Andrew Hudson and his selectors already had a difficult task on their hands picking the limited overs teams for the upcoming series against Australia – now that job has been complicated further following the injury to AB de Villiers.
Initial reports from India on Wednesday were that De Villiers, captain of both of South African limited overs teams, had fractured his left hand while training for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, who are participating in the Champions League T20 tournament in India.
The national team’s manager, Mohammed Moosajee, said the injury would be assessed by a local specialist before any decisions are made, but a fracture of any sort would put in jeopardy De Villiers’s place for the two T20 matches and three one-day internationals against Australia. The first T20 match is at Newlands in a fortnight.
Hashim Amla, who was appointed as De Villiers’ vice-captain, should automatically step up to the top position should De Villiers be unavailable. That is the easy part for Hudson and his fellow selectors who will be meeting at the Wanderers over the weekend to decide on the make-up of the two South Africa squads. The tougher bit lies in identifying who will replace De Villiers behind the stumps.
Mark Boucher and Heino Kuhn were both part of the 28-man squad that participated in new coach Gary Kirsten’s recent training camp at Arabella in the Western Cape.
Boucher hasn’t been part of the limited overs plans for the last 12 months but as a short-term fix the selectors may want to look his way again.
Kuhn would be a long-term solution and Hudson hinted at such a move this week, saying the selectors won’t just want to look at this season, but also towards next year’s T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka and even the next 50-over event in 2015.
Meanwhile, Australia named their squads for the T20s and three ODIs yesterday.
AUSTRALIA LIMITED OVERS SQUAD
Twenty20 – Cameron White (captain), Shane Watson, Doug Bollinger, Patrick Cummins, Aaron Finch, David Hussey, Brett Lee, Mitchell Marsh, Shaun Marsh, Stephen O’Keefe, James Pattinson, Steven Smith, Matthew Wade, David Warner.
ODIs – Michael Clarke (captain), Shane Watson, Doug Bollinger, Patrick Cummins, Xavier Doherty, Brad Haddin, Mike Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Brett Lee, Shaun Marsh, James Pattinson, Ricky Ponting, Steven Smith, David Warner.