'Captains Amla and Cook are hard to separate'
Tuesday 22 December 2015 14:39, UK
Amla v Cook. Morkel v Broad. De Villiers v Root... Bob Willis compares South Africa and England's star players ahead of their four-Test series.
Hashim Amla v Alastair Cook
I am a great believer in captains only being as good as the bowlers they have at their disposal. When South Africa are at full strength and everyone is fit and at home, Amla looks a terrific captain but in foreign conditions in India with no spinners to speak of and Vernon Philander and Dale Steyn injured, he didn't look much of a captain.
I was surprised when Amla was preferred to AB de Villiers as Test skipper following Graeme Smith's retirement and I believe he is still on a learning curve in the job, but he is a great thinker about the game and has the potential to be a very good captain. He may need to be this winter as due to the injury situation, among other factors, South Africa and England are as close together in quality as they have been in quite some time.
Cook's captaincy, meanwhile, has improved considerably since Paul Farbrace and latterly Trevor Bayliss joined the coaching set-up, with his field placings now far less conservative. I think he was inspired, too, by what Brendon McCullum was doing with New Zealand, when the Black Caps captain proved exciting cricket could pay off in terms of results.
As far as the batting match-up between Amla and Cook goes, one obvious similarity is their ability to play long innings. Amla is a more gifted and wristy player who plays a lot of excellent shots off the front foot, whereas Cook's strength is on the back foot with the cut shot and the pull through midwicket. It's very difficult to put one of these top-class players ahead of the other but I would edge towards Amla, even though on recent form there is not a cigarette paper between them.
AB de Villiers v Joe Root
This is a good comparison to make in that both De Villiers and Root are attack-minded players who play all three forms of the game to a high standard and have the job of injecting momentum into their respective side's innings.
I put De Villiers right at the top of the tree; he is absolutely world class and, I guess, only Brendon McCullum - who doesn't have the class of De Villiers - has had a bigger impact on the world game in the last 10 years or so.
Players from previous eras are always guilty of rating those they played with and against as the greatest of all time but De Villiers deserves to be mentioned alongside Sir Vivian Richards, Sir Garfield Sobers and Brian Lara as one of the finest batsmen cricket has ever seen. Root is catching him up, though, and is going to be a marvellous player going forward.
Pakistan exposed a mild weakness in Root's game in the UAE by urging their left-armers to bowl full and wide at him outside of stump but I can't see any real glitches in De Villiers' make-up, unless he goes for a booming drive early in his innings and brings fourth slip or gully into play.
De Villiers will not move too far in the batting order at this stage of his career but Root is a candidate for promotion. I don't think England will be too keen to shunt him from No 4 but if Cook's opening partners continue to go through the revolving door, he may have to move there. It is so demoralising for a side to be one or two wickets down with the score on 20.
Dale Steyn v James Anderson
Steyn and Anderson are very much the spearheads of the two attacks, despite being very different bowlers in lots of ways. Steyn is an out-and-out paceman who has the ability to swing the ball late, whereas Jimmy, who is not as speedy, has a few more tricks up his sleeve.
Anderson disguises his reverse swing better than Steyn but if you can bowl the ball regularly above 90mph, which Steyn can, it is a tremendous advantage. The South African has a fantastic strike rate in all conditions, while Jimmy has had one or two problems abroad, though he has gone from 300 Test wickets to over 400 in double quick time and is now right on Steyn's tail.
Anderson is probably more important to England than Steyn is to South Africa purely because of the lack of back-up; Steyn has had Morne Morkel and Philander for support as well as a decent substitute in Kyle Abbott, whereas it has often been the Anderson and Broad show for England, with the other pacemen being chopped and changed.
Both players have also been key for their teams in the field. Until Ben Stokes arrived on the scene I would argue that Anderson was England's best all-round fielder, while Steyn is like lightning in the outfield and has a gun arm. Anderson just edges it as a fielder for me, though, as you can rely in him in the slips, too.
Morne Morkel v Stuart Broad
I think both of these bowlers are at the peak of their powers at the moment.
Morkel did a fine job in a losing cause for South Africa in India, getting good players out with little support from an injury-ravaged pace attack and a poor spin contingent, and is probably the more intimidating of the two with his extra pace and bounce.
But Broad, despite approaching 30, is still improving as a bowler; he destroyed Australia in the summer and bowled beautifully in the Emirates without a great deal of reward in terms of wickets, while he has this knack of taking wickets in clusters, something that is like gold dust in Test cricket. The confidence in his batting is also returning if his enterprising recent cameos are anything to go by.
Morkel and Broad have been excellent foils to the more heralded Steyn and Anderson, too. Seam-bowling partnerships have always been key - myself and Sir Ian Botham worked well together, for example - but quite often the lesser light has to put in the hard yards, something Morkel and Broad have done in a thoroughly professional manner without complaining.
Coverage of the first Test between South Africa and England in Durban gets underway at 7.30am on Boxing Day morning on Sky Sports 2.
