Amla steps it up a notch

When Hashim Amla walks out to bat, calm follows him to the crease. Composure is writ all over his forceful forward-defensive, elegance on his velvety cover drive. Publicly Amla has been serenity personified, but now a different side of his personality wishes to be seen.

Having only played three T20s at international level, he will captain the national team in the limited-overs series against Australia, following an injury to AB de Villiers. "I don't think I will change much. The intensity will change," Amla told ESPNcricinfo. "Everything will get compressed down. T20 will be a lovely experience. Like everything, I'll have to get used to it.

"Maybe because I am not so boisterous people think I am very serious. But you can ask my team-mates, they will tell you how I really am."

Since most of his team-mates were away at the Champions League, Amla was forced to explain it himself. "I enjoy a lot of things [including] batting," he said. "What's there not to enjoy about batting? It's fun and it's something you practise day in and day out."

The colourful side of Amla's batting had to emerge at some point. It started when he surged to the top of the one-day rankings last year, with shots like the upper cut making their way into his repertoire. Since May 2010, he has scored seven one-day centuries, and generally used the presence of mind he has always shown in Test cricket and applied himself more aggressively to the one-day game.

Many want to know what has changed. Amla says nothing has. "The biggest difference has been getting a bit more experience. Sometimes it just takes one knock to click."

He traces the source of the success he has enjoyed over the last two years - in which he has averaged nearly 60 in both Tests and ODIs - to the troubles he dealt with in his first few years as an international player and the growing up he has had to do since then.

At 21, Amla was named captain of the Dolphins, in the 2004-05 season, and scored four hundreds in eight innings, which got him selected for South Africa. He made his debut against India in Kolkata, an emotional occasion for him because of his Indian heritage. He scored 24 and 2. In two Tests after that, he scored just 36 and was dropped from the national team. What happened after that that shaped Amla's character.

In seven innings for the Dolphins, he managed a highest score of 25 and averaged 9.57. "There was always talk about my technique not being good enough, and initially I thought I needed to change things," he said. "When you are going through a bad patch, facing everyone is difficult. There are about 99 different ways you can get out. I wouldn't wish a bad patch on anybody but a lot of good can come of it."

In the last first-class match of that season, the SuperSport series final against the Eagles (now called the Knights), Amla burst back to life with his first double-hundred.

Phil Russell, who was coaching the Dolphins at the time, gave Amla clear instructions that he should not do anything too different. "There were some complaints about his backlift, but I didn't think it was a problem," Russell said. "He just needed to work on getting the bat to come down straight, a bit like Gavaskar used to."

Amla relinquished the Dolphins captaincy at the end of the season, saying it adversely affected his batting, and although the stats don't illustrate that clearly, those seven innings do. When he was recalled to the South African Test side 11 months later, he scored 149 against New Zealand, and he has kept his place since then. "When I came back into the team, I knew how it operated, and I knew I needed to find a way of performing in it," Amla said.

It was a year and seven months before Amla scored his next century, again against New Zealand, but now he was allowed time to settle into the international circuit. He said that allowed him to develop his own style of play and was valuable in determining the kind of player he would eventually become.

"Mickey [Arthur] had a role to play," Amla said. "He was the coach at the time and he showed a lot of faith in me, and I had a good run to try and prove myself. During his tenure I managed to cement a position, so I'm grateful to him and his confidence in me."

After being part of the South Africa side that beat England in the 2008 Test series, Amla accepted an offer to play county cricket for Essex in 2009. The following year, he spent two months with Nottingham.

Amla scored a century on debut for both counties. "I remember going there, especially to Notts, and seeing the wicket. It was so green. I thought, 'How am I going to make runs here?' It taught me a lot about batting and tactics, because Notts played very aggressive cricket."

It's that sort of determined cricket that South Africa have been trying to play over the last few years, but while it has succeeded at Test level, it has not paid off in the shorter versions, especially in ICC events, where South Africa haven't won a tournament since the ICC Knockout in 1998. Amla was part of the squad that succumbed to New Zealand in the 2011 World Cup quarter-final, and he said the experience was both the highlight and lowlight of his year.

"The team was in such a good space at the time and we had connected with each other very well," he said. "We each felt each other's pain. In some ways it was consoling that everybody was hurting. It was really disappointing at the time. But, on the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed the World Cup. We were having fun and that's very important, especially in a long tour of about six or seven weeks. If you're not enjoying it, you're going to dread every day. We were having a lot of fun. Everybody gave 100% in training. I don't think anybody came back thinking they should have given more."

With South Africa having secured the services of World Cup-winning coach Gary Kirsten, there are expectations that their fortunes will change, perhaps as soon as the World Twenty20 next year. Amla said too much shouldn't be read into the appointment. "From a player's perspective, you can't put too much emphasis on the coach doing the work for you. He will give his ideas and plans to work with the players and get the best out of them. Each player knows his game and knows his role; it's a matter of doing it on the field."

For Amla that role is to continue being a peaceful player, who radiates calm. It's a role he has mastered, having learnt to conserve his energy for when he is on the field. "We were playing a Test in Bangladesh and Graeme [Smith] and Neil McKenzie batted the whole day. I was next in to bat and I spent the day watching them," he said. "At the end of the day I was so mentally drained. I thought I was expending too much energy watching the game. So ever since then, I try to not expend too much energy. You watch a bit and then you just switch off, because when you get in the middle, that's when it really starts."

Many members of the South African team have said they benefit from Amla's stillness and see it as an essential component of their team dynamic. Amla said players are starting to carve these types of niches for themselves as the team looks to build its ethos.

"There's been a big drive to have an official team culture," he said. It seems a tricky concept, especially with a team that has players from such diverse backgrounds. "If you get it from everybody it's not tough. If there are a whole group of guys who want to pull the team in the right direction, the rest will follow. We are still developing, but it will take time. You have to have patience."

Amla will now be the leader of that culture, albeit temporarily. It may mean he will have to sacrifice some of the calm and embrace a more forceful, feisty role. Russell believes it is the ideal position for Amla, who he earmarked for the captaincy four years ago. "He brings stability to a team, he always talks common sense, and he never blames anybody else," Russell said. "And he has a wicked sense of humour."