3 January 2011

Jacques Kallis - dramatically underrated

And on the other side in the encounter between the world's top 2 sides - Jacques Kallis scored his 39th hundred to draw level with Ricky Ponting. Even now, having finally scored a double hundred in this series and then moving to second in the all-time Test century makers list (as he's played less Tests than Ricky Ponting and/or he's earlier in the alphabet?!), I can't help feeling he's massively underrated....especially in England as he's not been at his best against us. Given that he's scored as many hundreds as Ponting, the Aussie skipper seems like a good man to compare him against....

Kallis is a guy who averages 56.4 compared to Ponting's 53.5, averages 32 with the ball at an economy rate of well under 3 (he'll take well over 300 Test wickets by the time he's done - he's on 270 at the moment), and has as good a set of hands as Ponting, having taken 166 catches (to Ponting's 178). A truly class act, and if he were Australian he'd be in the Gilchrist, Warne and McGrath bracket (or perhaps of those only Warne can claim to be his equal) but somehow he sneaks under the radar as an all-time great as he plays for South Africa. He makes my all-time international XI comfortably.

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