Durban – This week’s sudden departure of Hashim Amla from the Dolphins has sent ripples across the murky waters of KwaZulu-Natal cricket.
When Amla, who has always played his off-field activities with as straight a blade as he offers to toiling bowlers around the world, serves up such an unexpected swish of the bat, the rumours are bound to follow.
The fact that the national squad hardly plays any domestic cricket makes Amla’s decision even more undigestible, and suggests that there is more to this than meets the eye.
In the modern world of cricket razzmatazz, Amla is the antithesis, as reluctant a headline hogger as you are ever likely to find. Making the front pages has never been his style, and seeing his name on the wrong side of the paper is a rarity.
But the whispers of discontent from weeks ago now take on a new spin.
Weeks ago, as the Dolphins limped out of the Wham Bam T20 stuff, Amla’s management company fired an online verbal volley at the incompetence at Kingsmead.
Of course, those tweets disappeared just as quickly as they had surfaced.
But, the point had been made. With the dismal end to a campaign that had promised much at the start of 2013, the Dolphins ended the season in familiar waters, with defeat, denials and then the departure of their only superstar.
There are other, budding cricketers who are threatening to make their mark at the highest levels of the game, like the dashing, but inconsistent David Miller, and the tireless Kyle Abbott.
But they are far from the finished article, and the weight of expectation has hampered Miller’s development.
Amla was the proverbial banker for KZN cricket. As long as his face could be splashed across billboards and his name mentioned amid the whisky and water in the presidential suite, things were still okay at Kingsmead.
Much like he is in the middle, his presence provided a calming influence in the changeroom and around the city. His loss cannot be overstated. From the far-flung days when national players were the norm in Durban, his departure emphasises how dry the well lies now.
Lonwabo Tsotsobe is technically the only Dolphins player contracted to the national team, but the patrons of Port Elizabeth’s malls and dance halls have seen more of him than any of the die-hard fans who still go through the turnstiles at Kingsmead this season. I wonder whether he will be back next term.
This off-season provides the brains-trust at Kingsmead a chance to address the steadily diminishing belief in their product around the province. They need to win back the trust of their supporters, on and off the park.
They have already roped in Morne van Wyk, the grizzled old warhorse from the Knights. He will provide the “old-pro” influence that the young Dolphins side has been desperately crying out for over the last few years.
They also need new heroes to emerge, to step up to the considerable hole left by the world’s best batsman.
Amla can’t be replaced, but KZN cricket desperately needs someone to recapture the imagination of a city that used to flock by the thousands to see their flannelled heroes, but have grown accustomed to being let down.
As for Amla, his service to KZN cricket over the past 13 years is immeasurable. He has transformed himself from a flourishing, but flashy upstart into one of the game’s purest joys to behold. And all this while maintaining a sense of humility and serenity, even as he worked in the shadow of the chaos in the upper echelons at Kingsmead.
Durban’s loss is certainly Cape Town’s considerable gain.