Cricket Life Begins at...50?

Kallis confounds himself

Rory McIlroy’s recent assertion that there was “no way” he would ever play on the Seniors Tour raised a few eyebrows. Some said it was ‘disrespectful’ to the many great players who do compete regularly amongst other 50+ players.

But McIlroy is just 35-years-old and, as Padraig Harrington said in his defence, “15 years is a long time in anyone’s life. Let’s see what he thinks and says when he’s a little closer to 50.” Ernie Els is one of many Major-winning golfers who also said the Seniors Tour wouldn’t be for him. Now he’s having the “time of his life” on it.

It’s not just golfers. Thousands of professional cricketers swear they won’t play again after retirement only to be persuaded back for the occasional Benefit Match which leads to helping out a mate’s club in a vital promotion or relegation match and so on…the taste doesn’t always linger but sometimes it does.

Jacques Kallis said he was ‘done with cricket’ when he finally accepted that he wasn’t going to make a sixth World Cup in 2015 and retired in August 2014, a year before the 2015 edition, having played 328 ODIs. “Time to get the slippers on and put the feet up,” he said in one of hundreds of newspaper columns I ghost-wrote with him.

And yet here he is, captaining the South African Masters team alongside younger team-mates like Hashim Amla, Jonty Rhodes, Vernon Philander and Makhaya Ntini, playing competitive cricket at the age of 49, doing exactly what he said he’d never do. So, what changed? What happened? I decided to ask him.

“It started with a request to help promote the tournament, to grow the game and be an ambassador, and they’d pay me, so it was a no-brainer really. And then you see the guys hitting balls, having fun, and you start wondering…” Kallis said with a laugh directed squarely at himself.

There are limits, of course. “I told them that I wouldn’t mind having a bat that there was no way I was going to bowl again. Then we had so many injuries that nobody else was available so I trundled in off half a dozen paces but it wasn’t something I trained for, unlike the batting. I had a few nets to make sure I could still see the ball.”

Sri Lanka and India topped the six-team log with Australia and India also qualifying for the semi-finals while South Africa’s only victory came against winless England with Amla making a classy 82 from 55 balls in pursuit of 158 for victory which they achieved with 11 balls to spare. India beat the West Indies in a final featuring both Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar. But the result wasn’t really the point, was it?

“It’s actually bloody competitive on the field. Some of the guys might be carrying a bit more weight these days, and there’s definitely more injuries, but for all the joking off the field once you cross the boundary and get onto the field all the competitive juices start flowing again…”

Does Kallis enjoy it? Will he, too, carry on into his 50s? “I probably don’t enjoy the actual cricket as much as I did when I was younger – it hurts a lot more! But I love being with the boys again and catching. You spend your life in a team environment, playing for each other, so you miss it. But every time I play I say ‘that’s the last one.’ Who knows. Maybe there’s another one…”

Does it pay well? “Sachin is obviously in a different league but there’s no doubt it’s a very welcome cheque for most of the guys, especially those who didn’t play IPL and also missed out on the other franchise leagues. The dollar goes a long way in South African rands.”

He’s too polite to talk numbers but even the less well-known cricketers are paid in the region of $20k each while the stars receive well in excess of $50k. While many regular domestic franchise tournaments are battling to make their business models work, the Masters League clearly has a market, sponsors and an audience. There may be a lesson in that, somewhere.

Is the cricket all, err… ‘clean’? Kallis doesn’t flinch at the question: “I haven’t ever seen or heard about anything, at all, which suggests otherwise. If I had then I wouldn’t be anywhere near it.

“It’s a good thing to show people that you can still play cricket into your 50s, I’m all for that.”

The great all-rounder’s primary sporting love is golf. Some, including himself, would say that it was always at least a parallel passion during his cricket career. He was about to play in a Golf Day in Stellenbosch when we spoke. Had he seen McIlroy’s comments? “Yes,” he chuckled. “Fair enough but, as you say, let’s see how much he misses the competition if he stops playing at 50.”