Eighteen years in the relentless grind of international sport is a
long journey by anyone’s standards. Yet few cricketers truly epitomize
the powerhouse tag better than Jacques Kallis, arguably one of the
world’s greatest all rounders of all time and certainly the greatest
amongst his contemporaries spanning across the last couple of decades.
It only naturally follows that an undeniable twinge of sadness hangs
heavy in the air, not to mention the slightest hint of apprehension,
with Kallis’ retirement truly marking the end of an era.
Those feelings find resonance amongst aficionados for whom
contemplating cricket and life itself without their favourite iconic
players is next to impossible. If fans have found familiarity in a
player who has remained at the top of his game for the better part of
two decades, it has to be attributed to the degree of his commitment and
passion to the sport and to the level of fitness demanded at the
highest level. Jacques Kallis is one of those rare giants of the game
that will leave a huge void as South Africa rebuild their cricket
without the familiar sturdy colossus casting his protective shadow over
their interests.
Pomp and pageantry are not for him. That would explain why while many
a player of his time hung around longer than able if only for a
swansong, Kallis has, in his unassuming style, chosen to bow out without
fanfare. There was a sense of shock and at the same time, inevitability
when Jacques Kallis announced that he was hanging up his boots in all
formats of the game – he had retired from international Test cricket
over six months ago. The shock was palpable given that South Africa were
slated to lose one giant per World Cup with the 2015 edition in
Australia-New Zealand expected to mark Jacques Kallis’ farewell from
international cricket. Yet Kallis’ decision to retire came six months
too soon after a rather sedate single digit showing in the three one day
internationals on South Africa’s otherwise successful tour of Sri
Lanka.
Some would have attributed Kallis’ ambition for one final World Cup
showdown to downright greed that is sometimes the bane of legends past
their prime. However, to Kallis, the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015
represented one final lung burst of an opportunity to make amends for
the national’s passionate sporting interests that have been hurt sorely
by South Africa’s chequered history at the Cricket World Cup. After
all, Kallis was the Man of the Match for his five-for with the ball in
the only ICC tournament that South Africa have won – the Wills
International Cup in 1998 that later went by the name of the ICC
Champions Trophy. With South Africa having been stuck rather too
conveniently and often harshly and unfairly with the ‘chokers’ tag,
given Kallis’ ambitions for the team, it seemed only natural that he
would have wanted to bring all the wealth of his experience and skill
sets towards South Africa setting the record straight once and for all.
However, even legends have to sometimes come to grips with the
inevitability of reality that the gap between desire and execution may
be a chasm too wide to bridge. That is precisely what Kallis seemed to
have come face to face with in the mirror upon returning from the tour
of Sri Lanka where South Africa won the one day internationals series in
the Emerald Isles for the first time since the post apartheid era in
1991. And the team did it without a characteristic worthy and weighty
performance from the humble all rounder. In Kallis’ case, true to his
selfless nature, he did not need the shove of the selectors to tell him
it was perhaps his time to go. To be fair, left to themselves, the South
African selectors may not have had the courage to make such a huge game
changing decision on Kallis’ time knowing the World Cup was round the
corner. However, Kallis wanted to win his place in the team for the
World Cup on merit, and not solely on the reputation he painfully, and
sometimes at the expense of his own personal turmoil, built over two
decades.
Only a player true to his game and bold enough in his decision making
could have made the tough call that Kallis did, so close to the World
Cup. Some would have thought to ride the rough waves in the hope of a
fitting farewell for diligent service rendered. But Kallis knew better
than to bide time and hold South Africa back. Arguably the toughest
decision that even the greatest of players must make before it is forced
down their throat like bitter medicine, Kallis was magnanimous enough
to realize that it was time to make room for fresher legs and more
importantly, a fresher, hungrier mind. On calling it a day, Kallis
expressed rather candidly, “I realized in Sri Lanka that my dream of
playing in a World Cup was a bridge too far. Ï just knew on that tour
that I was done. The squad that was in Sri Lanka is an amazing one and I
believe they have a good chance of bringing the trophy home in March.”
Kallis’ thoughts are not entirely misplaced. He was at first hand to
experience that South Africa does have the potential talent to go the
distance – that really never was South Africa’s problem to be honest.
While Kallis remained the only South African batsman to score a century
in Sri Lanka in sixteen matches since 2004, on this tour alone, four
centuries were scored between wicketkeeper-cum-opener, Quinton de Kock,
South Africa’s ODI captain, AB de Villiers, and South Africa’s Test
captain, Hashim Amla, who scored two centuries in a format that many had
rather erroneously ascribed as being beyond the classically styled
batsman. Besides, South Africa have a world class bowler in Dale Steyn
and well backed up by the likes of Morne Morkel, Ryan McLaren and Vernon
Philander although it has to be said in the same breath that South
Africa have not quite unearthed an all rounder of the same caliber or
mould as Kallis which is not unexpected given Kallis’ majestic yet rare
stature in world cricket.
If numbers alone could separate the genius from the mediocre, Kallis
would not find rush hour traffic-like competition. That he remains one
of the most underrated cricketers of his time was evident in the fact
that while Kallis was caught in a three horse race that involved India’s
Sachin Tendulkar and Australia’s Ricky Ponting for the top billing as
Test cricket’s highest run getter, he was often the forgotten third act.
That Kallis finished third, falling short by only eighty-nine runs to
Ponting’s 13,378 runs, boasting an average superior to both his
contemporaries at 55.37 and having four centuries more than Ponting’s
forty-one hundreds puts Kallis on a pedestal only a few can even aspire
for.
When Kallis ended his Test career following the home series against
India, it greatly impacted a fellow statesman and his captain, Graeme
Smith. It was not long thereafter that the South African skipper called
time on his own Test career at the end of the home Test series against
Australia. And in one of those candid moments, Smith spoke about how
Kallis’ retirement has had a telling impact on him towards factoring his
own retirement decision. If fast bowlers hunt in pairs, perhaps there
is something to be said of the fact that for Smith, Kallis may have
seemed to have hung around since time immemorial, having begun his
international career as a twenty-year old in 1995 while Smith’s own
career got underway following the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2003 at
twenty-three years of age.
That Kallis’ retirement from the one day internationals is a huge
loss despite his lack of runs was evident in the effusive tribute that
the current South African Test captain, Hashim Amla, paid to the genuine
all rounder. Amla spoke about Kallis’ presence that had greatly
influenced men of his generation and that he would leave a void in the
dressing room, “Jacques was a one in 50 years cricketer who had a huge
influence on so many Proteas players over a twenty year period. I was
privileged to have been one of those. You appreciate the magnitude of
the cricketer not only when you look at his record but also when you
play alongside him.”
Numbers only further emphasize Amla’s point. Kallis retires from the
game after having played 328 matches with 11,579 one day international
runs that include seventeen centuries and a phenomenal average of
44.36, only a shade shy of Tendulkar’s one day internationals average of
44.83. Kallis ends his career as the seventh highest run getter in the
fifty overs format and only the third non-Asian cricketer in the top
ten, sandwiched between Ponting in second spot and West Indies’ Brian
Lara on the tenth rung.
But what differentiates Kallis from the likes of Tendulkar and
Ponting is that while both men turned their arm over, one more than the
other, Kallis was considered amongst the truly genuine all rounders the
game has ever seen. Robust numbers back that perception including the
fact that he is third on the list for winning the most number of Man of
the Match awards at thirty-two. With 200 catches in Test matches and 131
catches in one day internationals, Kallis established himself as a
permanent member of the safest slip cordon. His forty-five Test
centuries make his the highest for South Africa, Smith coming in a
distant second with twenty-seven with Amla catching up with twenty-two
centuries to his name. His 292 Test wickets and 283 one day
internationals wickets only further evidence the fact that Kallis was
one of South Africa’s frontline blustery bowlers on whom the South
African skipper relied consistently on to form the crux of the team’s
bowling arsenal. He is one of four all rounders and the only non-Asian
besides Sanath Jayasuriya, Abdul Razzaq and Shahid Afridi to have to his
credit over 5000 runs and 200 wickets which says something not only
about the dearth of great all rounders but also, of the rare gem of an
asset that Kallis has been to South Africa’s cause.
But Kallis did more than just make up the numbers. One of the truly
enigmatic personalities of the sport, Kallis carried a Zen-like aura
about him that defied the colossus of a team mate that he was in the
dressing room, an opponent who commanded respect and a true icon of the
game in every sense of the word. His character as a grounded, safe,
stable, gentle giant of the game was in sharp contrast to the
competitive streak with which he approached his game. Although never one
with a visible aggressive streak, an ability he learnt well to
camouflage under an unfazed exterior rather early in his career more as a
necessity in a team context when South Africa needed an anchor rather
than a swashbuckling hero, Kallis was a stealth weapon who sneaked up on
the opposition with a game changing, match-winning performance to
evince awe and respect.
One of the truly reticent gentlemen on and off the game, Jacques
Kallis came to represent a certain sense of solidity about a team that
carried a touch of vulnerability and fragility about them despite having
one of the most mentally formidable captains in Kepler Wessels leading
them upon their return to international cricket over three decades ago.
Kallis reminded many of Brian McMillan in the same likeness of both,
being a broad shouldered gentleman with a safe pair of hands in the slip
and an all rounder. And yet like much of South Africa from the initial
days, Kallis was a vastly improved, improvised and impervious version of
the all rounder who represented South Africa in the limited
opportunities that was accorded to South African cricketers late in
their careers at the time.
Kallis often gave off the impression that he couldn’t care less what
the bowler had in mind, often seeming to appear millions of miles away
while at the crease. His meditative nonchalant stance was perhaps
amongst the most deceptive as Kallis soon developed a reputation for
being one of the most difficult men to dislodge while at the crease. His
batting may not have been as flamboyant or extravagant as some of his
counterparts or even some of the other hailed all rounders of yore, but
that by no means meant that Kallis’ style of batting was unattractive.
If anything, Kallis’ classic cover drives spelt magnificence, his
picture perfect follow through arrested in flawless perfection and yet
his return to his nonchalant poise at the crease seemed not to allude to
the majestic shot that preceded it.
It was hard to fault Kallis for much while he was at the crease,
except perhaps for sometimes giving off the impression that he was more
content occupying the crease than letting the scoreboard rattle. Yet
numbers reveal nothing could be further from the truth. Kallis was one
of those few players in international cricket who perfected the sublime
art of pacing an innings, keeping his poise, playing into his role with
deceptive sedateness before powering through to another applause winning
knock that put South Africa on top and in command. Never one to show
emotion, even when life handed him some toughs family wise, the only
time Kallis’ emotions became more evident in the public eye when fellow
South African cricketer and personal friend, Mark Boucher, suffered loss
of vision in one eye while keeping eye on the foreign tour of England
in 2012 when Kallis tussled between his on field duties and off field
hospital visits. He even dedicated his century in the Test at the Oval
to his friend of many years.
With the ball, Kallis was equally deceptive and blustery in pace.
Injuries may have got the better of his bowling career towards the end
of his career but not of his prowess. His ability can be verified in
numbers, providing South Africa another frontline bowler who gave the
skipper the option to add depth to the line up. And yet in a team that
prided itself on more than one all rounder, there was never any doubt
that Kallis epitomized the perfect example of the traditional cricket
all rounder, one of the few genuine ones that cricket would look upon
with both, pride and envy.
Kallis’ retirement renders the air with nostalgia because he played
the finest brand of cricket, classic and yet blended beautifully to meet
the demands of the modern game. In Kallis, South Africa fashioned a
great many ambitions. While others may have walked away with accolades
on the day for a job well done, Kallis was the silent strength behind
the team, the wind beneath the wings, the sturdy foundation below the
magnificent architecture. The pillars may not always be bold or
ostentatious; they need not be. They reflect the rarest brilliance
because they hold up the structure without drawing attention to
themselves. Kallis was content being the grit behind the glory, the
gumption of the story than the glamour of the show. Never the gambler,
always the giver, Kallis showed that the sublime could deliver just as
effectively as the flamboyant, perhaps more deceptively so. Kallis has
been worth his weight in gold.
Source-
https://www.crictoday.com/