Hashim Amla is South Africa’s ‘rock’ in this World Cup says AB de Villiers
Hashim Amla is the quickest to 20 hundreds in one-day internationals
Tuesday 3 March 2015 13:36, UK
South Africa captain AB de Villiers hailed Hashim Amla as the team's ‘rock’ after the opener hit his highest ODI score of 159 in their 201-run win over Ireland in Canberra.
Amla also became the fastest player to 20 ODI hundreds, reaching the mark in 108 innings, fewer than Kohli (133), De Villiers (175) and Tendulkar (197).
“Amla is still the rock and will always be that for us,” said De Villiers, who scored just 24 following his own 150 in the Proteas' previous win over the West Indies. “He did it effortlessly; he plays with a lot of class.
“His game plans are so set, whatever you do he always seems to have an answer for it. It seems like it anyway. He was incredible and hopefully that form can continue for the rest of the tour.
“It was a good game and what pleases me most about our batting is that we did it our way – we're not trying to follow anyone else's strategy, we followed our game plans and what we believe works for us.
“There have been a lot of hundreds over the last 12 to 18 months, it's something we're very proud of. We want to keep scoring centuries because we feel it definitely helps setting it up for later in the innings.
Exceptional
“The guys stuck to their guns really well and we started off well with an exceptional partnership between Faf [Du Plessis] and Hash [Amla].
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“When you get a partnership of 200-plus in an ODI, you're always going to get yourself into a good position as a batting unit and we found ourselves in a great position going into the last 15 overs.”
Amla and Du Plessis – who scored 109 – put on 247 runs for the second wicket, laying the perfect foundation for some lower-order hitting from Rilee Roussow (61 off 30 balls) and David Miller (46 off 23) as South Africa passed 400 for the second straight game.
Rather than revelling in his own success, Amla sees setting that kind of platform for the big-hitters at the end of the innings key to his role in the side.
“Any hundred is a good hundred,” he said. “I'm just happy to get some runs and set it up for the boys at the back end.
“Fortunately we got off to a good start and had wickets in hand to give us that luxury of being able to go for it and fortunately it paid off."
Amla added: "You'd like to score runs every game, but I don't think that's quite possible - unless you're Don Bradman or AB de Villiers!"
South Africa are next in action against Pakistan in Auckland on Saturday. You can watch it exclusively live on Sky Sports World Cup from 12.30am.
