England v South Africa, NatWest Series, Match Five, Old Trafford

Jacques Kallis: a serene innings

One of the greatest mysteries of the recent World Cup, along with the devastating losses of form of Mahela Jayawardene and Inzamam-ul-Haq, was the utter anonymity of Jacques Kallis. In front of his home fans and at the peak of his career, it was inconceivable that Kallis would finish the tournament with a paltry 63 runs at 15.75, and that he would fail to take a single wicket until that fateful evening against Sri Lanka at Newlands - by which stage, of course, it was all too late.

Amid all the upheaval that followed - Shaun Pollock's sacking and Graeme Smith's careless choices of words - Kallis slipped quietly into the background. He pulled out of the subsequent tour to Bangladesh (a most unKallis-like decision, given the cheap runs on offer) and at the age of 27, there were more than a few rumours flying around that he had lost his appetite for the daily grind of international cricket.

What we now know, of course, puts everything into perspective. Kallis's father, Henry, has been diagnosed with lung cancer. His uncle, Denge, was claimed by the disease on the very day that South Africa flew into the country. And Kallis's batting in this series has been at once moving and immoveable.

England simply had no response to his iron will, and not even the vagaries of the Manchester floodlights could unsettle him. His form this series has been so effortless, he has not once felt the need to hurry - today's half-century came off 73 balls, but that was his quickest effort so far. On 68, he passed 300 runs for the series, and had it not been for Andrew Hall's appearance at No. 3, Kallis would surely have been celebrating his third one-day century in consecutive innings - a feat last achieved by his team-mate Herschelle Gibbs.

Hall, a bullying striker of the ball, played a hit-and-mostly-miss innings that underlined the serenity of Kallis's approach. Hall's 29 from 39 balls came at a comfortably slower strike-rate than Kallis's 82 from 105, and involved more risks than Kallis has taken all series. Instead, it was the more prosaic Jacques Rudolph who flourished in the conditions.

Rudolph's second half-century in ODIs was a compact affair, the likes of which only Anthony McGrath and Marcus Trescothick had been able to produce earlier in the day. Quite simply, England's middle-order once again failed to make enough runs, a problem compounded by Michael Vaughan's continued struggle for form. Although his failure today is forgivable, as Shaun Pollock had slipped a gear or three and found the perfect range and the most immaculate legcutter.

Smith, South Africa's captain, may have run-worries of his own, but with Pollock and Kallis coming to form at precisely the right time, the gradient of his learning curve has been reduced by a degree or ten. South Africa have earned their pre-eminence in the NatWest Series, and they are now playing with a solidity that augurs well for the Test series as well.

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