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Hashim Amla
by Biltong Tue 15 Nov 2011, 6:59 am
This is part of an interview and article that was done and featured in the SA sports illustrated in November of 2010.
The longer Amla has gone about his business as a decent Muslim lad who’s good at cricket, the more people have come to realise that maybe their preconceptions were complicating things unnecessarily. In fact, by the time Amla won the Cricket South Africa Fans’ Cricketer of the Year award in July, most people had forgotten that they had ever been anything but massive Hashim Amla supporters in the first place. Those widely-voiced doubts over his technique when he was dropped after three Test matches in 2005?
Ancient history! His declining, for religious reasons, to wear the logo of South African Breweries, the Proteas’ sponsor? Always understood! Being embraced by a team culture more secular than his own? Easy! So, when a man walks up to us in the street, grasps Amla’s hand and earnestly says, “Well done, Hash!”, it’s tempting to think the congratulations might be meant as much for all those priceless, less tangible triumphs as for that imperious 110 hit against Zimbabwe the day before.
In 46 Tests, Amla averages – at 45.10 – well in excess of Test cricket’s gold standard of 40, and for a player supposedly not suited to the limited-overs game, he boasts an average of 57.16 in 34 ODIs. ‘Boasts’ is the wrong word. “I’m not really a big averages person,” Amla corrects me. “But these days you can’t get away from it. Everyone’s always telling you about it, especially if you’re doing well. JP [Duminy] was telling me the other day, ‘Do you know what your average is?’ I said, ‘Don’t tell me! I actually don’t want to know!’ Sometimes you feel embarrassed when they bring it up on the screen. Makes you feel a bit shy.”
Out in Tongaat, the younger Amla was serving a useful apprenticeship at the hands of his brother. Their grandparents had originally settled in Durban after emigrating from the Indian province of Gujarat (home of Mahatma Gandhi), but their father, a doctor, had moved the family to Tongaat when he opened his practice. Small town life meant endless backyard cricket, almost always played against bigger and more skilful boys. “Hashim’s a lot tougher than me,” admits Ahmed, older by almost four years. “He has to be – he got
pushed around and sorted out for 21 years at home!”
Ask anyone. Amla’s appetite for work, and his reputation for outsized mental strength, precedes him. “He hits a lot of balls,” says Lance Klusener admiringly. Klusener played with
Amla at the Dolphins and is now a consultant coach there: “And if you hit a lot of balls and you’re working really hard at your game, you’re giving yourself the best opportunity.”
Both latent qualities – work ethic and determination – were forged in the fire of self-examination after Amla was unceremoniously dumped from the Test side after scores of 24, 2, 1, 0, 25 and 10 at the start of the 2004/05 season. Not only was his unorthodox backlift dismissed as ridiculously flawed, but mean-spirited gossip questioned whether his selection had been on merit anyway. “When I first made the South African team,” says Amla, “I thought I was batting the best I had ever done. I had got four hundreds [in eight innings for the Dolphins] and when I was dropped, it was like, ‘No, he was only there for transformation.’ I remember thinking, ‘What the...?! No way, man! I was caning runs just the other week, and now all of a sudden...!’” He sighs. “But I guess people see things differently. What can you do? Just persevere and stick to your plans.”
Those plans involved relinquishing the Dolphins captaincy to free up his formidable resources and then bringing his furnace-like focus to bear on the faulty backlift. “The following season came and I wasn’t in the national team,” Amla remembers with a wry smile. “I scored the most runs on the domestic circuit and I never watched myself bat. One day I did watch a recording, and I thought, ‘Man, nothing’s changed! My backlift still looks exactly the same!’ But in my mind, I was thinking that it must have changed because all of a sudden, I’m scoring runs! I got a shock and that made me realise that you’ve got to find your own way of playing.”
lthough others expected him to, Amla never felt any extra pride at being the first Indian cricketer to play for the Proteas. “It never struck me when I was picked. I felt happy and
chuffed to play for South Africa, but being recognised as the first Indian didn’t add any prestige,” he says. It’s an attitude that confounded fans of every hue, from impatient
whites wanting players of colour to support; to blacks, Indians and coloureds who were equally desperate for one of their own to break through to the highest level. But given some perspective, the agitators now see that what Amla was saying was right all along: “Because of the demographics of our country, you can never get away from people seeing colour before seeing anything else. But the fact that you’re playing for your country is prestige enough.”
It is this ability of Amla’s to unerringly steer an independent and principled course through the minefield of South Africa’s excitable multiculturalism that has won him friends everywhere he goes. Call it what you will – humble, tranquil, charming, infuriating – but make no mistake, this inner certainty that Amla possesses is as hard as a rock, and it is deeply rooted in his Islamic faith. It’s never been anything but self-evident to Amla that there can be no value judgement attached to the differing beliefs that he or his teammates might happen to hold. It’s not good or bad. It just is. If Amla would prefer to pray five times a day and consult a different religious text, who is he to question others’ penchant for
alcohol and nightclubs? And vice versa.
“We always gave him space in the dressing-room,” reflects Arthur. “Because he’s not a talker, he’s a doer. Hash lives his religion to the nth degree. So when it came up that he didn’t want to wear the Castle Lager logo, that was 100% correct and taken brilliantly by the team. Hash doesn’t mess around with his religion. He’s devout and he lives his life that way.”
Amla possesses a special talismanic power for the Proteas. As a senior, influential player who averages over 50 and has an enviable 71% win rate in the ODIs that he’s played, the Proteas need Amla on the field. As a man who is worthy of universal respect, South Africans need him off the field too. He reminds us that only through our differences can we truly
come to know ourselves.
Amla has scored only 1289 runs in his first 22 tests (40 innings) at an average of 33.92 with 3 centuries and 6 fifties.
Amla has scored 2723 runs in his last 30 tests (52 innings) at an average of 57.93 with 10 centuries and 13 fifties.
Amla has an ODI average of 55.17 with 8 centuries and 15 fifties in 52 matches.
The longer Amla has gone about his business as a decent Muslim lad who’s good at cricket, the more people have come to realise that maybe their preconceptions were complicating things unnecessarily. In fact, by the time Amla won the Cricket South Africa Fans’ Cricketer of the Year award in July, most people had forgotten that they had ever been anything but massive Hashim Amla supporters in the first place. Those widely-voiced doubts over his technique when he was dropped after three Test matches in 2005?
Ancient history! His declining, for religious reasons, to wear the logo of South African Breweries, the Proteas’ sponsor? Always understood! Being embraced by a team culture more secular than his own? Easy! So, when a man walks up to us in the street, grasps Amla’s hand and earnestly says, “Well done, Hash!”, it’s tempting to think the congratulations might be meant as much for all those priceless, less tangible triumphs as for that imperious 110 hit against Zimbabwe the day before.
In 46 Tests, Amla averages – at 45.10 – well in excess of Test cricket’s gold standard of 40, and for a player supposedly not suited to the limited-overs game, he boasts an average of 57.16 in 34 ODIs. ‘Boasts’ is the wrong word. “I’m not really a big averages person,” Amla corrects me. “But these days you can’t get away from it. Everyone’s always telling you about it, especially if you’re doing well. JP [Duminy] was telling me the other day, ‘Do you know what your average is?’ I said, ‘Don’t tell me! I actually don’t want to know!’ Sometimes you feel embarrassed when they bring it up on the screen. Makes you feel a bit shy.”
Out in Tongaat, the younger Amla was serving a useful apprenticeship at the hands of his brother. Their grandparents had originally settled in Durban after emigrating from the Indian province of Gujarat (home of Mahatma Gandhi), but their father, a doctor, had moved the family to Tongaat when he opened his practice. Small town life meant endless backyard cricket, almost always played against bigger and more skilful boys. “Hashim’s a lot tougher than me,” admits Ahmed, older by almost four years. “He has to be – he got
pushed around and sorted out for 21 years at home!”
Ask anyone. Amla’s appetite for work, and his reputation for outsized mental strength, precedes him. “He hits a lot of balls,” says Lance Klusener admiringly. Klusener played with
Amla at the Dolphins and is now a consultant coach there: “And if you hit a lot of balls and you’re working really hard at your game, you’re giving yourself the best opportunity.”
Both latent qualities – work ethic and determination – were forged in the fire of self-examination after Amla was unceremoniously dumped from the Test side after scores of 24, 2, 1, 0, 25 and 10 at the start of the 2004/05 season. Not only was his unorthodox backlift dismissed as ridiculously flawed, but mean-spirited gossip questioned whether his selection had been on merit anyway. “When I first made the South African team,” says Amla, “I thought I was batting the best I had ever done. I had got four hundreds [in eight innings for the Dolphins] and when I was dropped, it was like, ‘No, he was only there for transformation.’ I remember thinking, ‘What the...?! No way, man! I was caning runs just the other week, and now all of a sudden...!’” He sighs. “But I guess people see things differently. What can you do? Just persevere and stick to your plans.”
Those plans involved relinquishing the Dolphins captaincy to free up his formidable resources and then bringing his furnace-like focus to bear on the faulty backlift. “The following season came and I wasn’t in the national team,” Amla remembers with a wry smile. “I scored the most runs on the domestic circuit and I never watched myself bat. One day I did watch a recording, and I thought, ‘Man, nothing’s changed! My backlift still looks exactly the same!’ But in my mind, I was thinking that it must have changed because all of a sudden, I’m scoring runs! I got a shock and that made me realise that you’ve got to find your own way of playing.”
lthough others expected him to, Amla never felt any extra pride at being the first Indian cricketer to play for the Proteas. “It never struck me when I was picked. I felt happy and
chuffed to play for South Africa, but being recognised as the first Indian didn’t add any prestige,” he says. It’s an attitude that confounded fans of every hue, from impatient
whites wanting players of colour to support; to blacks, Indians and coloureds who were equally desperate for one of their own to break through to the highest level. But given some perspective, the agitators now see that what Amla was saying was right all along: “Because of the demographics of our country, you can never get away from people seeing colour before seeing anything else. But the fact that you’re playing for your country is prestige enough.”
It is this ability of Amla’s to unerringly steer an independent and principled course through the minefield of South Africa’s excitable multiculturalism that has won him friends everywhere he goes. Call it what you will – humble, tranquil, charming, infuriating – but make no mistake, this inner certainty that Amla possesses is as hard as a rock, and it is deeply rooted in his Islamic faith. It’s never been anything but self-evident to Amla that there can be no value judgement attached to the differing beliefs that he or his teammates might happen to hold. It’s not good or bad. It just is. If Amla would prefer to pray five times a day and consult a different religious text, who is he to question others’ penchant for
alcohol and nightclubs? And vice versa.
“We always gave him space in the dressing-room,” reflects Arthur. “Because he’s not a talker, he’s a doer. Hash lives his religion to the nth degree. So when it came up that he didn’t want to wear the Castle Lager logo, that was 100% correct and taken brilliantly by the team. Hash doesn’t mess around with his religion. He’s devout and he lives his life that way.”
Amla possesses a special talismanic power for the Proteas. As a senior, influential player who averages over 50 and has an enviable 71% win rate in the ODIs that he’s played, the Proteas need Amla on the field. As a man who is worthy of universal respect, South Africans need him off the field too. He reminds us that only through our differences can we truly
come to know ourselves.
Amla has scored only 1289 runs in his first 22 tests (40 innings) at an average of 33.92 with 3 centuries and 6 fifties.
Amla has scored 2723 runs in his last 30 tests (52 innings) at an average of 57.93 with 10 centuries and 13 fifties.
Amla has an ODI average of 55.17 with 8 centuries and 15 fifties in 52 matches.
Biltong- Moderator
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Re: Hashim Amla
by msp83 Tue 15 Nov 2011, 10:12 am
Quite a change from what we saw in India during his early days. terrific cricketer, and the future core of SA batting alongside ABDV.
msp83- Posts : 16223
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Re: Hashim Amla
by Mad for Chelsea Tue 15 Nov 2011, 10:23 am
Amla's tranformation has been pretty remarkable. I remember his test debut against England in the 04-05 series, and I really couldn't see him having a future as a test cricketer at that time. His technique was all over the shop, and he struggled against short-pitched bowling, the ball coming back into him, etc. But credit to him, he went away, worked on his game and came back a far better player than I ever thought he could be.
His ODI record is remarkable, though he had a poor world cup (I remember this as I had him in my fantasy team
). Very good article, if sometimes a bit OTT (40 is no longer the "gold standard" in test cricket IMO for instance), and gives a nice insight into Amla's character. Thanks biltong 
.
His ODI record is remarkable, though he had a poor world cup (I remember this as I had him in my fantasy team
). Very good article, if sometimes a bit OTT (40 is no longer the "gold standard" in test cricket IMO for instance), and gives a nice insight into Amla's character. Thanks biltong .
Mad for Chelsea- Posts : 12103
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Age : 36
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