Good day dear comrades. I am back in Europe after Christmas in Mzansi. Usually, this time of the year is really slow, and I used to spend my time on the couch watching test cricket. The boxing day and new years test matches were always a highlight for me. After eating myself to death and drinking lots of beer on Christmas day, there was no better way to sleep it off than watching the Proteas the next day. Since DSTV doesn’t allow me to stream here, I can only follow the scores online. I guess I could make a plan to watch it somehow, but I really lost interest in the Proteas since 2019.
This slow time made to think back to a time when I really enjoyed cricket, and when the Proteas weren’t rubbish. A while back in my article about the Bokke, I wrote that we don’t really have many sporting superstars. Well, that is unfortunately true. What I didn’t mention though, is that we have a cricketer who is the GOAT (Greatest of all time, for those unfamiliar with the term). That cricketer is none other than Jacques (King) Kallis. I know the Indians and Aussies will vehemently disagree with my opinion, but in the end, the stats don’t lie.
The batsman
Having played in a time when test cricket was still the pinnacle of the game, no one can argue that Kallis had one of the best batting techniques. He was an orthodox number 3 and later number 4 batsman, who was ideally suited to the test match game. Rahul Dravid was probably the “most textbook” batsman I ever saw, but Kallis was a bit more aggressive. He was equally effective playing off the front and back foot, and I always admired his silky-smooth cover-drives.
In terms of numbers, he scored the 3rd most career runs in test matches, and the 8th most in One Day Internationals (ODIs). Additionally, he scored 45 test match hundreds, which is the 2nd most of all time. He scored 17 ODI hundreds, which is only the 22nd most of all time, but he also scored 86 fifties, the 3rd most of all time. His game wasn’t as well suited to ODI cricket, but his records is still quite remarkable.
The bowler
When he burst onto the scene in the late 90s, Kallis was probably more a bowling all-rounder than anything else. He struggled with the bat in his first couple of years, with a record nowhere near that of later in his career. His bowling probably saved him early on. He was a fast-medium bowler and had the ability to get some decent swing in the right conditions. Later on, he lost a bit of pace, but was still a very handy bowler.
He fell just shy of the 300-wicket mark in test cricket, with 292 wickets overall. This made him the 42nd highest wicket taker in test cricket. That probably doesn’t sound that impressive, but he took only 20 wickets less than great bowlers such as Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson. More impressively, he took 273 ODI wickets, the 19th highest tally of all time. Funnily enough, he took more ODI wickets than Allan Donald (although he had a much longer career).
His peers
Jacques Kallis played at a time when there was an abundance of legendary batsmen. We are talking about cricketing gods such as Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar. When looking purely at batting statistics, he almost has an identical test match record to that of Dravid and Ponting. Of those three, Kallis has the highest batting average and scored the most hundreds. Scoring 45 test match hundreds, and having a batting average of 55 over 166 test matches is astonishing. The only batsmen to score more runs and test match hundreds than Kallis, Ponting and Dravid was Sachin Tendulkar. Everyone regards Tendulkar as the best, and purely based on numbers, he probably is. I would argue that if Kallis also played 200 test matches, he would have surpassed Tendulkar’s record.
Kallis was also a legend in ODIs for South Africa. His batting was often regarded as being too slow for the modern ODI game. Irrespective, he had a batting average of 44 and scored 17 ODI hundreds. Ponting is arguably the best of the three if you look at ODI stats. He scored more runs and ODI hundreds, but had a slightly lower batting average. Ponting was a far more attacking batsman, and had a game suited to ODI cricket. Looking at overall statistics, I doubt that Tendulkar’s ODI batting record will be beaten anytime soon (or ever).
What sets Kallis apart from the rest, is his bowling. In test matches, he too 292 wickets at an average of 32. In ODIs he took 273 wickets, also at an average of around 32. None of the others were ever used as front-line bowlers, and were just in the team for their batting. Some compare him to Garfield Sobers, as they are widely considered the best all-rounders of all time. I never saw Sobers play, so I can’t really draw a comparison. All I know is, no one compares to our boy.
My two cents
The debate on who is the greatest ever cricketer, will continue as long as the game is played. But given how cricket is shifting towards T20’s, and playing less test matches and ODIs, I feel that some of the test match and ODI records will probably never be broken.
If one looks purely at statistics, it is hard to argue that Jacques Kallis isn’t the best cricketer of all time. Yes, he might not have scored the most runs, or taken the most wickets, but no one else can claim to have made such a big overall contribution to the game, and to their teams such as Kallis.
He has scored the third most runs in test cricket, and he took almost 300 test match wickets (that is when you are considered a great bowler). None of the other legendary batsmen have come close to matching his bowling record. He is still the only player to score 10000 or more runs and take more than 200 wickets in both test cricket and ODIs. He is without a doubt the best all-rounder of all time, and given his record in test cricket and ODIs, he is certainly a South African sporting legend and the GOAT.
Until next time, dear comrades.
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