Telford Vice: Absence of King Kallis a stark reminder he can't rule forever

Jacques Kallis of South Africa. Photo / Getty Images

A South African test XI that does not include Jacques Kallis is Auckland without the Sky Tower, Wellington without the Basin Reserve, Dunedin without an Antarctic edge in the air, Cape Town without Table Mountain and Johannesburg without traffic and razorwire.

When Kallis is not around the Proteas' landscape is suddenly and unsettlingly changed. Something big and important is missing. This particular gloom last descended on South Africa in 2006 in Durban, where Kallis was ruled out of the second test against India by a back injury. Since then, and until yesterday, South Africa contested 49 test matches with Kallis in the ranks

The disaster has struck again. Because of a stiff neck, Kallis was not in the South African team that began the third test against New Zealand in Wellington yesterday.

That part of the nation back home who were awake when the awful news shuddered into their lives at around 2.30am (SA time) at the toss would, instantly, have rudely awoken the rest of the nation to tell them.

No Kallis! Stiff neck! Don't just lie there like a lump, dazed and confused! Do something!

Kallis' injury must be significant considering South Africa have a series lead to protect and that he played through the pain of a side strain in the deciding third test against India at Newlands in Cape Town last season. He scored 161 and 109 not out to prove what we already knew: the man is not human, in the most impressive way.

This is something South Africans acknowledge warily. We know that Kallis will one (catastrophic) day retire. Rumours of his mortality we neither want nor need.

In purely academic terms, the removal of Kallis from the equation means South Africa are denied the talent, skill and experience of a player who could hold down a place in any team on the planet.

In his pomp, he could have done so as a batsman or a bowler. Kallis no longer bowls long spells, but he can still fetch a vicious over or two from memory. Last season, at Centurion, he pelted Sri Lanka's Dilhara Fernando - who had earlier committed the stupidity of hitting Kallis on the head - with a fearsome over featuring five deliveries clocked comfortably over 140km/h.

Kallis is famously impervious to pressure. Shane Warne tried to get into his bulletproof head in the Boxing Day test of 1997. Kallis was playing his seventh test, Warne his 62nd. Warne took six wickets in the match, but he didn't get Kallis - who scored 101 in the second innings.

Now he is not there, and we are disturbed by his absence. Inside the heart of every cricket-minded South African there is a Kallis-shaped vacuum. And we know that he, too, must pass.

Telford Vice is a freelance cricket writer in South Africa.