Kallis: Here Come The Naysayers

The retirement of Jacques Kallis from Tests marks the end of an era in South African cricket, an era that spans just a little less than my own interest in the game. In my lifetime I doubt that we will see another player in the same class from any cricket playing nation.

The Internet is already full of articles singing his praises and digesting his remarkable statistics, but Kallis has always had his share of critics and they have also been sharpening their pens. Kartikeya Date's thoughtful article "Can Kallis really be called an allrounder?" does a good job of putting words and numbers to what most others struggle to articulate. In the coming weeks no doubt we will see more of the same.

Kartikeya damns with faint praise by calling Kallis "the greatest batsman who can bowl" and highlights the oft-cited observation that Kallis never dominated series with both bat and ball, and the less often cited fact that Kallis bowled fewer overs per year than Sobers, Imran, Hadlee and Kapil.

Most of the all rounder arguments are caused by people refusing to accept that there is more than one kind of all rounder, and that the different types are impossible to compare.

Batting all rounders: Kallis and Sobers are the best of these. Steve Waugh, Carl Hooper, Tony Greig, Wally Hammond and Wilfred Rhodes are others on the list. Ravi Shastri, Sanath Jayasuriya, Bob Simpson, Ted Dexter and Frank Worrel probably are too. Through most of their careers their bowling effectiveness was secondary to their batting. This is the case even for Sobers, despite what Kartikeya would like to claim.

Bowling all rounders: Imran Kahn and Ian Botham head this list, others on it are Kapil Dev, Richard Hadlee, Shaun Pollock, Keith Miller, and Andrew Flintoff. These guys were bowlers first and foremost but could, at least for some of their career, hold their own with a bat.

Comparing the two types leads to endless debates of "Kallis wouldn't be picked for his bowling" versus "Imran wouldn't be picked for his batting". Both are partly true, but the comparison is meaningless. Wicket-taking bowlers win you cricket matches, which makes bowling all rounders arguably the most valuable type of player. This further confuses the all rounder argument.

Statistics aside, one department that Sobers clearly has Kallis' number is in charisma. Sobers was a a renowned entertainer, a dashing, well built athlete and hailed from the mysterious Caribbean. Although they will never admit it, I'll bet that all his detractors find it hard to stomach that the second best batting all rounder in history is a chubby balding Afrikaans guy from Pinelands with all the charisma of a fence post.