All his career, Dean Elgar, 36, 150 Test innings and 12 years of cricket behind him, has batted like an abstinent monk. But in the first innings of his farewell series, before the sun sets on his career, he decided to taste batting’s worldly pleasures that he had forbidden himself when practising the most capricious of batting arts.
He is, and always, has been a throwback batsman, his reputation founded on immaculate defence, impeccable judgment, and iron-willed defiance of conditions. But he compiled his 14th hundred, shockingly the first on his home perch SuperSport Park, with the dash and daring of a Bazball-convert, displaying that attacking zeal was never beyond him. Just that he resisted the route, just that he put his team over self-indulging.
It was perhaps the circumstances. In the post-AB de Villiers-Faf du Plessis-Hashim Amla era, at a time when there was a batting vacuum, at a tough time for the country’s cricket in general, they required a wall of resistance. So came Elgar, winning and saving games with the old-fashioned virtues of grit and guts. But before it all ended he wanted to unburden himself, a privilege his hard, sweaty runs had earned. The stonewaller would transform into a stroke-maker.
The Man of the Moment 💪
Huge cheers around @SuperSportPark for Dean Elgar after a terrific century 👏 🇿🇦#WozaNawe #BePartOfIt #SAvIND pic.twitter.com/bjkDHvnh2m
— Proteas Men (@ProteasMenCSA) December 27, 2023
It was perhaps the hour’s need too—merely looking to survive on a surface with venom was ill-advised and risk fraught in South Africa’s bid to surpass India’s first innings total of 245 on a still vicious surface. They duly did, were 11 runs ahead at stumps and five wickets in tacts, including that of Elgar on 140.
The cover-drive embodied his free-spiritedness. Unless the ball is a listless half-volley, he does not usually drive. Maybe, he is preconditioned that way. The drive, in hostile batting surfaces of South Africa, invites perils for opening batsmen, not least for someone with short strides.
Most of his off-side runs, thus, are taps and steers through behind point, or the cut when the length is too short. He is more of a leg-side beaver, frustrating the bowlers with his discipline outside the off-stump and forcing them to stray onto the pads. Flamboyance is absent in his leg-side repertoire too. He clips, nudges and deflects the ball towards the gaps, building the innings with sneaky singles, hitting, on an average, only four fours in an innings. Here, he slammed 23, and 23 that you would not forget as soon as the stumps are drawn.
Often in the end, all you remember is the blows his body had soaked—he did wear a couple on Wednesday too—and the defiant face, the stubbled streaks of grey peering from the helmet grille painting the picture of a gladiator. The metaphor of a gladiator is apt, for every time he went out to bat, he conveyed an impression that he was tussling with an untamed beast, roaring to rip his heart apart, in a cage.
Dean Elgar celebrates scoring his 14th Test hundred against India on Day 2 in Centurion. (AP)
Here, though, he uncaged himself. He did not hang back for the bad balls. The bowlers would err marginally, or they would not err at all, but Elgar would drive with zeal. The first of the expansive drive came against the debuting Prasidh Krishna. It was good-length, angling away and wide outside the off-stump. He routinely leaves those balls, but here he drove emphatically on the front-foot. Later, Shardul Thakur would serve a tempter, a full and wide ball on the sixth stump. Elgar’s feet did not quite reach the pitch of the ball, but his hands ensured that it reached the fence. It was a phase where he latched onto even marginal boundary-hitting chances. Thakur kept feeding him full and wide balls outside the off-stump and Elgar would repeat the dosage. After one gorgeous cover-drive off Thakur, he even struck the pose in his follow-through. He breezed to his half-century in 79 balls.
If the spectators thought he would decelerate, accustomed as they could be to their ways, they were wrong. Even Jasprit Bumrah, who had rammed a ball onto his mid-riff with the new ball stood, awed when he unlocked a sumptuous cover-drive on the rise. Bumrah spat fire in his second spell, but Elgar doused the flames, and often emitted fire himself. The next fifty arrived in only 62 balls. The phase included a whippersnapper slash behind point off Mohammed Siraj, a rare stroke of his that bordered on arrogance. An occasional ball would beat him. But those aberrations did not haunt him. Bumrah hustled him with a spiteful away-swinger but he laced him through point, with a punch on the rise.
The introduction of Ravi Ashwin, the off-spinner that has taxed him in the past in the subcontinent, did not bother him. He slugged him through midwicket; before on-driving him to reach 96. Ashwin foxed him with a flighted beauty, the off-break snapping past his open-faced bat. Five balls later, with a vehement pull off Thakur, he completed his 14th hundred in the only format that he plays these days.
The celebrations were uncharacteristically elaborate, the landmark marked with a David Warner-esque leap and punch.There could not have been a more contrasting pair of openers than Elgar and Warner. But both would, ironically, retire on the same day. Elgar’s hundred too was Warner-like in rendition. Upon landing, he removed the helmet and let out a roar of delight, before soaking in the applause of the crowd. Just two of his hundreds had come at a better strike rate. Then, Elgar’s batting has been less about strike rates and more about crease-occupation. But before he disappears into the shadows of the game, he just showed that he was capable of aggression, only that he chose a monkish path. No one would dispute the right he has earned to revel in the forbidden indulgences.