Jacques Kallis: Best ever. Ever.
2011-01-04 14:00
Quite simply, the South African all-rounder is the best cricketer this country has ever produced and the best modern day cricketer we’ve seen in the last 30-odd years. I don’t need facts and stats (if you do like your stats you can always go look them up on Cricinfo) to back it up, because it’s so obvious that he’s head and shoulders above the rest it should never even be a point of discussion.
I’m not saying he’s the best batsman the world has ever seen (though he’s definitely South Africa’s best batsman by far), but rather that he’s the best cricketer to come knocking since cricket went commercial in the late 1970s.
There have been some great names over the years (too many to list), all of which have provided various highlights in the bowling and batting department, but as cricket has become more frenetic, with ODI matches almost every second day, Twenty20 fixtures rearing their heads more regularly and pressure on Test matches to draw in bigger crowds, Kallis has survived the carnage of it all and come out looking fresher and more dominant at the crease than ever before in his career.
He fully deserves to be mentioned in the same exalted breath as his contemporaries; Ricky Ponting, Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, yet for some reason Kallis only gets begrudging respect from certain meatheaded fans. Those cricketers are the company he keeps in the batting averages and total runs scored.
Only Lara has played fewer Tests than Kallis, while the rest have all played ten Tests or more than the South African. Ponting has played in the best team of the last 15 years, Tendulkar and Dravid (like Kallis, have played in a strong yet inconsistent team over the same time) while Lara was just a freak of nature in a team that could best be described as ‘effective’ in it’s pomp and ‘waning’ on every other day.
In an all-round sense, no one has been better than Kallis on the world stage. (Interesting side note: Only four players have achieved the treble of 2 000 runs, 200 wickets and 100 catches in Tests. While Garry Sobers and Jacques Kallis possess a batting average over 50, Shane Warne is the best bowler among the four, with 708 wickets at an average of just over 25. Ian Botham is the fourth).
The English laughably refer to Andrew Flintoff as a legend of the game. Were it not for injuries this might have been so (and he certainly had Kallis’ number when they last met in England), but the likes of Ian Botham, Flintoff (and maybe Chris Cairns) – the only cricketers you could genuinely call true all-rounders – have been outlasted and outplayed by Kallis as time has worn on.
As for locally, I know the old farts get teary-eyed when mentioning the likes of Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock and other legends of South Africa’s pre-isolation cricket, but Kallis is without a doubt the best we’ve had.
Take into account the improved standards of the game, that he’s managed to grow his hair back, the non-stop cycle of travel and playing, the fact that his stats are similar in all forms of the game, that he’s scored his runs off some of the best bowlers of the last 30 years (McGrath, Warne, Muralitharan, Flintoff, Waqar, Kumble and Bryce McGain) and there’s just no denying his credentials as the best of the lot.
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