Jacques Kallis should take his omission from South Africa’s Twenty20 squad as a compliment, rather than flying into a huff, resigning as vice-captain and threatening to quit all forms of the international game.
The fact that Justin Kemp — a technical and temperamental pygmy by comparison — has been selected ahead of him merely drives home the point.
Kallis is a consummate cricketer, the greatest South African batsman of the modern era and its greatest all-rounder from any period, with the possible exception of Mike Procter. Twenty20 is less cricket than hot-dog rolls and circuses. That it is becoming the most popular form of the game is a sorry symptom of American-style dumbing-down, of the pinhead quest for cheap thrills and instant gratification.
Predictably, many white people have latched on to the decision to drop Kallis as the addled fruit of racial quotas. With Haroon Lorgat replaced by a white selection panel convener, they have a problem (although I did enjoy the Cricket South Africa website blog ”Joubert Strydom — sounds like a legal firm”).
They solve it by seeing the chair of Parliament’s sports committee, Butana Khompela, as the villainous éminence noire, the puppet master jerking the selectors’ strings.
This is racial paranoia. If skin colour is the issue, why has Kallis not been replaced in the Test and One Day International (ODI) sides? Why were administrators of all hues scrambling to change his mind this week? Is one to see Kemp’s exclusion from the Test squad as a racial plot?
Across the world it has long been recognised that different formats require different skills. The unceremonious axing of Steve Waugh — Steve Waugh — from the Australian one-day squad three years before his Test career ended was a clear statement of this fact.
A comparison of Test and one-day averages gives a rough guide to the version of the game players are best suited to. Lance Klusener, for example, averages 32 with the bat in Tests and 41 in ODIs, Kemp 13 (in four matches) and 32 respectively.
Batting is what counts here. Kallis, the seamer, has become more of a workhorse in recent years; it’s fair to say he would not command a Test spot on the strength of his bowling alone.
But his Test batting average places him in the front rank of all players who have stepped to the crease in this most exacting of formats — 55 from 182 innings, with 24 centuries.
His ODI average, 45 in 247 innings, is hardly to be sniffed at, and as his strike rate of 71 bears out, he is quite capable of educated big hitting. I particularly remember two cover drives for six — surely one of the most difficult shots in cricket — off Glenn McGrath in South Africa in a 2000 series.
But his natural bent is for technically flawless, unflappable, risk-averse crease occupation. His maiden Test century, in December 1997 in the giant cauldron at Melbourne, took six hours to amass. Steve Waugh remarked later: ”We’ve tried simply everything against this guy, but we can’t find a weakness in his game.”
The shorter the format, the more mindless — in the sense that the art of survival, long-term concentration and strategic planning matter less. By the time one reaches Twenty20, batsmen require little more than an excellent eye and a powerful pair of shoulders.
It says something that in his six Twenty20 innings to date, Kallis has managed 175 runs at an average of 35.
Kallis’s exclusion from the 15-man Twenty20 squad, which will compete in South Africa next month, no doubt has financial implications. At the relatively advanced age of 31, the lost bonuses and match fees must weigh on him.
But he gives every appearance of being piqued and personally affronted, as if his worth as a cricketer has been questioned. As a master of the Test game — the only true gauge of quality — he should know better.