How much is Kallis worth to SA?

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

If Hashim Amla, David Miler, JP Duminy and AB de Villiers each score a half-century in the course of five one-day internationals, and three of them get to within 15 runs of a century, SA should win more of those games than they lose, right? Wrong.

That is exactly what happened in Sri Lanka last July - and SA were thumped 4-1 in the series. At least part of the reason for that bit of skewed logic is that Jacques Kallis was not in the squad. Happily for SA, then, he is back in the mix for the ODI series that starts in Colombo on Sunday.

But last year’s problem may not be so simply solved. Kallis is the only new face among the frontline batsman in this group while Farhaan Behardien, Colin Ingram and Alviro Petersen have all been axed.

The decent batting ability of other additions to the squad - Beuran Hendricks, Wayne Parnell, Vernon Philander and Dale Steyn - will take up some of whatever slack might be evident.

However, will SA rue leaving out three specialist batsmen, and could even a player of Kallis’ peerlessness make a big enough difference for them to win the rubber this time? Is Kallis’ worth greater than the sum of the parts of Behardien, Ingram and Petersen?

An answer to those questions is that, between them, the three dropped players scraped together only 64 runs in seven innings in Sri Lanka last year.

But another is that Kallis himself averaged a distinctly unKallis 25.16 in this year’s Indian Premier League, in which he batted just seven times. Yes, the format is different. No, the conditions are not. And Duminy, Miller and De Villiers all had significantly busier and better tournaments than Kallis.

Former SA allrounder Justin Kemp acknowledged that “Jacques does add up to a lot” but he was also satisfied that coach Russell Domingo “seems pretty settled in his ODI outlook”.

Needed now, Kemp said, was the consistency of selection and approach that SA have veered from too often in recent ODI campaigns.

“It’s a case of the guys gelling together as a unit and understanding where they are at,” he said. “If the selectors believe this is the best bunch of players for the World Cup then they need to stick with them.

“I don’t think much is going to change before the tournament unless someone shoots the lights out during our summer.”

The inclusion of Steyn, Hendricks, Philander and, of course, Kallis, will spike SA’s bowling punch. But one-day cricket remains more about batting than it is about bowling. And whether SA have put enough tigers in their batting tank this time cannot be known at least until after the second of the three matches on Wednesday.

By then, they will have a good idea of whether their bowlers have to do more than their fair share - with both bat and ball.

If not, all good. But even if the division of labour is not shared equally, there is time and opportunity to tinker before the World Cup.