For Dean Elgar, a cold one afterwards makes the pain worthwhile

For Dean Elgar, whose gritty half-century helped steer South Africa to victory alongside Hashim Amla in the first Test against Pakistan at Centurion on Friday, the pain of the battering he takes from the bowlers and the mental fortitude needed to grit it out while the ball is whizzing past the edge of the bat or finding it, is all externalised.

Elgar had to dig deep to survive a torrid opening hour at SuperSport Park in which it looked as if he could be dismissed by any delivery, and eventually he gutsed it our for more than three hours as South Africa secured a six-wicket win.

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“Fortune was obviously on our side and it could have gone either way, there was a lot in it for the bowlers, we were chasing an iffy target and it was always challenging on a really tough pitch and Pakistan have brought some good bowlers that can exploit conditions. They need to treble our salaries because this is definitely the hardest place in the world to open the batting! It would have been quite entertaining to have had a microphone on my body, but I know the guys in the changeroom appreciate what I do, and I can ice it with a nice cold beer afterwards.

“That’s what makes it so satisfying, the tough times make the beer at the end of the game taste that much sweeter. You’ve got to be comfortable with the fact that there’s always one ball with your name on it. You’ve got to play each ball on its merits, whether it hits the middle of the bat or finds the edge, and I’m quite thick-skinned when it comes to that, I don’t look at the past,” Elgar said.

Elgar and Amla put on a crucial stand of 119 for the second wicket, after Aiden Markram had been dismissed for a duck, staying together for three hours to set up the victory, and the left-hander said they called on all their experience to get into their partnership.

“At first there were a lot of jokes between Hash and I, we try and see the lighter side, there’s not a lot of cricket-talk. Those are the five to 10 seconds we get to switch off and there are a lot of one-liners, we seem to get each other humour-wise. But as we both began to flow a bit more, so we focused more on our partnership, trying to take it from fifty to a hundred, that was the time for seriousness.

“Our experience helped because we knew we just had to hang in there and eventually they would start bowling to our strengths, start feeding Hashim’s cut and bowling on my legs. But first we had to leave and defend well. We each have a different game-plan, but the end-product is pretty similar. I think maybe at times I make it look a lot tougher – give the bowlers some false hope,” Elgar cheerfully said.

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