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In an era of fast scoring and high-octane entertainment, Jacques Kallis is a throwback — and an astonishingly effective one at that — to Test cricket’s more sedate age, when one’s wicket was a commodity to be guarded with one’s life, and runs were but an accidental by-product of crease occupation.

After a distinctly ordinary start to his Test career, Kallis blossomed into arguably the world’s leading batsman, with a defensive technique second-to-none, and the adhesive qualities of a Cape Point limpet.

Generally a placid and undemonstrative man, he nailed down the crucial No. 3 position in the South African batting order after a number of players had been tried and discarded, and his stock rose exponentially from that moment.

In 2005, he was honoured as the ICC’s Test and overall Player of the Year, after a run of performances against West Indies and England that marked him out as the biggest scalp in the modern game.

His batting is not for the romantic — a Kallis century tends to be a soulless affair, with ruthless efficiency taking precedence over derring-do, and he has never quite dispelled the notion that he is a selfish cricketer, with more interest in his average than his team’s position. But he is by some distance the leading all-rounder in the world game, capable of swinging the ball sharply at surprising pace off a relaxed run-up.

He is a strong man with powerful shoulders and a deep chest and he has the capacity to play a wide array of attacking strokes, if not always the inclination. To add to all this, he is a fine slip fielder.

Source:The News