Schooled By The IPL (14% and 4 In My Head Edition) - May 19-20

                                  

Old-timer on an egg-timer... Jacques Kallis (Bangalore Royal Challengers)
Maybe, in order to keep the astronomical theme going, I should've awarded him the Pluto among Planets... award, since it's about time someone demoted Kallis from his rarefied status. Instead, here's a figure:

                                                                     14%

You know what that is? That's the percentage of deliveries that Kallis left in Monday's 25-run innings. Left them. In Twenty20! The very fact that the number is non-zero alone should be damning enough, but anything in double figures is just ridiculous. (And it's not the first time.)

As it stands, the matter here is quite simple -- Jacques Kallis is not good enough to play in the IPL, or any competitive form of Twenty20 at the top level.  Sorry, he's just not. For the season, he averages 18.1, with a strike rate of 106, no centuries or fifties, and two ducks. Perhaps his bowling might save him, you're saying? Think again: in 9 games, he's nabbed only 4 wickets at an average of 69.25, with the highest economy rate (9.55/over) in his team for any player who's bowled more than 4 overs in the season.

At $900,000, he is undoubtedly the bust of the draft, and one of the primary reasons why Bangalore are guarantee to get the inaugural Wooden Spoon in the IPL. And if it's true that Rahul Dravid was the one who chose him for the team, then he himself should be stripped of the captaincy immediately, since his reasoning powers must obviously be slipping in middle-age. Anyone who's ever watched Kallis play knew this was bound to happen.

Uncle J Rod already brought this up a few of days ago, and I wasn't going to mention it again, but Kallis' innings yesterday only reminded me of it, since it made me try to work out what the hell goes on in that cavernous amphitheater mind of his.

For anyone who hasn't read it yet, here's the official Q & A with the man himself. It's a classic. Tomorrow morning, I could receive a recorded audiobook copy of Vladimir Nabokov's lost manuscript, read by J.D. Salinger, hand delivered to my door by Thomas Pynchon, and that Kallis questionnaire would still be the most exciting discovery of the week. It's just that good.

Apart from a bunch of delicious nuggets about the man -- a) he considers "Implement" [sic] one of his strongest morals, b) he considers his Investment Advisor an "item" or c) his Investment Advisor is one of the 5 most important items in his life -- the ultimate find here is the question regarding Kallis' four dream dinner guests. Ready for it? Bill Clinton... Neve Campbell... Denise Richards... and Nelson Mandela.

Now, I know that was probably just some offhand response, with little forethought to it, made hastily to an uninspired webmaster on a deadline. Nothing more to it, right? Well... the thought still came to his head at some point, and thoughts don't come out of nowhere. There's a reason why it came to his head, and I've spent hours now -- almost against my will -- trying to work out why the hell anyone would want those four people sitting at a dinner table together. (Believe me, the last thing I want to with my day is figuring out Jacques Kallis' thinking patterns.)

Seriously, what can he be expecting? Mandela and Clinton to talk, while the two girls are going at it in the background? Is that what dinner parties are like at the Kallises' -- the boys talk while the girls lick each other just within eye's view? Or is it a more serious affair, with Mandela retelling details of his fight for justice and his 27-year prison sentence, leading Campbell to mention how much that reminds her of a plotline in the third season of Party of Five, centred on Bailey's character and his alcoholism? Or are the words "Nelson Mandela" added to every answer that white South Africans give about any topic whatsoever?

So many questions, so much confusion... will someone please get Jacques Kallis out the IPL and out of my head?!!

3 Bullets to the head...

• What the hell has came over David Hussey lately? His form has dipped gravely in the past couple of weeks, and that innings against Rajasthan was one of the worst I've seen from him so far in this tournament, culminating with a truly atrocious shot. He was years too early into the pull and ended up getting bowled by the Royals' 6th best bowler. Is that what sharing a locker room as Ganguly does to a person after a while?
  
  
• Whenever I see his surname and his initial on the scorecard, I keep thinking the name of Kolkata's wicketkeeper is "Willy Saha." I don't know why. His name is actually Wriddhiman Saha, but I think "Willy Saha" is a great name for a keeper. Who wouldn't feel confident knowing trust old Willy Saha is behind the stumps? So can we all just start calling him Willy from now on?
  
  
• I tried my hardest to come up with a segue for this, somehow tying it  to cricket or to the IPL, but I couldn't find anything. So here it is, the history of modern warfare told with food:
  
  

Comments

[Ceci Masters]

here via CWB... Like you loved the Kallis file - love his strange strange collection of "personal" pics too - strangling a girl and pics of Biffa with plastered down hair - and is that AB in a hammock??? Kudos for your vid finds too - hope you don't mind but have gacked them for facebook (with acknowledgement of course)

Finding the stuff on IPL interesting - am only just getting to grips with who's playing for who since don't have access to Setanta (had a deal been done with Sky bet a lot more people here in England would have been interested) - supporting Shane Warne's mob for the sheer fun of watching a master tactician weld a team together - plus a sekrit passion for Biffa....

[D.S. Henry]

Ceci, glad you found the site. Kallis is, undoubtedly, my cricketing white whale. I just can't work him out, and it bothers me. I don't hate him the way I hate G. Smith, or McGrath. It's not irrational hate that exists solely to make the game more interesting for me as a fan -- Kallis is just a really weird specimen, and he demands analysis.

As long as it's attributed, take anything you want from the site.

It's a shame the IPL wasn't more freely available and convenient for everyone around the world. Regardless of what you think about the concept or the Twenty20 format, it's just cool to have all the great players in one place at one time, and to have every fan in the world focused on the same tournament.

[Hanlie]

Poppycock!