Duminy on track for greater things

JP Duminy is living proof that more than talent is required to produce a player who might make a name for himself at international level.

Talent will amount to little without temperament, and even players who are blessed with those qualities will struggle to succeed if they do not anchor their careers to a well-honed technique.

At 23 and with just 18 one-day internationals to his name, Duminy is still far from the best player he could be.

But the progress he has made - particularly this season as illustrated by the fine 46 he stroked against New Zealand in the first ODI last Sunday - suggests he is on track for a significant stay at the highest level.

He will have a chance to build on that in Friday's second ODI in Port Elizabeth.

His debut innings in one-day internationals, against Sri Lanka in Colombo three years ago, lasted just five balls before he was on his way back to the dressing room courtesy of Chaminda Vaas, who trapped him in front.

Having taken guard at No 8, Duminy made a typically confident start by grabbing a single off the first delivery he faced. But the penultimate ball Vaas bowled to him, a wide, seemed to unsettle the novice and set him up for the experienced left-armer's deadly strike.

So it went for much of the early stages of the youngster's international career. The odd bling innings, like his 70-ball 60 against Zimbabwe in Bloemfontein last year, struggled to shine through a fog of lesser efforts.

Away from the Proteas, Duminy grew in stature. He had announced himself the year before his ODI debut when he walked to the crease in the shadow of Worcester's cathedral with the South African under-19 team on 54/2 in their follow-on, still more than 200 runs from making their England counterparts bat again. He batted for more than four hours for his 116 to help save the match.

In the South African season that followed, the left-hander scored two centuries and three half-centuries for a first-class average of 72.57. To date Duminy has played 40 first-class matches in which he has converted seven of his half-centuries into hundreds and compiled a handsome average of 49.94.

Along the way he has proved himself a useful off-spin option, and he is a predatory presence in the field. His running between the wickets has occasionally suffered from his misconception that all of his partners are as lithe and speedy as he undoubtedly is, but there are remedies for that.

Before this season, Duminy has never quite convinced that he belonged at the highest level. Hylton Ackerman, the darling of Newlands in summers long gone, thinks he knows why.

"He's a very talented young player, he looks the part, and I'd like to see him in the Test side and not just in the one-day set-up," Ackerman says. "But in the last two years at the Cobras he hasn't been able to play alongside a senior player. He has had to be the senior player, and that is unfair to him."

Despite this (or perhaps because of it), Duminy would seem to have made a great leap forward in recent innings.

He was forced to wait until the fourth match of last month's one-day series in Pakistan for his chance, and then he sat and watched from the dressing room as South Africa wrapped up a seven-wicket win without his help with the bat.

But Duminy loomed large in the climactic fifth match, which the Proteas won by 14 runs to clinch the rubber. He scored an important 44 and shared a stand of 75 with Jacques Kallis, claimed the vital wicket of Mohammad Yousuf and took a remarkable catch to remove Misbah-ul-Haq.

His next international appearance was the Twenty20 game against New Zealand in Johannesburg last Friday, when his 33 was instrumental in the home side's win, followed by the 46 in Durban.

The Capetonian's numbers for the season so far make encouraging reading. But it's the way he has gone about achieving them that has made the greater impression.

The class and elegance he has shown at franchise level has percolated through to the big time, and there is a calm assurance in his game that does not often bestow itself on those so young.

Talent, temperament and technique: in a few years, Duminy might have crossed all of those Ts.