable, for Amla was often criticised for being a placid player, who could potentially make a decent Test batsman but would be too conservative for ODIs.

Lest we forget, this is a man who played 22 Tests before he was given a chance in the ODI arena. Curiously, being given an opportunity in ODIs loosened any shackles that once bound Amla, and as a consequence his all-round game has improved tremendously in the past few years, culminating in 2010 as his annus mirabilis.

Recalling Mohammad Yousuf at his very best, Hashim Amla is wonderfully still and calm at the crease, with an artist’s backlift and wrists that an ambidextrous masturbator would be proud of.

He exhibits unparalleled tranquillity, a wonderful serenity under pressure, and it is remarkable that Amla can play with such grace and style on testing home pitches.

Capable of cover driving off either the front or back foot with a fluency that would make a river swoon, his use of the depth his crease to both attack and defend against spin is another key trait, as an increasingly fraught Graeme Swann found to his cost during that unbeaten 311.

Incredible to see Hashim Amla scoring 300, then fielding at short leg. It’s like watching Jesus serve at a soup kitchen.

— Alternative Cricket (@AltCricket) July 22, 2012

An uncluttered mind and a state of pure zen have transformed Hashim Amla from a player of style sans substance, into a player of substance with style. It is difficult to recall many players who looked more ill-equipped for a lengthy Test career than Amla when he first came on the scene, which makes his current form even more remarkable.

After a difficult first few Tests against India and England, when his modest efforts saw him dropped amidst inevitable mutterings about the Durbanite owing his place to the South African quota system, he returned in 2006 to score his first international hundred against New Zealand – against who he also made his next two – before starting his love affair with the Indian attack with his first overseas century, a disciplined 159 in Chennai.

Now, he is South Africa’s undisputed MVP, which is no mean feat in a line-up with Smith, Kallis and de Villiers. When he passes three figures, his remorselessly beautiful mode of destruction offers impressively little let up to the opposition, with seven of his fifteen international centuries ending on 140 or more.

Without doubt, he is also the most popular man in cricket right now, as Amla silently commands respect from both opposition and fans. He refuses to participate in the IPL because of its debauched nature – Hash, you don’t know what you’re missing out on – and also refuses to wear an alcohol company’s logo when playing for South Africa, and so Amla is known as a man who values his own integrity over his wallet.

Amla the man mirrors Amla the batsman, and it seems almost impossible to find anyone within cricket with a unpleasant word to say of him. In 2006, however, former Australia batsman Dean Jones, when working as a commentator for Ten Sports, responded to Amla, a devout Muslim, taking a catch to dismiss Kumar Sangakkara in a Colombo Test with the words “the terrorist has got another wicket”.

When Jones subsequently apologised by irrelevantly stating he didn’t mean to say it on air, the response from Amla was witheringly cutting mix of forgiveness and erudition: “We all have some sort of inward prejudices we need to address,” he told an interviewer, with the same phlegmatic elegance he displays in the middle.

Perhaps we all do, but at the moment the only ingrained stereotype any right-thinking cricket fan can possibly have of Hashim Amla is that he has become one of the most divine pleasures of the game.

by James Marsh & the editor