Pain in rain for Dane

03 August 2015 - 09:41 By TELFORD VICE

Four days into his debut Test, Dane Vilas could take issue with Hashim Amla's joke before the start of the match that "if it was easy it would be called easy cricket". But so far, so easy for Vilas, who, like the other players involved in the second Test between Bangladesh and SA in Dhaka, has, except for the odd warm-up session, spent the past three days with his feet up.The hat-trick was completed yesterday when Cyclone Komen showed no signs of going, and the fourth day's play was abandoned, just like the third and second days before it.That left the match high and incongruously dry on its day one stumps score of 246-8 in Bangladesh's first innings. Of the 360 overs that should have been bowled by the end of yesterday's play, only 88.1 have been sent down.Not that others' lives have been as lightly brushed by the storm as the cricketers'.Yesterday morning, the death toll in the region approached 100. Some 700000 people had been adversely affected in India alone and another 60000 had been evacuated from the Cox's Bazaar area of Bangladesh.But Vilas, who at 30 has been waiting for his chance and earned it because of Quinton de Kock's batting blues, could be forgiven for narrowing his focus to the cricket. Or lack of it."I was very excited to get my cap and play that first day," Vilas said. "But the last couple of days have been frustrating. It's been bitter-sweet - really exciting but also disappointing because of the rain."We've spent quite a lot of time at the hotel watching movies and bonding. Obviously it's frustrating because you want to be playing cricket but the mood in the dressing room is good."De Kock, who was dropped after scraping together 100 runs in his six innings across all formats on the Bangladesh tour, has been re-assigned to SA A's tour to India - which starts on Wednesday and ends on August 28.Vilas is also in the SA A squad and is set to captain them in the two four-day matches they will play against India A.So, with New Zealand due in SA from August 14 - 26 to play SA in two T20s and three ODIs, who might be behind the stumps against the Kiwis? AB de Villiers, back from daddy duty, is the obvious answer...

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