Carefully Kallis

Just before he resigned Michael Vaughan and I met over a couple of hot plates in the hotel breakfast room. I commiserated with his bowlers' frustrations in trying to bowl out South Africa. "The trouble with them is, they just bat," he replied. His implication was that they never tried to be adventurous and he was right.

As a phrase it lacks the power of "We'll fight 'em on the beaches" or the old boxing complaint "We should have stood in bed" but it stuck with me so that as Jacques Kallis dot-balled his way to the conquest of England in the World Twenty-20 last night Vaughan's words kept swelling up in my brain.

Kallis may well be the greatest one-paced batsman of all time but no complaints. That beautiful technique, that impassive face, that safe-as-houses defence, those impeccable drives; he is the man, he is in charge, none shall pass.

I guess he is coming to the end of his career. Remember how he started as the dumbest kid on the block. His nickname used to be "Kalahari" after the southern African desert - "because there is nothing there." He is supposed to have asked Bob Woolmer, their coach, if the sea was always at sea level. My, how we laughed.

Fifteen years later we are not even giggling when he comes - a pound or two overweight admittedly - to the crease. Did the soldiers at Dunkirk laugh at the Panzars? Of course not.

Kallis is the lynch pin of a side filled with cricketers, athletes and thinkers who disposed of England, not the worst side in this tournament, as if they were a bunch of over-ambitious schoolboys trying to take on the adult Old Boys.

Graeme Smith is the most authorative captain around, especially since Vaughan and Stephen Fleming quit, AB De Villiers is most destructive batsman day-in, day-out (a previso made necessary, by the life force that is sometimes Chris Gayle), Stein is the leanest and fastest over by over, and for this event they have found spin bowlers of quality.

But their rock, rolling out the runs on schedule, is Kallis - "just batting."