Cow Corner Blog

Kallis in wonderland

Fri Jun 12 11:50AM

Jacques Kallis is the player every club cricketer would like to think they could be: solid with the bat while putting away the filth, and bowling successful medium-paced trundle despite eating like it was going out of fashion.

Kallis was as infuriatingly solid in knocking off the runs required for South Africa to coast past England's pathetic 111, as the hosts' batting was frustratingly fragile.

The allrounder is currently the top-scoring batsman in the competition, with his side looking more imperious with every game, but one man who is hot on his heels is the diminutive Sri Lankan Tillakaratne Dilshan.

If there is one thing Dilshan has taught us, it is that flailing a vertical bat in front of your face, aka 'Doing the Dilshan', can be productive as often as it is painful.

The opener has become so adept at executing the squatting-periscope flick that the pull shot seems to have been rendered obsolete.

There was a time when Sir Vivian Richards would swivel nonchalantly on one leg and swat the ball through midwicket, and that was considered audacious. Such a shot is now considered to be merely a drab application of the coaching manual.

Adam Gilchrist optimistically claims to have invented the reverse-flick over the wicketkeeper's head, but again that is as outdated as running your bat in for a brisk single, as Regan West will testify ruefully after Ireland's loss to India.

When the portly West neglected to ground his bat while walking back to his crease, he looked aghast to see the bails swiftly whipped off by MS Dhoni, before trudging away in the manner of someone missing a bus then pretending they did not care for it anyway.

There seems to be no end to the repertoire of reverse-flick-paddle-switch-hoik-flip-slog varieties available to a batsman in Twenty20 cricket, and the trend seeks to polarise the two types of batsman: the innovator and Luke Wright.

The Sussex allrounder certainly has a fantastic eye, but he seems to have all the tact and circumspection of a fired-up Devon Malcolm, with even less guile.

Barely had the cackling of derision abated from English quarters over Australia's premature exit, before Paul Collingwood's side made their best attempt to join them.

England were proud as mustard to seal their place in the Super Eights with a record of won one, lost one, and almost to mock the tournament organisers, proceeded to lose a second match while bizarrely staying firmly in contention.

While batting with proverbial blinkers on, England - as with Australia - seem to be contriving to give themselves the utmost preparation time for the Ashes. And who can argue with that?

--- 

Cowers would love to lambast Ricky Ponting for his uncouth and frankly impertinent damning of the city of Leicester, but he is right. So on to other matters.

Australia have suffered enough ridicule following their exit from the World Twenty20, so let us examine their plight in purely factual terms.

England have long been maligned for their tendency to form a bowling attack almost entirely constituted from innocuous military-medium pacers and finger spinners, but Australia matched them in this tournament.

Where do you start? David Hussey, Shane Watson, Michael Clarke and Andrew Symonds before he took an early cruise-boat home. Even Nathan Bracken was hardly bowling express in the two games.

Meanwhile, the barrage of Ashes adverts have already begun, and with Nasser Hussain marvelling at the revolutions of a cricket ball in the manner of Kevin Pietersen watching his own highlights reels, you feel slightly underwhelmed.

Indeed, when Ian Botham muses about the game being 'brought into your living room' the intense joviality of his statement half makes you expect him to whip out a pint of claret and declare that he has a free house.

--- 

SHOT OF THE DAY: Collingwood whipped a rabbit out from underneath his helmet in the form of a new shot: the glove-punch down the leg side. The England captain decided that using the bat was overrated, and instead proceeded to thump the ball down to the vacant fine-leg boundary with his hand. A cursory look down at his willow for an imaginary cherry ensured that umpire Steve Davis did not assume that no conventional shot had been intended.

STAT OF THE DAY: Never has a team lost their opening match of a tournament to the Netherlands, won their second against Pakistan, then lost their third against South Africa, and still gone on to win a World Twenty20 tournament. But as Geoffrey Boycott once said: "Stats are there to be defied."

USER COMMENT OF THE DAY: "New Zealand opening batsman Ryder hospitalised due to a persistent groin and abdominal injury? What a big Jesse!" shujaahmad2004

• Email
• Share:
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Stumbleupon
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine