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Jacques Kallis and 12 Other Great South African All-Rounders

Information about the book
JACQUES KALLIS
 
‘There’ve always been things I have tried to work on in my career.
You need to take on board criticism along the way, as long as it’s constructive.
The day you stop wanting to improve, that’s when you must stop.’
 
The records show that Jacques Kallis is the greatest all-rounder ever produced by South Africa in 125 years of Test cricket – and perhaps also our greatest cricketer.  
 
Among all-rounders in history from every leading country, statistically he is
matched only by Garry Sobers. And no one but Kallis has scored 10,000 runs
and taken 250 wickets in both Test cricket and one-day internationals (ODIs).
Kallis has played in 162 Tests – only four men have notched up more (Sachin
Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh and Rahul Dravid), and only Tendulkar
has scored more centuries than Kallis. Of the 11 players who have made more
than 10,000 Test runs, only the Sri Lankan Kumar Sangakkara has a better
average, and then marginally: 56.98 to Kallis’s 56.10. Only 12 batsmen with more
than 2,000 runs in history have a higher batting average than Kallis, and only two
of them can be described as all-rounders: Garry Sobers and Wally Hammond.
There is therefore no doubt that if Kallis had never bowled a single delivery,
his place in the game’s hall of fame would be entirely secure. But he has also
bowled nearly 20,000 balls in Tests (only 19 bowlers in history have delivered
more), and another 10,000 balls in ODIs. In mid-2013 he was just 12 wickets
away from achieving 300 in Tests, and his 288 wickets (which place him thirtieth
on the all-time list of Test bowlers) were taken at an average of 32.43 – matching
or better than not a few specialist bowlers.
In ODIs his bowling average is even better: 31.69 from 270 wickets. That
speaks for his economy rate, as well as his ability to take wickets as a secondor
third-change bowler – when the ball has lost its shine and the batsmen are
hunting quick runs. Throw in the 319 catches he has taken in both forms of
the game, and you have an all-rounder whose contribution has been consistent,
abundant and unequalled.
Kallis is fifth on the all-time batting list in ODIs with 11,498 runs. In 102
of his 307 innings (33 per cent), he has scored more than 50 or 100 – a ratio
better than Tendulkar’s (32 per cent) and Lara’s (28 per cent). And his average
of 45.26 is bettered by only five of the 62 men who have scored more than 5,000
ODI runs: Michael Bevan, MS Dhoni, AB de Villiers, Michael Hussey and
Viv Richards.
 
Unlike many all-rounders, Kallis was one from the beginning. He was a youngster
at Wynberg Boys’ prep school in Cape Town when he first became hooked
on cricket.
 
My dad was late in picking me up one day, and I saw these guys playing
a game on the field. I went and bowled a few balls, hit a few balls, and
quite enjoyed it. With the support of my Dad, I got more involved. He got
quicker bowlers, some older boys, to run in at me – I felt on edge, so he got
me a helmet.
 
In grade seven in 1989, the 13-year-old Jacques was teased unmercifully for
wearing a helmet, but he didn’t care.
 
That took the fear of getting hurt out of me. From then on I just played, I
just wanted to bat and bat. I’ve always preferred batting to bowling. I was
pretty small at school and I couldn’t hit the ball out of the ground, so I had
to learn a good technique to survive and try to rotate the strike.
 
He was known for hating to get out; and when he wasn’t playing in a game, he
was usually seen in the nets.
At Wynberg Boys’ High he was soon in the first XI and being picked for
provincial teams. At one stage, though, he was dropped from the Western
Province under-15 side. The selectors felt he was too small to hit the ball off the
square. His coach (and later headmaster) Keith Richardson called him into the
office to tell him the bad news, and Kallis’s response was simple: ‘I’ll show them.’
Kallis doesn’t remember saying that, but he notes that ‘I’ve never been one
that worries too much about what people say about me, or who speaks too much.’
At high school he was obsessed with cricket, though he was also good at other
sports. Richardson remembers him going into the nets immediately after playing
flyhalf in a first XV rugby match one August. He was teased for practising cricket
in winter – teasing which, again, he had no difficulty ignoring.
 
Kallis made his Test debut in 1995, but Ali recalls that he really revealed a bigmatch
temperament in his seventh Test at Melbourne in 1997, when he scored a
maiden century. Ali recalls:
 
The Melbourne Cricket Ground holds 100,000 people, but it was pretty
empty on the Monday. It was extraordinary, the acoustics – whatever the
players said, you could hear it in the stands. I can see it as if it was yesterday:
Michael Kasprowicz bowling to Jacques, loud-mouthing and verbalising
him. But he never flinched. Eventually Kasprowicz bowled a bouncer,
without effect, and verbalised him again – and eventually Kasprowicz said:
‘Is this man fucking deaf?’
 
Kallis’s personal milestone in that match was also a vital team contribution.
South Africa had been skittled out by Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne for 136
in the first innings, and were set a victory target of 381. Going into the final
day, they were 79 for one and not expected to survive, let alone win. But Kallis,
who was on 40 overnight, batted for most of the next day, and in all for more
than six hours, to help salvage a draw. Wisden remarked that South Africa ‘owed
much to an upright 101 from Kallis, which featured many stylish drives – and an
indifference to the sledging of the close fielders.’
 
Even so early in his career, Kallis was known for his ability to ‘get into the
zone’: impervious to distraction, placid and undemonstrative. Typically, after he
has played a shot and there’s no run, he immediately turns his back and walks a
few yards. He comments:
 
In between balls, I think whatever I want to. I look around, look at the
crowd. Then, when the bowler gets back to his mark, I switch on again and
face the next ball. I’ve never believed that words get you out. It’s the leather
ball that gets you out. I do hear what the fielders are saying, and sometimes
I might have a chuckle under my breath, but it’s never really affected me.
I’ve worked at being mentally strong, and being able to switch off between
balls. What they say can’t take my focus off the next delivery.
 
Kallis has bowled virtually from the start of his Test career, but he began to make
an impact with the ball only in 1998, in the five-Test series in England. Up to then
he had taken only 13 wickets in 14 Tests at 38.30. By the end of the 1998 series
he had taken another 11 wickets, including five for 32 in the match at Lord’s,
and that brought his career average down to 33.50. He also made 294 runs in
the series at an average of exactly 42, including 132 at Manchester, which meant
he had made his first simultaneous and sustained contribution with both bat
and ball.
He followed that with an even better all-round performance in the five-Test
home series against the West Indies in the summer of 1998/1999. In ten innings,
four of them without being dismissed, he made 485 runs at an average of 69.28,
including a century and four 50s. And he averaged more than three wickets per
Test with the ball: 17 at the excellent average of 17.58. At such times he would
more than justify the criterion of being worth his place either as a batsman or
a bowler.
The fourth Test against the West Indies in Cape Town, wrote Wisden, ‘will
long be remembered as Jacques Kallis’s match. He confirmed himself as one of
the leading all-rounders in world cricket when he became only the eighth player
in Test history to score both a hundred and a fifty and take five wickets in an
innings in the same match.’
Kallis made 110 in the first innings, all the more meritorious because he came
to the crease to face the second ball of the match, after Gary Kirsten was out
first ball to Curtly Ambrose. After Gibbs went for 42, Kallis and Daryll Cullinan
batted together for the rest of the day to take South Africa to 282 for two at the
close (they finally declared on 406 for eight).
Then Kallis took two for 34 in the West Indies total of 212, and nearly scored
a second century – he was on 88 when Hansie Cronje declared to set the West
Indies a target of 421. They could make only 271, their highest total of the series,
as Kallis opened the bowling in the absence of Allan Donald (who had a damaged
hamstring) and took five for 90. Apart from four hours, he was on the field for
the entire game.