Our batting has more than just Faf du Plessis and myself: Hashim Amla

Having wounded the Australians by a humiliating 5-0 defeat in the ODI series played at home the South African team will now fly down under to play a three-match Test series. They were without regular skipper and one of the best ODI batsmen in the world AB de Villiers but still managed to stay well ahead in all the games of the series. Their victory was substantially aided by stand-in skipper Faf du Plessis’ form with the bat and his captaincy decisions.

Recently Peter Siddle termed South African batting line-up as inexperienced, “Throughout they have got a lot of inexperience, and I think that is something we can exploit and get stuck into,”

“If we can apply pressure to those senior guys, it is going to put a lot of pressure on their inexperienced ones. I think we have got the upper hand there with experience in our batting line-up.

“Target the captain, get on top of them and the rest sort of crumble,” Peter Siddle added.

Hashim Amla along with the former Protea skipper Faf du Plessis are considered by the Aussies as the biggest threats in an otherwise inexperienced batting unit and will look to target the duo.

Hashim Amla feels that their team has got more than what it appears and the opponents think. “Before every series, there’s always the same questions,” Amla said while interacting with the media at the WACA Ground on Thursday ahead of the first Test.

“We got asked about Dave Warner and Steve Smith. So there’s always going to be two guys you’re asked about in the opposition. I don’t look too much into it, because I know in our batting order we’ve got guys who can make impacts at any stage of the game, and that’s a really wonderful thing to have in the team. Over the last six or seven years – the success we’ve had away from home, you don’t get that success with only one guy doing well,” Amla was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au.

The right-hander is greeted by pleasant memories at Perth where they defeated Australia the last time the two teams met which was also former Aussie skipper Ricky Ponting’s retirement Test. But Amla doesn’t want to dwell on the past and is more focused on today. “For me those things were four years ago, and eight years ago – really far in the past,”

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“You take the experience from it and the memories. But the game’s played on day one, two, three, four, and five. That’s where the cricket is. It’s not eight years ago,” he said.

He also took the opportunity to heap praises at their pace bowling spearhead Dale Steyn, who is  just 6 short of Shaun Pollock’s tally of 421 Test wickets. “It’s a phenomenal thing to think about,”

The guy’s in probably the top 10, if not top five best bowlers in the history of the game. For him to get the accolade – whenever he does – it will be a really special moment for all of us,” Amla concluded saying.

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