Shaun Pollock as a cricketer as always fascinated me. I guess we being of the same age, I have always in a sense measured his accomplishments against mine. For a long while, I always dreamed of being a great cricketer and Shaun has achieved this.

At the start of his career, he was a hostile, fast extremely accurate bowler. Partnered with the White Lightning man, Allan Donald, they were a pair that can be mentioned in the same breaths as Walsh & Ambrose, Wasim & Waqar and Warne & McGrath. No one can question Shaun’s ethic of giving everything for his team.

Recently we have all seen the decline of the pace & hostility, but not the accuracy. It started after Allan Donald retired and the challenge of the new ball fell entirely on Shaun’s shoulders. It has changed now, with Ntini proving to be a solid performer and the emergence of Nel and Stern, but the years it took for them to develop took its toll on Shaun. There have been calls that he be dropped from the Test side, but with a relatively still inexperienced side, that would be a mistake.

In the recent match between Sri Lanka & South Africa, 10 overs, 21 runs for 2 wickets a fabulous run out and 21n.o. off 17 balls showed that he still has the hunger to perform. Maybe Shaun will never plumb the depths that I have in the mundane world of IT, but damn, I would trade it all for his.