How things change – Kallis and Ganguly

Perhaps Kallis won’t like me branding him with Ganguly – but then again if he is reading my blog , I’ll take his displeasure :-)

As Ganguly’s Knights defeated the Chargers (yay for my unpopular KKR in semis prediction) and as Bangalore has lost a couple in a row, the tide seems to be turning. The positive energy about Ganguly is resurfacing here while Kallis , astonishingly , is starting to get some flak. The same Kallis who could do no wrong might be in trouble. I predict that if he scores below 7.5 per over in Bangalore’s next loss, the knives will be out despite an outstanding start to the series. So i thought I’d look at the performances and see whether any of it is warranted.

Jacque Kallis: performance to date

If you take a look at Kallis’s performance you will see the following. (i) He has an astonishing average (courtesy the 4 not outs) (ii) is the highest scorer so far but (iii) his strike rate is 124.  If you notice, his strike rate is going down consistently since the game against Punjab chasing 200+.And coincidentally his two poorest strike rates are the ones in games that Bangalore has recently lost. More damagingly, a strike rate of 124 does not put him in the top 50 players in the IPL on the basis of strike rates!!!!! Now that doesn’t sound so good for someone who plays in the powerplay and maybe the critics (who , i promise will come) have something there.  However , despite this data , lets really understand what is going on here. Kallis’s role is to stay there and have others score aggressively. And how’s that going. Not as well. Manish Pandey is scoring at a strike rate EVEN LOWER than Kallis @ 119. Couple that with the fact that Uthappa didn’t really fire the last game and now you have the real problem. Make no mistake - if Kallis cant get back to at least 125 consistently then its a problem. But if he does (and he will), he is more than doing his job and the rest of the team (Pandey is in danger anyway) needs to play its role and the Royal Challengers will be back on track.

Ganguly’s revival

Ganguly did dwarf over the rest of his team in the game against Deccan as you can see in the scorecard alongside. 88 runs at a strike rate of 162 is awesome. And if he can pull this off one more game – the positive press will absolutely rocket. Dada’s last hurrah, his swansong, what was Buchanan thinking etc etc . Funnily enough , take a guess what Ganguly’s overall scoring rate is at this point. A measly 113!!!!!! And his role – not yet clear as he has moved  up and down the order (seems to be settling to open) and struggled against the pace and struggled to accelerate in all games except the last one.

So spare a thought for Kallis , who has been the best all round player so far – is playing the role asked of him (ok one bad match) and don’t burn him at the stake if he doesnt score at the 150 strike rate – that’s not his job. Dada, sure its his swansong – so , what a great innings and what a turnaround!!