Ongama Gcwabe
AB de Villiers has called on the current Proteas leadership group to stand up and lead from the front in the remainder of the home summer as South Africa host Sri Lanka for two Test this month and close the summer with a multi-format tour of Pakistan between December and January.
In white ball cricket, South Africa are coming from a 3-1 T20I series defeat to India last week, while the Test side is on a high after series victories in the Caribbean and Bangladesh recently. However, both teams are yet to display consistency and the ongoing home summer is an opportunity for the squads to get their acts together.
With consistency this summer, the Test squad will find themselves at Lord's next year playing in the World Test Championship (WTC) final, while the white ball team will register much-needed series victories. De Villiers believes the consistency that South Africa is after stems from the leadership groups stepping up and leading from the front with performances this summer.
"The inconsistency is the one area I feel that we can still work on. I feel the talent is there, there's no doubt about that in my mind," De Villiers said at the Betway SA20 Rising Stars event yesterday.
"Inconsistency, I feel, comes from leadership and we need a couple of the experienced guys to start standing up now. I feel we are at that crossroads where to be consistent in all the formats, we need leaders.
"I think back at Graeme Smith when I was playing, he played an integral part in us being consistent as a unit because he was consistent as a captain and pushed us hard. So, we need that kind of leadership.
"In all the World Cups we've performed well, we've made the final in the T20 and with the WTC now we've got the chance of finishing top two if we beat Sri Lanka and Pakistan. So, it's all lined up, it's just a matter of finding a bit more consistency and that's up to a couple of leaders standing up."
Test captain, Temba Bavuma, is back in the Test squad having passed his fitness Test earlier this week and will be hoping to continue his good form in Test cricket this summer. Aiden Markram, the T20I captain, has been under a lot of pressure as his individual performances have been nothing short of poor since becoming captain in March of last year.
De Villiers reckons that Markram carries the burden of captaincy more than it is necessary but believes that the 30-year-old is capable of striking a balance between looking after his game and leading the team.
"He (Aiden) has been disappointing in the last few years. He knows that and he'll be the first to say it. He's got to find something to spark again," said De Villiers.
"Generally as a leader, you don't really have time to focus too much on yourself and that's maybe an area he needs to work on. You can see it takes a lot on himself when he gets out when he walks off the ground and that's the one area if I spoke to him is to work on that.
“Get that body language better. Don't carry the entire world. Enjoy your batting, put a smile on your face and you can go back to being captain."