There is a case to be made for Jacques Kallis not being included in South Africa's one-day team. It is, however, not a very convincing one.
Those who say he shouldn't be there because he is too old and his batting too slow fail to recognise the other areas in which the team truly benefit from his presence nowadays.
Kallis is an important senior member of an international one-day team presently in transition. Perhaps more than at other stages during his brilliant career, it was noticeable how he had often been involved in discussions about field placings and bowling changes in the first two matches of the current one-day series against Australia.
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Though one of the most experienced members of this Proteas side with 285 one-day caps to his name, he hasn't often been recognised as one of its leaders - certainly not as someone who might openly dispense tactical knowledge on the field when he is not bowling.
However, in this one-day series he has become more involved. Whether that is because Johan Botha is a new captain in charge of a fairly young side is not immediately apparent, but it is certainly encouraging.
The big all-rounder's wicket in Sunday's second match in Hobart, Tasmania, proved crucial. He contributed a sedate 72 off 96 balls, with a stack of singles and just 20 runs in boundaries. While he was at the crease, the visitors' scoring rate did not increase as was needed before the powerplay, but that was perhaps not his job.
Had Kallis stayed in the middle, even with a batting collapse of the kind South Africa suffered (they lost three wickets for 27 runs in 38 balls), they would have won.
He remains the rock of his country's batting in both one-day and Test cricket as he closes in on two batting landmarks. The burly Capetonian needs just 12 runs to reach 10 000 runs in Test cricket and a further 16 to achieve the same mark in ODIs - to become the eighth player in these two forms of the game to manage that.
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