Dane Vilas ready for a starring role

The closest Dane Vilas thought he would get to international cricket was when he was Allan Donald.

Seven years ago Vilas was a dedicated provincial player, adequate but not exceptional, captaining the Lions franchise's academy side in Potchefstroom, a student town 120 kilometres south-west of Johannesburg, which was also home to the Lions bowling coach Gordon Parsons and his wife, Hester, the sister of Hansie Cronje.

When Hester's brother Frans, who was making a movie on Hansie's life, told his family that he was struggling to find extras who were both athletic and articulate to play the role of some of Cronje's team-mates, she suggested Vilas' name.

Vilas' height (six feet), his hair colour (a blond that's not quite bleached) and his angular face reminded Frans of Donald, so though Donald was four inches taller, with a little less hair and a harder expression, Vilas was cast as him. That Vilas was an English-speaking wicketkeeper-batsman and Donald an Afrikaans-speaking bowler whose English was almost exclusively learnt in Birmingham made no difference. Welcome to the movies.

These days wicketkeepers tend to be batsmen who can't bowl. Standing behind the stumps is a "second skill", according to coach Ray Jennings, because most teams cannot afford to have a place reserved for a gloveman whose main strength is safe hands.

"If we are honest about it, wicketkeeping around the world has become worse in skills terms, because keepers are relying on their ability as batsmen to make it into teams," Jennings said. "There isn't an understanding that if you keep badly you will be dropped on that alone - as long as you can bat as well."

That means sometimes the best wicketkeeper may not make it into a team but the best wicketkeeper-batsman will.

In October 1997, Nic Pothas was widely regarded as the best keeper in the country. He was Transvaal's first choice, had played 41 first-class matches and scored 1849 runs at 33.01. Mark Boucher, three years younger, was a rising star who had been with South Africa's Under-19 team but had played only 14 first-class matches, in which he had scored 689 runs at 38.27.

Boucher was much less experienced but his potential loomed large, and his bullish batting was partly the reason why he was picked ahead of Pothas to replace an injured Dave Richardson in a Test in Pakistan.

For the next decade and a half, apart from three Tests in 2004, Boucher was South Africa's Test keeper and there was no obvious competition. Despite scoring a century against West Indies A a month after Boucher's debut, Pothas played for the national side only as his injury replacement, and his career eventually took him to the county circuit.

Morne van Wyk should have been Boucher's challenger - he had a batting average over 40 for four seasons and over 50 for two - but never got a look in. Instead, Thami Tsolekile replaced Boucher briefly but then fell off the radar and emerged again only as Boucher's career reached its twilight. There were no other candidates to keep wicket, perhaps because no one wanted to be a wicketkeeper in a system where they did not stand a chance.

"The same thing happened with bowling, when South Africa would insist on an attack with four seamers and no spinner, and then found we had not developed spinners," Jennings said. "We have to stimulate every side of the game so that players in every discipline can feel they have a chance and there will be opportunity."

Vilas started playing cricket in 1994, when he was nine years old. What set him apart then was that he had better equipment than any of his peers.

His mother, Anne, is the managing director of Opal Sports, the South African agency for Gunn & Moore. "Dane may actually be the South African Gunn & Moore have sponsored the longest," Anne joked.

Anne, whose brother was a wicketkeeper for SA Schools, was "always keen" that her three sons play sport, so she sent them to King Edward VII school (KES), the alma mater of Ali Bacher and Jimmy Cook. "I thought that even if they only make the B team, they would be pretty good."

Of the three boys, Dane was the most successful. He was a regular in the school teams, where he performed well, but it was not immediately clear that sport could be a career option for him. He was picked for a provincial side only once while in school, when he played for the Gauteng U-13 B team, and Anne accepted that while Vilas would be a decent school sportsman, it would possibly be difficult for him to progress beyond that. "It's not often that if you are not in the provincial system through the age groups that you will go further."

After school, Vilas played at Old Eds, the KES old boys' club, while working as a sales assistant for his mother. He was also occasionally involved with the provincial side. He was on the fringes of the franchise team and captained the academy, but by the time he featured in the Cronje movie, Vilas seemed to have reached a glass ceiling, although he appeared to want to break through.

Jennings, who was on the domestic coaching scene at the time, remembered Vilas as a committed cricketer, "a fanatic, a very hard worker, who would be in the nets until the sweat ran off him".

At the start of the 2010-11 season, Cobras were looking for a keeper and thought Vilas would fit their requirements. It would mean moving to Cape Town, which Anne said was "difficult for the family but good for Dane". Nobody really thought the move could open doors to the national side.

Vilas was solid behind the stumps and with the bat he averaged 48 in 2011-12 and above 30 every season since then, but more importantly he was building a career as a professional cricketer. "He really loves the game, which is important when you are one of those players who may not make it," Anne said.

By the time Boucher announced his intention to retire in mid-2012, a replacement had been lined up. Tsolekile was nationally contracted, had travelled as the reserve keeper, and he claimed he was promised he would get to take over from Boucher in the home series against New Zealand and Pakistan in 2012-13. But when an eye injury forced Boucher to quit earlier than planned, AB de Villiers was given the gloves as the emergency replacement.

At that point, wicketkeepers on the domestic scene would have been forgiven for giving up. The national selectors made it clear that they were not casting the net wide, primarily because with de Villiers keeping they could play an extra batsman.

Then de Villiers' back started to give way. His value as batsman, fielder and captain was being compromised by the burden of keeping wicket, but by then Quinton de Kock had emerged to take his place behind the stumps. Carefree but calculating, aggressive but artful, at 19, de Kock had already played for South Africa, been dropped and re-selected by the time he was needed to take the load off de Villiers.

And as he broke batting records - de Kock was only the fifth batsman in history to score three ODI centuries in succession - other keepers in the country lost hope.

Vilas had been picked for a solitary T20,against India in March 2012. "He'd been playing for a couple of years for the Cobras and we thought it was not impossible that he might get picked for South Africa," Anne said. "But after that T20, I thought that was it."

Vilas did not bat in the match and he was only required in the field for 7.5 overs before rain stopped play. Rain was to play a major role in his next South African debut as well.

After the 2015 World Cup, South African cricket structures shifted dramatically, underlined by a stronger commitment to transformation. In the aftermath of the World Cup exit, Cricket South Africa announced increased quotas at franchise level, and eventually, following a protracted controversy surrounding Vernon Philander's selection for the semi-final against New Zealand, explained how the system applied to the national teams as well.

The commitment to change was obvious from the squads selected to tour Bangladesh, particularly in terms of the number of black African players. Against that backdrop, Vilas was a surprise inclusion. He was travelling as a reserve, much like Aaron Phangiso, and with the focus on providing more opportunities to players of colour, Vilas was probably lucky to be included at the expense of Tsolekile or even Rudi Second.

Vilas was "shocked" by the call-up, and even more shocked when, two days before the game, he realised he would be making his Test debut. De Kock was struggling with his form since his comeback from an ankle injury, and with de Villiers out of the tour due to paternity leave, there was no one else but Vilas, who had also become a father four months before the series.

"He just loved the experience being with the team," Anne said. "Dane likes structure and he liked the kind of structure that set-up had. And then to make his Test debut - that was just the cherry on top. He was so excited to make his Test debut and we were so proud of him. We had thought of going over when he told us he was going to play, but on short notice and with the possibility of rain, we decided not to go."

Play was possible only on the first day. The remaining four were washed out. An experience that started off as "amazing" for Vilas turned "bittersweet", especially since he didn't know whether his Test career would go the same way as his T20 one.

Immediately at the end of the Bangladesh tour, de Kock redeemed himself with a hat-trick of hundreds on South Africa A's tour of India. Vilas, also part of that squad, scored a fifty in a List A match and 75 in an unofficial Test, but he did not know if that was enough. There was uncertainty over everything, including Vilas' batting ability, but the selectors decided the only way to obtain some clarity would be to give Vilas a fair chance. He is the first-choice keeper for the upcoming tour of India.

"We don't know how good Vilas is because he hasn't had the chance to show us yet," Jennings said. "From a wicketkeeping point of view, I don't think there is much between Vilas and de Kock, but from a batting point of view, I don't know," Jennings said. "What I do know is that Dane's work ethic and skill and desire is there. Now it's about how he performs. India will be about standing up to the wicket and making sure the skills are good enough. There will also be uneven bounce and spin. After India we will have a better idea of who is in front for now."

At 30, Vilas will have fewer years to give than de Kock, who is now 22, but Jennings does not believe age will be a factor. "The best player must play, and if he is a bit older, then there needs to be a succession plan in place. It's much more important to have a strong system. Competition means there is a person pushing from the bottom and the person already there cannot get into a comfort zone and stop growing."

Vilas has never had the luxury of complacency in cricket, except when he was pretending to be Donald. Now he is a real international cricketer. Welcome to the movies.