Blogs Morkel Goes Wham-Bam Again!!
January 23rd, 2009 by calypsoAlbie Morkel is fast turning out to be South Africa’s new version of Lance Klusener. ‘Zulu’ as Klusener was famously called had a notorious reputation for blasting off the opposition in the dying stages of the game and winning matches for his team with his lethal batting. Now, Morkel is emerging as another great finisher for the Proteas and he did the same thing during the third of ODI series between Aus and SA.
Of course, it was Kallis who was the architect of the win again, as he held the middle order together at a time when SA was losing wickets by the bunch. His 60 was priceless and had it not been for his presence at the crease, SA with or without Morkel could not have even dared to challenge Australia’s 269. South Africa hasn’t been getting good starts in this series and the pattern continued with Amla again failing to make any impression. Kallis has been restored his much-favoured no. three position and it seems to work best for him. He had nearly won the game for SA in the second one-dayer too.
The Aussies did have a pretty good start to their batting with the new-sensation Warner slogging the bowling just like Gilchrist used to do. It might be too early to make comparisons but he hits the ball as savagely as Gilly. The SCG is Warner’s home ground and he enjoyed batting in front of his home crowd, giving the spectators ample opportunities to cheer with his hard-hitting drives and cuts. However, the Aussie middle-order failed to score against the South African spinners and instead of reaching a very-possible score of 300, they folded up short of even 270.
Besides Albie Morkel destroying Australia, it was again the use of power plays that continues to confuse Ponting. Tait did bowl pretty well during the middle-overs of the Proteas’ innings but no bowler could survive Morkel’s assault. What impresses most about his batting is that, just like Klusener, he is sent in when the team is on the brink of losing the match. It is then left to him to do whatever he can to try and win if from there. With so much pressure on still a pretty inexperienced cricketer, one would have imagined that the expectations would get to him but he has now delivered in two out of the three matches played so far.
