Jacques Kallis has announced that he will retire from Test Cricket after the Durban Test. My first thought when I read this announcement was to think how wonderful it might have been for Tendulkar and Kallis to retire in the same Test. In my view, Kallis is the most important cricketer of his age. Tendulkar made cricket a multi-billion dollar industry, Lara was a genius, Warne and McGrath built the most successful Test record in history, but Kallis did something far more important. He stood like a rock at the heart of the most important story in Cricket over the last 20 years - the rise of South Africa.
Jacques Kallis has been burdened with a tag which does not fit him at all in my view - that of being a genuine all rounder. In this post I will argue that Kallis was never a genuine all rounder. He was a batsman who could bowl, much like Kapil considered himself a bowler who could bat. It is generally assumed that there are 4 types of cricketer - specialist bowlers, specialist batsmen, specialist wicket keepers, and all rounders. I would argue that there are actually six categories. The two additional categories which, in my view, are self-evident in most Test teams are 'bowler who can bat' and 'batsman who can bowl'. In each case, the secondary skill is just that - secondary. Bowlers who can bat are not expected to make runs like a top order batsman is. Batsmen who can bowl are not expected to take wickets like a front line specialist bowler is. All rounders are expected to bat like batsmen and bowl like bowlers.
Look down the list of the top all rounders in Test right now. The list reads - Ashwin, Shakib, Kallis, Philander, Broad, Watson, Johnson, Swann, Siddle, Southee. All the players in this list are all either batsmen who can bowl, or bowlers who can bat. R Ashwin can be considered to be an all rounder in Indian conditions. Overseas, especially against decent opposition, he should be competing with Ravindra Jadeja for a spot rather than with a specialist spinner. Shakib Al Hasan can be considered an all rounder because he plays for a weak side in which averaging 30 with the bat is an achievement.
So what is an all rounder? This is not some nebulous idea. It is in fact, a very clear idea. An all rounder is a player who would make a Test team if he was just a bowler, or just a batsman. Put another way, an all rounder is a player who is good enough to play in a Test team either as a specialist bowler, or as a specialist batsman. Nobody seriously expects Ashwin or Johnson or Broad or Philander to make Test hundreds or be selected as specialist batsmen. Nobody seriously expects Kallis or Watson to take 5 wickets in an innings, or play as specialist bowlers.
Test Cricket is a game for specialists. Specialist bowlers are decisively superior to bits and pieces men. Specialist batsmen are decisively superior to makeshift ones. It is why playing Dinesh Karthik as Test opener only makes sense if there are no realistic specialist candidates available. It is also why this will never be as good as having a specialist in a position. Specialist all rounders are an extremely rare breed. Most specialist all rounders are successful specialist all rounders for only a few years in their careers.
A genuine Test quality all rounder fulfills the role of a specialist test quality batsman and a specialist test quality bowler. A specialist batsman is one who can make Test hundreds anywhere in the world, especially when the wicket is reasonably good. A specialist bowler is one who has the endurance and skill to bowl multiple long spells in a day at or near his best and bowl sides out when the conditions are suitable.
There have been very few genuine all rounders in Test cricket - Miller, Sobers, Imran and Botham in the modern era. Kapil Dev was a genuine all rounder for part of his career, but eventually decided to focus on his bowling, and has on multiple occasions insisted that he was a bowler who could bat. Richard Hadlee would not have made New Zealand's Test team as a specialist batsman.
Once you get past these four giants of the game, you get to 'all rounders' like Shastri. Shastri was a versatile batsman who bowled steady left arm spin. But there was no realistic expectation that he would bowl sides out in the second half of Test matches. People expected Harbhajan Singh or Anil Kumble or Pragyan Ojha to do this.
It is the responsibility of simultaneously being at the heart of the specialist batting and the specialist bowling that is essential to being a genuine all rounder.
Over the course of his career, Kallis bowled 3361 overs. In Kallis's 165 Tests, South Africa have bowled 26978 overs. Kallis bowled about 1/8th of South Africa's overs - nearly 12.5%. This is a shame, because he clearly had a lot of ability with the ball (his career record makes this indisputable in my view). His record for South Africa in 58 Tests when Steyn or Donald were not playing, and in the 13 Tests in his career when South Africa did not have Steyn, Donald or Pollock is testimony to his ability. But even when South Africa were without both Donald and Steyn, Kallis only bowled 13.7% of their overs (1322 out of 9630 overs). When South Africa were without Donald, Steyn and Pollock, Kallis bowled 14.4% of South Africa's overs (268 out of 1854).
Compare that with the aforementioned genuine all rounders - Miller, Sobers, Imran and Botham. Over the course of his 20 year career, Sobers bowled 17.8% of West Indies's overs (21599 balls out of 121068 delivered by West Indies). Botham bowled 21.2% of England's overs (21815 balls out of 102473 delivered by England). Keith Miller bowled 16.4% of Australia's overs (10461 balls out of 63470 delivered by Australia). Imran Khan bowled 22% of Pakistan's overs (19458 balls out of 88934 delivered by Pakistan).
These are figures over the course of these players careers. Careers during which they maintained healthy averages with the bat. But even within these careers, they had core periods at which they were at their best. Lets look at their workloads during these periods.
Imran's Test record as captain is arguably, statistically, the single greatest individual performance in all Test Cricket. 48 Tests, 2408 runs at 52 with 5 Test hundreds, 187 wickets at 20.26 with 12 five wicket hauls. Imran bowled 20% of Pakistan's overs as captain (1535 out of 7641). But lets look at his record over a longer span. In nearly all of these Tests Imran took the new ball or bowled 1st change. He was his team's best bowler as well as a solid middle order batsman. But lets look at his record over a longer period of time. Lets start in 1976, the year in which Imran made his first half century in Tests, and end in 1990, the year in which he bowled his last over in Tests. His record with bat and ball is formidable. He bowled 22.4% of Pakistan's overs during this period.
Gary Sobers was first picked in the West Indies side as a spin bowler. He was unique in that he bowled finger spin, wrist spin as well as seam and swing. By his own account, he could bowl at Joel Garner's pace. This makes his statistical record as a bowler tricky to read. What is not in dispute is that he won Test matches (indeed Test series) for West Indies with the ball. His batting was magical. He was probably the greatest left handed batsman in Test history (yes, that includes Lara). In the 1960s as a whole, he averaged 60 with the bat and 32 with the ball. In the 2nd half of this decade, he carried the West Indies attack along with Lance Gibbs. At the start of the 60s, Sobers was an exciting young player in Worrell's team. By the end of the decade he was the greatest cricketer of all time. He averaged 60 with the bat while bowling 21% of the overs bowled by West Indies in that decade. 21% of West Indies overs amounted to 25 six ball overs per innings in that period! On two tours of England in 1963 and 1966, he dominated with bat and ball. He was a match winner the best sense of the term. But more importantly for the present argument, he was expected to perform central roles with both bat and ball and did so successfully.
Botham's record will perhaps invite the greatest skepticism here. But Botham's record has to be seen to be believed. Andrew Flintoff was a genuine all rounder for England for a period of about 3 years. In 41 Tests from the start of the 2003 summer to the end of the 2006 summer, Flintoff averaged 40 with the bat and 28 with the ball. He bowled 20.7% of England's overs during this time. Botham was a genuine all rounder for England for about 7-8 years from the beginning of 1978 to the end of 1985. In his first 50 Test Matches, Botham made 11 Test centuries and took 227 Test wickets at 23.5 apiece. By the time he took his 300th Test wicket in his 71st Test, he had made 13 Test centuries and his bowling average had dropped to 26.45. He bowled 22.5% of England's overs in these 71 Tests. The workload amounted to about 23 overs per innings.
I will not belabor the point by discussing Miller or Kapil here. Kallis should not be considered a genuine all rounder because South Africa did not expect him to be one. He was, as Firdose Moonda has aptly put it, the ultimate luxury. His record as a bowler, both in terms of his bowling average as well as his very limited workload (about 12 overs per Test innings) says a lot about the seam bowling riches available to South Africa. This is especially so when we consider the fact that South Africa never had a top class specialist spinner (from Paul Adams to Imran Tahir, that list is a peculiar one) during Kallis's career. Spinners usually bowl a lot of overs (Kumble and Murali bowled about 30% of their team's overs, Warne - 28% or so). Kallis was a pretty good bowler, but he was not a frontline bowler.
Now that this has been said, he'll probably take 10 wickets at Durban!
To consider Kallis among all rounders is to do all rounders a disservice. We would not consider Shaun Pollock a genuine all rounder, and rightly so. Pollock had a lot of ability the bat, ability which was evident in Pollock's Test average of 32. But he would not have made South Africa's Test team as a pure batsman. Yet it is indicative of the bias among observers in favor of batsmen, that more people will probably be willing to class Kallis as an all rounder than Pollock.
Kallis was a batsman who could bowl really well. But his bowling was invariably a luxury. He was not picked to bowl. Had he made the runs he has made over his 165 Tests while bowling 22-25 overs per innings, he would indeed have been super human. He would have been an all rounder in the league of Sobers or Imran or Botham or perhaps even in a league of his own. He didn't.
It is extremely difficult to average 50 with the bat in Test cricket. It is arguably even more difficult to average 25 with the ball, and be considered a primary wicket taker for one's team as a specialist bowler. It is nearly impossible to achieve both. It is nearly impossible to be an all rounder. The physical demands should not be underestimated. There is a huge difference between bowling 12 overs an innings and 22 overs an innings. But the demands in terms of skill should not be underestimated either. Put simply, if Kallis is an all rounder, then Botham and Imran and Sobers are cricketers from another planet.
Jacques Kallis is no all rounder. He is merely the most important cricketer of his era. Oh, and he's also the most magnificent batsman.
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