Kallis out, all out, and Atapattu the great

After South Africa were blanked in Sri Lanka, Graeme Smith said the side needed more intensity. He could have just as easily said that the team would rely a little less on Jacques Kallis, for South Africa's fortunes have tended to ride on the back of Kallis's performances. Since last year's World Cup, he has scored one-fifth of all runs by the team, and when he fails, the team almost always suffers. Of the 11 matches Kallis scored less than 20 runs, South Africa could win only two games. However, on the occasions he went past 20, the success rate shot up by a considerable rate. It raises an uncomfortable question for Smith: is the South African batting fast becoming a one-man act?

Or perhaps not. A look at the other one-day teams reveals a pattern. Marcus Trescothick leads the tables for England with almost one-fourth of the runs, and Kumar Sangakkara and Chris Gayle aren't far behind. Predictably, the Australian runs are more evenly distributed. Ricky Ponting adds only 15.8% of his team's totals, so a failure by him does not necessarily lead to an Australian struggle.

Atapattu the great
While at least one team has been noticed for losing, the quiet rise of Sri Lanka has gone unobserved. Winning 16 of their last 17 games, the Sri Lankans have swept aside South Africa and Zimbabwe, and won the Asia Cup as well. These may yet be early days and it must be noted that 11 of these wins have come at home and five were against Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, this has placed Marvan Atapattu in pretty decent company; after 28 games as captain, he ranks fourth among the most successful captains in one-day history.

Atapattu was formally handed the baton (a stick of dynamite at the time) after Sanath Jayasuriya resigned following an indifferent World Cup, and he began shakily and lost two of his first four games, but led the team to its first-ever one-day series victory in the West Indies.

Singling out Vaughan
With the rest of the English team pulling their own weight, Michael Vaughan has been singled out for his lack of contributions in one-dayers; he has scored only two half-centuries in 24 games as captain. The criticism is justified to an extent, because Vaughan has, by far, the lowest one-day average among all current international captains - Tatenda Taibu included. Vaughan has failed to get past 30 nineteen times in the 24 games. His Test form makes it even worse for him, for he comes in at seventh place, ahead of Taibu and Ricky Ponting, who has captained in only four Tests. Though the disparity between his average in both forms of the game isn't as high as the other captains, Vaughan is unfortunate in that he is labeled a failure in a team of success stories.