By Jacques Kallis
It was hard to believe what was happening of the first day of theTest. Wickets were falling all the time but, as always, you expect theflow to stop at some point, or at least be slowed down by apartnership. But it never happened.
Test cricket very quickly teaches you to expect the unexpected,but India's performance was a shock. I do not believe they are capableof having such a bad day again – certainly not in the third Test! Weall know what they are capable of doing and, as well as we played, weknow the competition will be a lot more fierce next week.
I still remember December 30th, 1997 as though it was last week.It was the day I scored my first Test century at the MCG in Melbourne.It was the final day of the Test match and we were batting to save thegame. Shane Warne was in his pomp and everybody, including the manhimself, expected him to run through us.
Every Test century is hard work – some harder than others, ofcourse – but if anybody had told me after that day that I would scoreanother 29 I would probably have laughed. It has been a great journeyand I cannot deny that I am extremely proud and honoured to havereached 30 centuries.
When I made my debut as a youngster we often felt inferior as ateam because we had nobody with 50+ international caps, let alone 100,and nobody averaged 40, never mind 50. We couldn't help feeling alittle bit intimidated by the records of the Indian, English andAustralian teams and sometimes we were even in awe of them.
But then Gary Kirsten reached 20 Test centuries and became thefirst man to play 100 Tests and, of course, we had the great AllanDonald who passed 300 wickets. Slowly but surely we started to createa legacy for younger players to aspire to and my 30 Test centuries isjust another piece of that history. I honestly feel that it is a SouthAfrican record rather than a Jacques Kallis record – it belongs to thecountry.
But back to the present. I see India have revised their squad forthe final Test and included five spinners. I will admit there weremore than a few smiles amongst us when we heard the news but nobodywas surprised. We were all expecting dry, dusty pitches before we evenarrived here so at least we'll get to play on one after the featherbedin Chennai and the excellent pitch in Ahmedabad.
I take no more than a passing interest in the composition of theopposing team – I leave that job to the captain and coach. But Icouldn't help thinking that, if India take a few gambles in order totry and square the series, it might mean them playing three spinnersand just one full-time seamer to share the new ball with SauravGanguly. That would be a gamble which could backfire for threereasons:
First, South Africa really isn't that bad against spin as ourrecord over the last five or six years shows!
Second, I believe thenew ball is still the best way to take wickets and, with respect toSaurav, he isn't a great threat.
And third, if the pitch is dry anduneven then Dale Steyn, Makhaya Ntini and Morne Morkel will be just asdangerous as Anil and Harbhajan. I would much rather face a spinner ona turning wicket than somebody who bowls at 150 kilometres per hour ona surface with unpredictable bounce.
Hawkeye / Chivach Sports
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