South Africa's Greatest Batsmen by Ali Bacher

Author:Ali Bacher [Williams, Ali Bacher ; David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77022-866-5
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Published: 2015-08-30T22:00:00+00:00

Gary Kirsten

Born 23 November 1967

International career: 1993–2004

8

Jacques Kallis

“I think he’s been a rock. He’s proper. I haven’t seen a better cricketer than Jacques Kallis.”

Those are the words of Brian McMillan, himself a distinguished all-rounder, teammate of Jacques in the late 1990s and a shrewd analyst of the game. The legendary Australian captain Steve Waugh is unhesitating in his assessment of Kallis: “One of the greatest cricketers of all time.”

Jacques played in 166 Tests – only three men have notched up more (Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh), 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: 58.04 to Kallis’s 55.37. Only 14 batsmen in Test history have a higher batting average than Kallis.

In addition, Kallis is seventh on the all-time batting list in ODIs with 11 579 runs. In 103 of his 314 innings (33 per cent), he scored more than 50 or 100 – a ratio better than Tendulkar’s (32 per cent) and Lara’s (28 per cent). And in ODI matches, his average of 44.36 is bettered by only 11 of 73 men who have scored more than 5 000 runs.

Jacques says he has always been indifferent to statistics. When Ali pointed out that Jacques’s first-class batting average ranked alongside those of Barry Richards and Graeme Pollock, he affirmed that he had never thought he might reach that level. “Definitely not,” he said. “As a youngster you just want to do well so that you can retain your place early on, and help whatever team you are playing for to win games of cricket.

“I never looked at stats – that’s probably one of the blessings that I had. I tried to just play according to the situation of the game. I certainly didn’t start out my career trying to be the best player South Africa has produced. I played the game of cricket because I loved and enjoyed it. I’ve always believed that if you take care of the stuff on the field, off the field stuff takes care of itself. If you’re producing the goods to win games of cricket, the stats come by themselves.

“I was more about being the best player that I could possibly be, rather than comparing myself to others. I can’t control what others are doing. I can only control what I am doing.”

Kallis made his Test debut in 1995, but Ali recalls that he really revealed a big-match temperament in his seventh Test at Melbourne in 1997, when he scored his maiden century.

“The Melbourne Cricket Ground holds 100 000 people, but it was pretty empty on the Monday,” says Ali. “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,

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