Amla made the right call, now South Africa will struggle: Graeme Pollock

Former South Africa batting great Graeme Pollock reckons Hashim Amla made the right call when he decided to call it quits from all forms of international cricket on August 8 (Thursday).

Amla joins pace ace Dale Steyn and former captain AB de Villiers in the list of recently-retired Proteas stars that Pollock feels has left a deep void in the squad. "South Africa cricket will appear pretty mediocre without them," Pollock told MID-DAY on Saturday.

"SA have lost a lot of quality players over the years and I think they are going to struggle for the next few years to fill the gaps caused by the exits of those players," the 75-year-old, who played 23 Tests, explained.

Pollock also feels Amla made the right decision to quit. "Look, he was not getting the amount of runs he would've liked to have got towards the end of his career. I'm glad he played the World Cup and I would have loved to see AB playing there as well," he said.

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Amla could manage only 203 runs in seven ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 games. "It's a hard decision to make but it gets very hard [with age] especially the first 20 minutes at the crease. I can understand his decision. He made the right call."

He may have played just 23 Test, but Pollock had the best Test averages in the game 60.97 in 23 Tests in which he scored 2256 runs. "Hashim had a wonderful career. He was one of the best and did a helluva lot of good for South African cricket. He made runs in all forms of the game, remember. He's made a big contribution and his exit is a tremendous loss," he said.

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Pollock lavished praise for one of the greatest batsmen from South Africa, who also went on to become one of the leading run-scorers for his country.

"When I saw him for the first time, he was very much a leg-side player. They said he was a bit 'flicky'. He was a dominant leg-side player, used to play across the line a lot which resulted in leg before wicket dismissals. Someone had a word with him and he then started playing straighter. That made a huge difference," said Pollock.