First of all, congrats to Jacques Kallis on a magnificent career. Definitely an ATG cricketer and I hope he goes out on a high by scoring some runs
Now onto the discussion about him being Tendulkar+Zaheer - it is misleading, simple as. About as misleading as something like this:
Kallis batting average:55, bowling average 32.5. Difference=22.5
Botham batting average 33.5, bowling average 28.4. Difference=5.1
What do we make of that? Does this Botham was not even in Kallis' league as an all rounder? Nope, it's just misleading like Tendulkar+Zaheer.
This is a retirement thread and Kallis has truly had a great career so this isn't the right place to criticize him. However, just a few things:
1)Purely as a batsman, I would have him behind Tendulkar, Ponting, Lara and possibly even Dravid. He has the record of an ATG batsman but he's not as good as Tendulkar, Ponting, Lara and I am not sure that is up for debate. There is a *small but clear* difference in class there.
2)While his ability to crank it upwards of 140 at 38 cannot be overlooked, he's always been the 4th or 5th bowler and has nowhere near the workload of say, a Zaheer Khan or a Chaminda Vaas. You could argue he was generally brought on when the dirty work had been done. All things considered, he is significantly worse bowler than Zaheer Khan or Vaas or Jimmy Anderson for that matter. Seriously, he is a bloody good cricketer but hand on heart you really cannot say he is Cook+Anderson or Tendulkar+Zaheer or whatever. He is not.
So yes, for me it isn't as clear-cut that he is a MUCH better cricketer than Ponting or Tendulkar or whoever. I would give an understanding nod if someone said he was more valuable and brought more to his team than Ponting or Tendulkar did, but if they made it sound like it was an easy choice I would be pretty skeptical. Really, I'd like to know many England fans would rather have Kallis than Cook+Anderson or how many Indian fans would have Kallis over Tendulkar+Zaheer? Let's not get silly please. Yes it makes for a good screenshot, that is all.
All that said, Jacques Kallis is definitely a great cricketer. There will be a few hisses about the red ink or the sometimes seemingly one dimensional nature of his play, but there is no way you could reasonably argue that he isn't one of the best of all time. SA will definitely miss him. Thank you Kallis, wish you the best.