{"id":51144,"date":"2017-01-13T02:15:42","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T02:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=51144"},"modified":"2017-01-13T02:15:42","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T02:15:42","slug":"race-identity-and-the-making-of-hashim-amla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=51144","title":{"rendered":"Race, Identity and the Making of Hashim Amla"},"content":{"rendered":"

Race, Identity and the Making of Hashim Amla<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Africa Is A Country<\/a>
\n2013-07-20<\/p>\n

Niren Tolsi<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Hashim Amla<\/a> has arrived. His back-lift to gully now appears the sort of lazy flourish that bored twelve-year-olds develop because they are staggeringly superior to their opposition, rather than the defect that presumed he wouldn\u2019t cut it at international level early on in his career.\u00a0That twirl of a back-lift is now brought down to defend, flick, drive and reduce Test<\/a> bowlers into looking like schoolboys.\u00a0He is silky and elegant in a manner that compelled Richie Benaud<\/a>, the former Australian captain\u2013and one of the most knowledgeable, and least myopic, of that country\u2019s commentators\u2013-to describe him as \u201can artist in a team of artisans\u201d during a solid first tour Down Under in 2008.<\/p>\n

At the time of writing (after the Wanderers Test match against Pakistan<\/a> in early February) he was the International Cricket Council\u2019s world number one ranked Test batsman. En-route to overtaking Australian captain Michael Clarke<\/a> to assume that apex he had struck an unbeaten 311 against England at The Oval<\/a>\u2013becoming the first South African to score a triple-ton and the 22nd\u00a0person in the history of Test cricket<\/a> to do so.<\/p>\n

His batting is eye-catching. As is the shaggy square beard that marks him out as a devout Muslim in a team that has traditionally traded on what Jesus would do, Castle Lager<\/a>, jock-of-the-establishment-school-tie posturing and a gritty approach to the game that melded the conservative, dour and tragic elements that reside inside the Afrikaner and the Rooi-neck.\u00a0If Jacques Kallis<\/a>, the darling of the South African (white) cricketing media corps, represents the establishment with his hair implants, demeanor as wooden as his \u201cbig bat\u201d and tweets calling for the return of the death penalty<\/a>, then Amla, all leg-side flicks as luxurious as his beard, imperious punches off the back-foot and mere physical manifestation represents its anathema\u2013almost.\u00a0In the chaotic, overlapping and contradictory world of South African identity politics even that would be too reductionist. Too simple…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Race, Identity and the Making of Hashim Amla Africa Is A Country 2013-07-20 Niren Tolsi Hashim Amla has arrived. His back-lift to gully now appears the sort of lazy flourish that bored twelve-year-olds develop because they are staggeringly superior to their opposition, rather than the defect that presumed he wouldn\u2019t cut it at international level […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,8,520],"tags":[16443,25967,25966,25965,25964,7222],"class_list":["post-51144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-south-africa","tag-africa-is-a-country","tag-cricket","tag-hashim-amla","tag-hashim-mahomed-amla","tag-niren-tolsi","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51145,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51144\/revisions\/51145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}