Don’t let the nickname deceive you. Jacques Kallis might just be the world’s best all- rounder, writes Kevin Mitchell
Some say he is the finest all-rounder in the world. His team-mates call him Dozy. Meanwhile, Jacques Kallis gets on with a career that has gone through good and bad times in four short seasons and threatens to blossom in front of his peers in this World Cup.
“He concentrates so hard on the task immediately at hand,” says a friend, “that he blocks everything else out. Totally. It has led to some curious moments.”
On tour in Australia, Kallis was averaging just 19 by the time South Africa got to Melbourne, a fact that Greg Blewett, fielding at short leg to Glenn McGrath’s howitzers, did not let pass without comment. “You might as well up on this bloke, Glenn,” he shouted in Kallis’s ear. “He’s useless.” Kallis said later he could not recall Blewett’s sledging. Or anything much else, for that matter. After three- and-a-half hours at the crease, however, Kallis had posted his first Test century.
Bob Woolmer, the team coach, describes this trance-like state as “the bubble”. Others are not sure how to categorise Kallis’s intensity. Captain Hansie Cronje reckons that the player has a tendency to “drift” off into his own world, ignoring instructions and quietly slaughtering the attack without reference to the scoreboard or the context of the match.
In a one-day match in Bangladesh against Sri Lanka, Kallis broke free of his automated mode for the one instance in his career that team-mates can remember. Cronje had told his batsmen “not to take any chances” against Muttiah Muralitharan and pick up runs against the other bowlers. Kallis piled into Muralitharan and the spinner’s 10 overs went for 58, while the others were left to celebrate an unusual number of maidens in their analyses.
The same batsman, against West Indies at Newlands last season, moved to a painfully slow first- innings century as his dogged determination to improve his first-class average dominated his stay at the crease. In the second innings, he had the chance of a double and Cronje pleaded with him to “get on with it”.
“I’m going to give it one more hour, Jacques,” the captain said.
“What do you mean?” Kallis replied.
“One more hour to get your hundred, Dozy!”
“Oh,” he said – and finished unbeaten on 88, as Cronje finally had to bring his team in.
But there are signs that Kallis is starting to express himself as a batsman, unfettered by the tyranny of the scorebook. He has been obsessed since he broke into the first-class game with getting his average past the magic figure of 40, the performance level that professionals regard as the benchmark for a “proper player”. Now that he has closed in on that target, he tells friends, he will feel more comfortable in playing his shots.
Shoaib Akhtar, who has jousted with Kallis, smiles knowingly when asked who might be the batsmen he finds most stubborn this summer. “Well, Jacques is a very fine player, that is obvious. He bats superbly. But it is his bowling too, that has progressed more rapidly. He is now a proper all-rounder.”
Oddly, that is not the way Kallis wants to regard himself. He retains the batsman’s instincts above all others. He is a compiler of runs, a destroyer of bowlers. If anything, he says, he is a batsman who bowls. His partner in the South African team who is his mirror image is Shaun Pollock, the bowler who bats. But Kallis’s development as a bowler over the past 18 months confounds that simple analysis, and Cronje is in no doubt as to his worth with the ball in his hand.
As the captain observed when they arrived in England: “The beauty of our team is that there are quite a few options. The opposition can never be quite sure what to expect. Effectively, we can field nine batters and seven bowlers.”
Wasim Akram was full of praise for Kallis when his players attended a reception at the Hampstead home of the Pakistan high commissioner recently. “For me, Kallis will be the player of the tournament,” the Pakistan captain said. “I think he is tremendously talented with both bat and ball. He is bowling now so much more dangerously than even a few months ago.”
Richard Pybus, the Englishman attached to the Pakistan team as assistant coach, witnessed Kallis’s development first hand when he was coaching in South Africa and regards him with some awe. “He is such a technically gifted player,” Pybus says, “and does everything so neatly at the crease.
“What I like about him as a bowler, though, is his ability to generate speed from nowhere. He is quicker now than he was when he started, so he is obviously working on his action and his technique.”
Of all the players who could turn this tournament upside down, few are capable of doing so with less fuss than Kallis. His batting is clinically brilliant – and getting better – and he bowls with quiet stealth, in and out off a tidy length at good pace.
Kallis, like all great batsmen but unlike nearly all-rounders, bats at three. So he is perfectly placed to impose himself on the game, which does wonders for his self- esteem. He has the added advantage of knowing the conditions, having given Middlesex the benefit of his burgeoning skills two seasons ago, averaging 47 and finishing 12th in the bowling averages.
Born in Cape Town 23 years ago, Kallis was always a prodigy, making substantial scores from a young age at Wynberg Boys High School, a classically correct player standing tall and striking the ball straight and hard. He moved with unchallenged inevitability through the ranks of the South African Schools team in 1993 and into the Western Province B team later that summer.
All seemed perfectly schemed as the runs came attractively and often. He became a regular in the first team the following season and then a Test player in 1995-96, making his debut against England in Durban. However, any notion that this upward curve would continue without hindrance was rudely upset when Peter Martin put him back in the pavilion for just the single digit.
Kallis would continue to struggle — his Test average had sunk to a career- threatening 7,25 after seven Tests – and there were a few who feared the youthful promise would disintegrate at the highest level. But he has rebuilt his career to the point where his current Test average is 38.
In the winter series against West Indies, he showed he was fulfilling his potential when he was made man of the series, scoring 485 runs and taking 16 wickets. In all first-class innings in South Africa last season Kallis averaged 64, and took 26 wickets at 18 apiece.
Finally, the statistics are falling into place for the man they call Dozy.