When Jacques Kallis arrived at Kingsmead 18 years ago, he sat in the changing room and looked out the window. He did the same thing before his last Test this week.
“Nothing much has changed since then, except me,” he said. “I’ve got a little bit older, got a little bit wiser, lost a little bit of hair, gained a little bit of hair. My dad was here watching my first Test. Today, I had my sister watching my last. I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do what I love.”
The affection for the game has not dimmed but the desire to meet the demands of playing at elite level has. There’s much more that goes into preparation for Test cricket than what the public can see and the mental and physical toll was weighing heavily on Kallis. Many players say there is an epiphany, a morning when they wake up and know it’s over.
Kallis had his about a week ago when he told Graeme Smith, then Mark Boucher, then his team-mates and Cricket South Africa. “I felt I lost that little bit of an edge because mentally it is quite tough over the five days. If I can’t give 100%, I don’t want to be bringing a team down,” he said. “I had 18 wonderful years. I woke up and said its time; I am 100% convinced that it is. Sometimes when you are in the grind you just keep going. When I started playing, I said I wanted to leave the game in a better state than when I joined it, hopefully I’ve done that.”