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Talent aplenty at SA's disposal
27/11/2007 14:40 - (SA)
Port Elizabeth - The sheer dominating brilliance of Jacques Kallis has tended to overshadow the fact that the 2007/08 international season has also seen the maturation of young talent on a scale that South African cricket has not experienced for a very long time.
Hashim Amla, who set something of a record with his three successive partnerships in excess of 150 with Kallis (170 at Karachi, 330 at the Wanderers and 220 at SuperSport Park, all three matches being convincingly won), and Dale Steyn (one of only six bowlers ever to take 20 or more wickets in a Test series at an average of less than 10) have made their mark in the Test squad this season.
To that duo can be added Paul Harris. The left-arm spinner may be 29-years-old but spinners do tend to mature later than other practitioners of the game and he is confident himself that he has another 10 years of top level cricket left in him. Look how long the likes of Shane Warne, Stuart MacGill, Mushtaq Ahmed and Muttiah Muralitharan have kept on playing!
The brothers Albie and Morne Morkel were two of the stand-out performers of the Twenty20 World Champiosnhip and there is no doubt they will both play key roles in the ODI squad before the summer has run its course.
Mature manner
Morne has already knocked hard on the door of the Test squad as well and many good judges expect Albie, who has a first-class batting average of 43 and whose bowling is regaining its venom of old, to follow suit.
And then we come to the outstandingly mature manner in which AB de Villiers and JP Duminy, teammates for South Africa at Under-19 level back in 2003, set up what in the end turned out to be a nail-biting victory in the first ODI at Sahara Stadium, Kingsmead, on Sunday.
AB has had a fairly difficult time in the Test squad this season because, as a No 6 batsman, he has often had to hold a lower order together that has not had its normal quota of all-rounders, rather than simply being able to concentrate on his own game.
It certainly cost him the opportunity to turn his 77 in the first innings at Karachi into a century - he was last man out - and he followed it with a flawless 45 at Lahore that ended with an unlucky deflection off the bowler on to the non-striker's wicket.
Even allowing for his three ODI centuries - the latest one was at Lahore this season - he took his career forward significantly at Kingsmead, on Sunday when he and the equally young and even less experienced Duminy produced a partnership of great maturity and skill to put South Africa on the victory path.
Conditions were not easy for batting as was born out by the fact that the par score for the match was 240 rather than the norm these days of somewhere close to 300 for most venues.
De Villiers first helped his captain, Graeme Smith, put on 91 for the third wicket off 123 balls after the first two wickets, including Kallis, had fallen for just nine on the board. De Villiers and Duminy then added a further 72 for the fourth off only 77 balls to put the Proteas firmly in control.
They had been set the target of getting South Africa to 180 in 40 overs and they certainly paced themselves superbly in reaching 150 in 35.2 overs and then 172 when De Villiers was dismissed off the second ball of the 39th over.
Harsher critics will point to the fact that one of them should have batted through to sew things up and De Villiers, in fact, made the point himself at his man of the match media conference afterwards.
No doubt AB and JP will both have learned a lot from the experience and one thing that is crystal clear is that these two are the exciting young face of South Africa's ODI batting going forward.
They complement one another perfectly: the one is right-handed the other left, they are both natural athletes which makes them quick between wickets and also fast, energetic and skilful in the field. Who will forget those two wonderful outfield catches in the series decider at Lahore?
The building blocks are falling very nicely into place for the next World Cup campaign when you consider that most of these youngsters will gain something like 100 ODIs of experience before they travel to the Asian sub-continent in 2011.
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