The gist of Kallis's apparent complaint was that either Smith was fit to bat, or he was not.He dead-batted this easily. "No, we're very close mates, Bouch [Mark Boucher] and myself as well. I think he [Smith] will become one of our best captains and the guys support him 100 per cent. He was my man for the job from day one."Occasionally, Kallis will take you by surprise by playing a piercing conversational cover drive, delivered in an amenable, relaxed way. Asked about the concentrated nature of this England tour he said: "It's crazy the amount of cricket we are playing. The guys aren't getting time to recover, bowlers are knackered and you are going to get to a level where the public have had enough."The problem is that the administrators want to make money, and you can see where they are coming from," he continued. Even there, Kallis was eager to insert a rider under the category known as "on the other hand".He tends to become a wee bit annoyed (that is, he narrows his eyes half a millimetre) when he is sometimes mildly derided for his one-paced batting "I have worked out what works for me.

Going in from ball one and trying to hit it over the top doesn't work for me as it might for someone like Andrew Flintoff So I am continuing to do what I do. I think I have proved that when it needs to be kicked on, I kick on. If people say that's a failure then go to the beach."He can barely explain his batting form of the past few years (and he is, officially, the world's best all-rounder despite diminishing bowling returns) but his sequence of 16 scores above 50, including eight hundreds in 26 innings, started after his father's death."Over the last two years I have played as well as I have ever done I played well before my dad died. He went in four months and that taught me there is more to life than cricket Enjoy every day. Maybe I am just a bit more relaxed." Carrying South Africa's batting and still relaxed.. It was during a rain break in Antigua in 1998 that the England team had a heated debate about the ability of bowlers to control seam movement.

Curtly Ambrose had instigated the discussion on a pitch not too dissimilar to that being used in the current Test match between South Africa and England here. But then, on the second morning, Ambrose consistently nipped the ball away. When the rain returned, Alec Stewart asked the England bowlers whether they could control the way the ball seamed.All but one of the bowlers said no. Andrew Caddick was the only one who felt he could control the direction in which the ball seamed, insisting he could do so nine times out of 10. An argument ensued, and eventually I went to the West Indies' dressing-room to ask Ambrose whether he had deliberately bowled as he had.The Antiguan said his gameplan revolved around getting the ball in the business area and hitting the seam. He didn't particularly care which way the ball moved as long as it did something. Courtney Walsh, another legend of the game, agreed with every word his opening partner said.At the time, the pair had taken more than 700 Test wickets, so that was good enough for me, and I reported my findings.

Caddick was not happy, especially when he realised I had told them his views.But what is it about fast bowlers that allows some of them to seam the ball more than others? Obviously you have to hit the stitching which keeps the four pieces of leather together, but surely if the pitch conditions are conducive every fast bowler should be able to move the ball about.This is where a bowler's action enters the equation, and it is the reason why Andrew Flintoff has been able to extract more movement from a helpful Centurion pitch than any other England bowler.Stephen Harmison has struggled to hit the cut strip on this tour - let alone the seam - so we shall ignore him for the moment, while Matthew Hoggard and Simon Jones both try to swing the ball. In an effort to do this they keep their hands behind the ball and at the moment of release they pull down on the seam. This allows the ball to rotate backwards as it travels towards the batsman and increases the chance of swing movement.But the fact that the ball is rotating backwards means that - like a back-spinner or flipper from a leg-spinner - it skids off the pitch on to the bat. Flintoff's fingers, however, stay almost clawlike on top of the ball. This reduces the chance of backward rotation and is one of the principal reasons why he rarely swings the ball.Yet the high action of the Lancashire all-rounder, along with his method of release, does allow him to bowl the ball into the wicket rather than along it.