The numbers confirm it: Markram's a T20I maestro

Sport24 chief writer

It would be ill-advised to talk of “cold statistics” ... because Aiden Markram’s are, simply, too hot.

While the talent-blessed, muscular stroke-player has had his well-documented delivery problems at various times in both the Test and one-day international environments, his lustre in the Twenty20 format has been virtually never-ending.

Not to mention palpably mounting, certainly when you scrutinise the incontrovertible numbers.

Much of the limelight in the Proteas’ camp of late has been rightly stolen by Reeza Hendricks, the previously under-scrutiny opener who has reinvented himself with extraordinary prowess.

But while Hendricks on Wednesday became the hitherto unlikely first South African - and only third frontline-nation figure alongside Chris Gayle and Brendon McCullum - to post four consecutive T20I half-centuries, Markram duly ascended to a proud landmark of his own.

In scoring a typically bruising, cleanly-struck 56 at a strike rate of 207 against Ireland at Bristol on Wednesday, the right-handed now fixture in the No 4 berth became the first Proteas player to twice register three fifties on the trot in the landscape.

The feat took him above the three to have managed that trick once: the obvious Hendricks, plus Hashim Amla and another current team-mate in Quinton de Kock.

Markram, who will turn 28 just before late October’s T20 World Cup in Australia, first did it in only his third, fourth and fifth appearances in T20 internationals: all against Pakistan on highveld turf (Centurion or Wanderers) in April 2021.

The latest three-strong volley came against England (at Sharjah, late last year, then Southampton much more recently), plus against Ireland this week.

It would be astonishing if Markram could so