Dean Elgar: Living in the glory days of past

Dean Elgar: Living in the glory days of past

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Fiore de'i Liberi, a late 14th century knight and diplomat, in his manuscript called the Flower of Battle, listed four attributes that make a good warrior. Of the four listed attributes were courage and strength, qualities that are not only integral in moulding a warrior, but also symbolize them.

He then goes on to state that “a good warrior must have a bold heart if he is to learn any fighting at all.” Being a batsman is no different to being a warrior. A good batsman must have a bold heart if he is to learn any batting at all. He must be ready to spill blood for his team and be prepared to toil hard. He must also be ready to make mistakes, embrace it and eventually learn from it.

And Dean Elgar, by all means, is a warrior in the truest sense. The attributes that define him and are associated with him are courage and strength. Many a time he’s spilt blood for his team - none more prominent than his knock at the Wanderers against India where he copped blows left, right and centre against an Indian attack that came for the kill - and throughout the course of his career, has made innumerable mistakes. In fact, he started his Test career with a pair. But he learnt from them.

If the cricket ground were a battlefield, there’s no one you’d want fighting for you than Elgar, for you know that he’ll be there until the sun goes down. This is also why it’s unsurprising as to why no batsman in the history of the game has carried the bat more times than Elgar. 

When you watch Elgar bat, you know he means business; you know he’s there to fight. He’s the first one to volunteer to stand in the firing line and he always ensures that the enemy runs out of arrows to shoot: by either dodging them, taking them on the chest or a combination of the two. Either way, he gets the job done. And in 2017, this lion-hearted, mettlesome opener, after a somewhat dissatisfactory start to his career, finally attained his peak.

It was a year where he scored more Test runs than everyone not named Steve Smith or Cheteshwar Pujara; it was a year where he scored 5 centuries in just 12 games and it was a year where he basically transformed from a mid-carder who competed for the Intercontinental Title to a main-eventer who was right in the mix for the World Heavyweight Championship. Hell, it was a year where, in first-class cricket, he scored more runs and more tons than anyone else in the world.

Most runs scored in 2017 (Tests + First Class) © ESPN Cricinfo

His stocks shot up to a phenomenal extent, almost outdoing the boom that the bitcoin was seeing in and around the same time. He attained a level where he was all but immune from criticism and rightly so. Basically, Elgar, with his sheer weight of runs, built a reputation for himself, performed lobotomy on the brains of every single viewer of the sport and planted this idea of a whole new Dean Elgar. And reputation is like a hairspray: it keeps your hair intact, locks it in place, makes you look good and it is all but impossible to mess with it. But once it’s spoiled, the come-down is phenomenal and hideous. Elgar locked in his hair with a spray in 2017 and it, till date, has stayed intact. 

But is Dean Elgar’s hair really THAAAAAAT good? Or is it just that the rest of ‘em are either bald or really, really messy that we’ve been forced to give him a free pass? As we all know, an idea grows in our minds like a parasite, doesn’t it? And maybe, just maybe, the idea has grown on us all so much that everytime we see Elgar’s name, everytime we watch him bat, we picture him to be this invincible, unconquerable superior being that took the cricketing world by storm in 2017. A deep scrutiny of his numbers, however, show us a story that our minds, thus far, have dared to imagine.

Since 2017, a calendar year where he finished with scores of 199, 18, 113 and 31, Elgar‘s Test career has been on a freefall and he is now in dire need to arrest it. 

Elgar's year-by-year breakdown in Tests since 2017 © ESPN Cricinfo

Not only did the average plummet down from 53.71 in 2017 to 36.72 in 2018 to 25.07 in 2019, but each year, there has been a drastic fall in the number of runs he’s scored, with him in both 2018 and 2019 barely managing to score 50% of the runs he did in the preceding year. 

In fact, the breakdown below paints a clearer picture of how Elgar’s career has plummeted post the golden 2017 year, with him barely averaging over 30 across two calendar years, in over 20 Tests.

Elgar's Test career till December 31, 2017 vs Elgar's career since Jan 1, 2018 © ESPN Cricinfo

But the eye-catching aspect of this particular graphic, more than the average, is the figure fifth from the right, the number “2”, which refers to the number of tons Elgar’s scored since the turn of 2018. After scoring 10 tons in his first 42 Tests, in 67 innings, averaging a century every 6.7 innings, the opener has just two in the next 21, averaging 21 innings per century. And those two tons - against Australia in Cape Town in 2018 and against India in Vishakhapatnam in 2019 - had a 560-day gap between them. 

There can also be an argument made that 2019 was the lowest point of Elgar’s career. Of course, we all remember his masterul 160 in Vizag, but his performances on either side of those knocks were hideous and forgettable. In 16 innings in 2019, Elgar scored a total of just 351 runs which, to put things in perspective, is not even one third of what he managed in 2017. But it gets worse. Of those 351 runs, 160 of them were knocked up in one innings, meaning in the remaining 15, he scored 191 runs at an average of 12.73. Those 15 innings included nine single digit scores and just two scores of 30 or more. In fact, the century in Vizag was Elgar’s ONLY fifty-plus score in the entirety of 2019. 

So, how did such a dreadful year like this go completely under the radar? The 160 in Vizag helped him erase the past and, in turn, made him immune for the immediate future no doubt, but there are also other factors that contributed to it. That his opening partner Aiden Markram, somehow, had an year worse than him helped his cause. That skipper Faf du Plessis was being targeted for South Africa winning just one Test in the entire year helped his cause. That the focus was completely on the misfiring Temba Bavuma also helped his cause but most importantly, more than anything else, that he had firmly experienced himself as a ‘warrior’ helped his cause. 

Coming back to du Plessis, though, it is interesting that the skipper was being called out, shamed and paraded in public despite him not having a ‘bad year’ by any means. He’s had a stinker to 2020, no doubt, but then again, when did 6 innings ever start to become a fair sample size to judge a batsman? A direct comparison of Elgar and du Plessis should give us a fair perspective.

Faf du Plessis vs Dean Elgar in Tests since 01 Jan, 2019 © ESPN Cricinfo

Funnily enough, since the start of 2019, Faf has actually outperformed Elgar with the bat, sporting a better average, scoring more runs and fifties. And recently, the skipper came under fire for not converting his 36 in Port Elizabeth and 35 in Johannesburg. Could you take a guess what Elgar’s last 5 Test scores are? 34, 35, 15, 26 and 24. The left-hander has, historically, like a vast majority of batsmen in the world, fared better at home as compared to matches away. But should his away record spark concern?

Dean Elgar - Overall performance vs Home Performance vs Away Performance © ESPN Cricinfo

17 of 26 fifty-plus, including 7 of his 12 tons, have come at home (third row), he’s scored more runs at home and there’s also a steep fall in the average the moment he steps out of his own territory. It is also to be noted that his away record has been considerably bolstered by his performances in Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, two nations where he averages 75 and 41 respectively. But whilst this has been the case historically, it is the recent form that’s a major concern. 

Openers away from home since Jan 1, 2018 (min 250 runs) © ESPN Cricinfo

Since the start of 2018, of openers to have scored a minimum of 250 runs away from home, Elgar has the worst average amongst everyone. Yes, this is a list that includes the name of Keaton Jennings. 

But as bad as it sounds, it really shouldn’t bother South Africa or Elgar; batsmen, especially openers, failing gloriously away from home is a common sighting in this day and age. What should, however, irk both Elgar and the management is how he’s fared at home. 

Openers in South Africa since Jan 01, 2018 (min 300 runs) © ESPN Cricinfo

For all openers to have scored a minimum of 300 runs in South African conditions since the start of 2018, you guessed it right, Elgar has the worst average, 32.86. Of course, there can always be an argument made that this is comparing apples and oranges, for he’s played 20-25 more innings than 80% of the batsmen in this list. But even if we filter it down to threshold of 25 innings, his compatriot Markram has comfortably outperformed him, almost edging him out in every single metric. Perhaps, as we’ve all been taught over the course of the past 18 months, Elgar is not the best opener in the world, after all. 

So, where do Elgar and South Africa go from here? As things stand, nowhere. Dropping Elgar would be ridiculous and foolish, for he’s undoubtedly still one of their best batsmen and would be needed now, more than ever, at a time where it looks like we might have seen the last of Faf in Test cricket. For starters, though, perhaps they can start asking more questions of him and start making him more accountable.

Throughout the entirety of his career, it’s during times of turmoil, when his back’s been against the wall, that the southpaw has brought out his best. Given that accountability and responsibility have often woken the monster in him, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad call after all to hand him the Test captaincy. That is a different topic altogether, though.

For now, however, we know that  Dean Elgar’s Test career has suffered a vertebral subluxation and is in dire need of a chiropractic adjustment. But on a battlefield, there won’t be any doctors to help him crack his back. Rather, there will be enemies trying to break his bones. The Warrior in Elgar has always been alive and awake, but it’s no time for the batsman in him to wake up. 

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