Where does Kallis rate as a batsman alone?

[Cricketismylife]

That's a good point Hit Wicket. I should have looked into more detail before making my claims...just out of curiosity what does Kallis average per country? I could look it up but seeing as you have the figures at your fingertips!

 

[Adamc]

Aside from being boring as hell to watch (even when he's scoring quickly), he probably gets underrated somewhat because he didn't have a great start to his career with the bat. The likes of Lara and Tendulkar were marked as greats early in their career and the label stuck. Kallis' progression has been more gradual.

First 50 Tests: 2952 runs at 41.00
Next 50 Tests: 4988 runs at 72.28
Next 43 Tests: 3710 runs at 57.96

Plenty of reasons why his performance may have improved so dramatically (pitches, quality of opposition etc.) but it seems obvious that he's a better batsman than he was earlier in his career.

 

[Uppercut]

The biggest tell sign is that one really has to think hard to come up with Kallis innings which would stand out from the crowd. You can roll them off your tongue for Tendulkar and Lara, and to a lesser extent for Ponting and Dravid.

I think that's more because no one actually watches cricket involving South Africa, though.

 

[centurymaker]

I don't have any arguments against his playing style.

It's just that he seems to have feasted on a lot of weaker attacks, significantly more than his other top notch contemporaries like Tendulkar and Lara. Some would argue that it's not Kallis' fault that the others could not cash in as much on the weaker bowling units, but the way I like to judge is how well a batsman performs against the best rather than who can pummel the weaker attacks more.

He has 8 hundreds against West Indies - 7 of them against absolutely ordinary attacks
6 against Pakistan, most of them against attacks missing their top bowlers
5 against New Zealand
4 against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh

In contrast, Tendulkar has 17 hundreds against Australia and South Africa and 33 if you include England and Sri Lanka. Kallis has just 8 against Australia, England, and Sri Lanka.

Similarly with Lara, 13 of his centuries are against Australia and South Africa, 25 including England and Sri Lanka.

The biggest tell sign is that one really has to think hard to come up with Kallis innings which would stand out from the crowd. You can roll them off your tongue for Tendulkar and Lara, and to a lesser extent for Ponting and Dravid.

You're spot on and his averages in some countries aren't great either. Thats mainly why he won't ever be rated higher than Ponting or even dravid imo as a batsman.

 

[Flem274*]

I think that's more because no one actually watches cricket involving South Africa, though.

Exactly.

Part of being an ATG is having the appropriate hype behind you. Every time we tune into Channel 9 we hear them jizzing over Ponting. Likewise in India Sachin has the media hype behind him.

One good example of hype is one of the cricinfo judges picking Lillee over McGrath because he was faster and a fast bowlers bowler. It's such bull****.

 

[Hit Wicket]

I think that's more because no one actually watches cricket involving South Africa, though.

Not sure about that. At least their matches against Australia, England, and India are well followed and covered. And to think of some top notch influential innings by South Africans recently, the back to back double hundreds by Smith, Smith's last innings century to win the series in England, deVilliers' century chasing the record score at Perth, Duminy's 150 odd at MCG immediately come to mind.

Can't think of any Kallis innings at the same level of quality and sense of occasion.

 

[vcs]

I don't have any arguments against his playing style.

It's just that he seems to have feasted on a lot of weaker attacks, significantly more than his other top notch contemporaries like Tendulkar and Lara. Some would argue that it's not Kallis' fault that the others could not cash in as much on the weaker bowling units, but the way I like to judge is how well a batsman performs against the best rather than who can pummel the weaker attacks more.

He has 8 hundreds against West Indies - 7 of them against absolutely ordinary attacks
6 against Pakistan, most of them against attacks missing their top bowlers
5 against New Zealand
4 against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh

In contrast, Tendulkar has 17 hundreds against Australia and South Africa and 33 if you include England and Sri Lanka. Kallis has just 8 against Australia, England, and Sri Lanka.

Similarly with Lara, 13 of his centuries are against Australia and South Africa, 25 including England and Sri Lanka.

The biggest tell sign is that one really has to think hard to come up with Kallis innings which would stand out from the crowd. You can roll them off your tongue for Tendulkar and Lara, and to a lesser extent for Ponting and Dravid.

I think he has generally always taken on Australia when they had McGrath/Warne available. India have sometimes played Australia when one or both of the two were missing. Not using this to take any credit away from India, mind you, just a mitigating factor for Kallis. I think he has a pretty good record against England, doesn't he? 7 hundreds against them, and they've usually had good in-form attacks against SA. Particularly the 2004-05 series in SA where he averaged nearly 70 with 3 hundreds against the Ashes winning attack of Flintoff-Harmison-Hoggard-Jones.

 

[Pothas]

I think that's more because no one actually watches cricket involving South Africa, though.

Nah just no one cares about them.

Am rather warming to South Africa of late because I like a lot of individuals in the side but there is still something 'meh' about them.

 

[centurymaker]

I think he has generally always taken on Australia when they had McGrath/Warne available. India have sometimes played Australia when one or both of the two were missing. Not using this to take any credit away from India, mind you, just a mitigating factor for Kallis. I think he has a pretty good record against England, doesn't he? 7 hundreds against them, and they've usually had good in-form attacks against SA. Particularly the 2004-05 series in SA where he averaged nearly 70 with 3 hundreds against the Ashes winning attack of Flintoff-Harmison-Hoggard-Jones.

He avgs 20 odd in england btw.
And australia's always had decent back-up bowlers unlike pakistan atm for instance.

 

[vcs]

He avgs 20 odd in england btw.

Irrelevant to the discussion I know, but he bowls well there. Maybe he's asked to shoulder the bowling workload more when he plays in England? I don't know, haven't watched enough to be able to say.

 

[akilana]

Not sure about that. At least their matches against Australia, England, and India are well followed and covered. And to think of some top notch influential innings by South Africans recently, the back to back double hundreds by Smith, Smith's last innings century to win the series in England, deVilliers' century chasing the record score at Perth, Duminy's 150 odd at MCG immediately come to mind.

Can't think of any Kallis innings at the same level of quality and sense of occasion.

That's not Kalli's fault

 

[Sanz]

He avgs 20 odd in england btw.
And australia's always had decent back-up bowlers unlike pakistan atm for instance.

He Averages 29.30 which is not 20.

 

[centurymaker]

He Averages 29.30 which is not 20.

Well i found out about it more than 10 hours ago so i couldn't quite recall the exact figure
and 20 odd can be 29 too btw

 

[Sanz]

BTW some awesome filtering going on in this thread.

 

[kingjulian]

He is one of those players who has played a significant number of tests in both decades.

1990s was, statistically speaking, more bowler friendly than the 2000s where a whole host of batsmen have averaged more than 50.In the noughties, averaging more than 50 was expected of any good batsmen (Hayden, Gambhir, Hussey, Smith, Sehwag, Clarke, Sangakkara, Jaya, Mo Yo etc etc the list is quite long) . Where as, in the 90s, averaging over 50 was revered.

Having played 48 tests upto 31 Dec 2000, Kallis averaged a mere 43.09 runs in Test cricket. I'm not sure that can be overlooked while rating his career.

Interestingly, he had more responsibility as a bowler when he started, and he settled down to a batting all-rounder a little late in his career. So it is hard for me to call this. He has played in the same level as the best batsmen in the last decade though - If we take the period of 1st Jan 2000 to today. He has performed on par with Sachin, Ponting, Sangakkara etc and out performed Hussey, Jaya, Mo Yo etc. So this is a hard one to call.

For me...(I'm only listing present players and players from the very recent past)
Tier 1
Lara, Tendulkar (For proving that in their peak they were well ahead of the pack in Cricket, at a time when scoring was not as easy and also for staying with the lead pack in the flat track generation)

Tier 2
Ponting, Kallis, Dravid, S.Waugh, Hayden, Hussey, Sangakkara, Sehwag, Smith etc/etc.

 

[Sanz]

Well i found out about it more than 10 hours ago so i couldn't quite recall the exact figure
and 20 odd can be 29 too btw

No it wont, especially in the context where the whole idea is to denigrate a great batsman's performance by making stuff up.

 

[Lostman]

That's a good point actually. We are judging Kallis by todays standards.

This deserves that double face palm image.

 

[akilana]

Having played 48 tests upto 31 Dec 2000, Kallis averaged a mere 43.09 runs in Test cricket. I'm not sure that can be overlooked while rating his career.

So when was it that the batting became easy?

Kallis turned into a different batsman from 1999. He averaged 69 in 1999 and 48 in 2000.

 

[Sanz]

Having played 48 tests upto 31 Dec 2000, Kallis averaged a mere 43.09 runs in Test cricket. I'm not sure that can be overlooked while rating his career.

I don't get it. When everything else fails, people create new ways to determine a batsman's worth. Ricky was averaging around same after 43 tests.

Isn't it great that despite the ordinary beginnings, the guy has done so well as a batsman and statistically as good as anyone in his era ?

 

[Flem274*]

I don't get it. When everything else fails, people create new ways to determine a batsman's worth. Ricky was averaging around same after 43 tests.

Isn't it great that despite the ordinary beginnings, the guy has done so well as a batsman and statistically as good as anyone in his era ?

No, because he's boring/selfish and can't possibly be as good as >insert batsman with extremely similar record here<