Jacques Kallis: A career in numbers

Jacques Kallis, one of the greatest cricketers of all time, has decided to hang up his boots. Abhishek Mukherjee looks at an illustrious career in terms of numbers.

The curtains have been drawn. The spectators, on field and on television, waited for Jacques Kallis to walk out for this one final time, but he wouldn’t, being perfectly happy with the top-order batsmen to do the job for his side. A career – perhaps the greatest ever – came to an end.

How great an all-rounder was Kallis? How did he fare when pitted against the other greats across the eras – Garry Sobers in specific?

The all-rounder

Let us first put a basic cut-off of 2,000 runs and 100 wickets. In 136 years of Test cricket, only 25 cricketers meet the mark, which tells us a thing or two about how special the achievement is. If we do a basic product of runs and wickets, Kallis is so far ahead of the others that a comparison almost seems futile.

Top all-rounders: Product of runs and wickets

However, that tells us about the volume of runs and wickets for Kallis and the others. If we want to do a per-match performance, however, the best idea would probably be to find a combined average of sorts. The easiest approach to this would probably be to divide the product above by the number of Tests played.

Top all-rounders: Product of runs and wickets per match (qualification: 2,000 runs and 100 wickets)

The above table should have sufficed to establish Kallis’ supremacy, but let us do that conventional (batting average – bowling average) difference as well.

Top all-rounders: Batting average – Bowling average (qualification: 2,000 runs and 100 wickets)

The difference, of course, is not a parameter good enough (since the statistic is biased towards batsmen: a player with averages of 55 and 30, for example, would be equivalent to a man with 45 and 20, which would probably not be fair). Let us go for the ratio between the two averages, then.

Top all-rounders: Batting average / Bowling average (qualification: 2,000 runs and 100 wickets)

The batsman

As a batsman, Kallis’ supremacy is quite well-defined: to put things simple, he had finished his career as the third-most prolific scorer in history, and second in terms of Test hundreds.

Top batsmen: Most runs (qualification: 7,000 runs)

Not only had he finished third on the list, he had done so at a phenomenal batting average as well. Of all batsmen who have scored more runs than Don Bradman (in other words, over 7,000 runs) only Kumar Sangakkara, Sobers, and Wally Hammond have averaged more than Kallis.

Top batsmen: Highest average (qualification: 7,000 runs)

Over the years, Kallis has been one of the most reliable grafters of the sport, relying more on patience, determination, and temperament than on belligerent strokeplay. In fact, the most he ranks third in terms of the number of balls faced in the career…

Most minutes batted

… as he does in terms of the number of minutes batted.

Most balls faced