Du Plessis’s ODI and T20 career can comfortably be described as brilliant. He averages 47.5 in ODIs, with a strike rate of 88.6. In 50 international T20s, he averages 35.5 with a strike rate of 134. Those are imposing numbers and speak directly to the quality of Du Plessis in the shortened versions of the game.
I was asked to look at the good and the no-so-good of Du Plessis in Test cricket and to write about what I admired about the man and what irked me about him.To qualify this, the observation of ‘admiration and irking’ is specific to his Test career as a batsman. Du Plessis, in a 205-minute first innings, scored 78 from 159 balls, which meant that he spent 671 minutes at the crease.
Du Plessis was heroic in how he fought to save a Test, which takes a very different kind of strength when a batsman’s natural intent is to score runs to win a Test.With a mind as strong as Du Plessis’s and a technique tailor made to absorb the tortures and unrelenting examination of Test cricket, I thought Du Plessis would for the next decade be a dominant presence in the South African middle order.
Which is why any critique of Du Plessis as a Test batsman, has to be counter-balanced with his achievements in ODIs and T20s.