South Africa

Jacques Kallis is fitter than he looks

Jacques Kallis bowled a ball at about 90mph today. Generally speaking, he was bowling faster than Philander, Steyn and Morkel.

Despite looking more like a rugby player, Kallis has always been pretty slippery when the mood’s taken him. It’s astonishing that he can still do this when he’s 36-years-old. Few can do it at all at that age, let alone those who’ve played 400-and-odd international matches.

The average quick bowler covers about 15 miles a day during a Test match. Even the wicketkeeper averages about 10. Kallis doesn’t clock too many overs, but he does bat a bit. In fact, wait a minute – didn’t he hit 224 earlier in this match?

Maybe his new hair is impregnated with nandrolone. You thought it was vanity that led to his new mane, but it was actually a desire for an intrafollicular supply of anabolic steroids.

Vernon Philander takes wickets for fun

Other than Angus Fraser, few bowlers have appeared to do it as penance.

Many people’s definition of an all-rounder is that they should average more with the bat than they do with the ball. Vernon Philander isn’t a million miles away from that and his batting average is only 7.75.

His bowling average is 12.82 at the time of writing. Being as the website’s barely working at the minute, that figure will be totally wrong by the time you read this, but still, you get what we’re saying.

If you don’t get what we’re saying, we’re saying that Vernon Philander has a very low bowling average.

A few Tests away from home will see his figures fatten up like a family that’s just moved to the United States, but for now he can feel pretty pleased with himself and South Africa can stick with their entirely unexpected plan of having Dale Steyn as a supporting act.

Making sense of Test victories and defeats

The Test world is a baffling place right now. There’s more uncertainty than when the cat finds himself equidistant from some food and an open door.

Australia are worse at home than they used to be, but India are worse away than they have been in recent times, so what does an Australian win mean?

India’s batsmen collapsed. Are they old? Are Australia’s young bowlers really good? Or did the pitch deteriorate? After all, Australia collapsed too. Then again, they often do at the minute, most notably against South Africa – although that’s hardly surprising because the Saffers have such a strong pace attack.

Or do they? Pitches there have been greener than a seasick parrot in recent times, but the bowlers haven’t outdone their opposite numbers. South Africa drew 1-1 with Australia and are currently 1-1 with Sri Lanka as well. Maybe it’s the batting that’s letting them down. Maybe it isn’t.

Sri Lanka themselves were comfortably beaten by Pakistan. Most people concluded that Sri Lanka were struggling, but maybe Pakistan are amazing.

The good news is that Sri Lanka play another Test in South Africa, while India will play three more Tests in Australia, which should help clarify some of this.

That bloody two-Test series between South Africa and Australia is where all this uncertainty came from. It raised questions and answered none. In cat terms, it added a comfy bed to the food-and-open-door situation, leaving us in a pain-faced, miaowing, triangular limbo.

The deflation of Sri Lanka

A lot of the life seems to have gone out of Sri Lanka since Murali’s retirement. On the face of it, the team’s much the same, but there’s a wrinkling and lack of solidity about them. They’re like yesterday’s balloon.

They haven’t shown much heart according to Russell Arnold. Maybe that’s because they haven’t been paid. A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Anything else saps the will a bit, no matter what other motivations you might have.

So where worse to play than South Africa, where dismissals are pleasingly frequent these days? All out for 180 isn’t even particularly shameful by current trends over there. It’s not good, but we’ve seen worse and South Africa aren’t threatening a giant lead.

When we say ‘giant lead’ we mean how many runs more than Sri Lanka they’ll score. We don’t mean an oversized leash for Will Jefferson.

A two match Test series that was a success on every level

Australian defeats, South African defeats, brilliant fast bowling, feisty batting, 47 all out and everyone feeling profoundly irritated at being massively short-changed by there only being two matches – this was the perfect Test series.

It was better than anything. It was better than turning up at a restaurant and only being allowed to have a starter. “Lamb shanks? Get out. You’ve already had four scallops, you greedy bastard.”

It was better than going to the pub at 7pm and only having time to get one round in before they inexplicably close. “Quarter past seven, mate. I’m not hanging round here to pull you pints all night. What do you think I am?”

It was better than going to a theme park and sitting on a rollercoaster on the initial steep climb only to find there is no more track and so having to get off and walk back down again.

It was better than reading the first 42 pages of a brilliant book only to find that they’ve recycled the rest of the paper to manufacture the junk mail that you threw away that morning.

It was better than being sliced open for much-needed surgery and then being totally neglected and left to bleed to death.

Great times.

When the fifth day of a Test match has the right ingredients

The fifth day of a Test can be dreadful. It can also be the best thing ever. When you get the right ingredients, it’s rich and intoxicating, like a creamy mustard sauce laced with smack.

The second (and final) Test between South Africa and Australia is set up perfectly. South Africa could win or Australia could win. Nor is a draw out of the equation and that’s a good thing. People talk about wanting a result, but a draw is a result and that extra layer of complexity is one more thing that affects the way in which play develops. The changing tones of the action are what make cricket what it is.

Then there are the subplots. The most significant is that of old man Ponting. The crease-faced munchkin is being written off because he’s not been getting into double figures of late, but the man’s always looked gash early on. He managed to get up and running yesterday and if he does so again, it’ll be fascinating to see how he does.

Follow today’s play in person, on TV, on the radio or via the internet. It will be better than whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing by some margin.

One down in a two Test series

It’s a generalisation to say that long-term cricket fans gravitate towards the longest format, but it’s not an outrageous generalisation, like saying that all left-handed people are agents of Lucifer.

We’ve twice this year had perfectly civil interaction with someone who has later revealed themselves to be sickeningly wrong-handed, but we haven’t spoken to a single person in that period who has watched cricket for a decade or more and whose favourite format is Twenty20.

Yet here we have a two-Test series between South Africa and Australia. It’s counterintuitive that the whole sport should be geared more towards the fairweather fan than the diehard, but it is understandable. Our loyalty is taken for granted and the assumption is that we will make do with other formats if that is what we are given.

Still, if we were an Australian, we’d be quite pissed off that our side had lost the chance to win a Test series in the space of one hour of hilarious batting during the first Test.

“Fourth day of a series and the best we can hope for is a draw,” we’d say. “Is this what it means to be Australian these days? Is this our lot from now on? Is this why our forefathers renounced sleeves?”

Jacques Kallis’s odd days

Every now and again, Jacques Kallis has an odd day where he suddenly starts thrashing the ball around like he’s been possessed by one of Shahid Afrid’s many personalities.

He holds the record for the fastest Test fifty off 24 balls. Yes, it was against Zimbabwe, but plenty of other people have played against Zimbabwe as well and they didn’t do that.

We’ve written before that Kallis’s reputation is somewhat unfairly etched in stone by this point in his career, but we’re a great fan of these odd days of his. We like them specifically because he has invested so much of his life into doing the exact opposite. It feels like a treat.

Today, he hit 54 off 41 balls after Australia had reduced South Africa to 43-2 on the first morning of the second (and final) Test. This included a six and a four off Nathan Lyon’s first over, which brought to mind the treatment he meted out to Bryce McGain a couple of years ago. His batting then had been calculated and vicious and we were secretly hoping for something similar today.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. Jacques will have to spend the rest of the innings in the pavilion, munching cakes and smoothing his fair locks in the mirror.

Brad Haddin’s wicket was our favourite

When they manufacture a girl band or a boy band, they often work on a simple principle: put enough reasonably attractive people in one place and it’s hard to assess the visual merits of any one individual.

When it comes to girl bands, we subconsciously take the best features of each of the talentless no-marks, blending them together to form a Frankenstein’s pop star of rare beauty who exists only in our mind. After a year of struggling to keep up with the rapid editing of their music videos in a bid to identify the good-looking one, we will eventually realise that they’re all munters. But it takes a year.

We feel similarly about today’s South Africa v Australia dismissathon. So many wickets. Can any truly stand out?

Well, yes, actually. One wicket does stand out. Brad Haddin’s. On a day when great bowling met mindless batting, this was an absolute beauty.

It’s all about context. 17 wickets have fallen in the day and your team is 18-5. What do you do? Do you amble down the pitch to a short pitched ball and try and flap it into the air on the off side for no real reason? HELL YES, YOU DO!

Imagine you’re standing atop the white cliffs of Dover. A strong wind is blowing, causing people to lose their footing. So far you’ve seen 17 people slide over the edge and if you peer over, you can make out their spattered remains on the rocks below.

Most of us would back away from the edge in that situation. Brad Haddin would take a ruddy great run-up in the belief that he could jump to France.

Australia’s lowest Test total of all time

As we write, Australia are 22-9 in 12.5 overs.

Their lowest total ever is 36 and the lowest Test total of all time is New Zealand’s 26 (both those scores were against England, incidentally).

Bizarrely, Australia are actually 210 ahead, thanks to Michael Clarke’s increasingly spectacular 151 in the first innings and South Africa’s 96 all out.

Australia could quite easily record an utterly humiliating victory in this Test match.