The top all-rounders (by rating)

[SeamUp]

He also averaged 34.81 with the bat in his first 78 tests. He had a relatively low runs per test, but he was batting low in the order (usually 8), not because of his own ability, but because south Africa were fielding up to 3 allrounders capable of making the team as specialist batsmen. He managed 2 centuries batting at 9 in his first 78 tests, but his hallmark was consistency, not the spectacular- he was seldom a matchwinning batsman of his own accord, but his rearguard action (along with help from a strong tail) helped push a potentially very poor team total to a respectable one in what felt like at least every 3rd innings, and the lower order partnerships he contributed to helped swing the balance of a lot of games.

Judging by specialist bat standards, he had a limited range of strokeplay, but was very technically proficient in the shots he did use, and without any real weakness I can recall.

Like the Donald thing above.

I think there is even some under-estimation with the bat.

He was so rhythmic into his strokes. His cover-drive/straight-drive and his cut and his pull were lovely to watch.

He said it himself that batting was his hobby and felt he always wanted to get on with it. No doubt could have scored more runs if batting higher up the order if he took his batting more seriously.

One hell of a cricketer.

 

[Bolo]

Like the Donald thing above.

I think there is even some under-estimation with the bat.

He was so rhythmic into his strokes. His cover-drive/straight-drive and his cut and his pull were lovely to watch.

He said it himself that batting was his hobby and felt he always wanted to get on with it. No doubt could have scored more runs if batting higher up the order if he took his batting more seriously.

One hell of a cricketer.

All of his shots were textbook technique. The straight drive in particular really stands out to me although because of the effectiveness more than the technique. I don't think I've ever seen a batman who could play it as well as him.

I speculate that he would have had a good career as a specialist batman in domestic cricket if he'd quit bowling when he debuted for South Africa to only bat. He would also have made the SA side as a specialist batman at some point, but would likely have had to focus more heavily on his batting from a younger age to have been a top level international bat.

 

[smash84]

i think one of the reasons Pollock wasn't rated as high was that while being very accurate he just didn't have as many 5fers as some of the other top tier bowlers which probably translated to less impact. And of course he didn't have the flair of a donald or steyn which makes them so much more memorable

 

[harsh.ag]

He's not rated that high because he was mild mannered. End of.

 

[Bolo]

i think one of the reasons Pollock wasn't rated as high was that while being very accurate he just didn't have as many 5fers as some of the other top tier bowlers which probably translated to less impact. And of course he didn't have the flair of a donald or steyn which makes them so much more memorable

He had a whole lot of competition for wickets early on. Donald most particularly, but many others. Cronje was a sub 30 bowler, and he was usually playing as the 6th, and sometimes even 7th bowler.

I don't particularly hold his lack of 5fers against him- his bowling, like his batting was a model of consistent value rather than flashes of brilliance interspersed with garbage.

In a weaker bowling unit, a player with higher peaks and lows would likely be more valuable. With matchhauls of say 9, 3, 3 for very few runs you have probably won 1 match with your bowling. Matchhauls of 5, 5, 5 wouldn't win you a match outright, but if the rest of your bowling lineup is good, you have a good chance of winning all of them.

This said, even accounting for the quality of the bowlers around him, a wickets per match of just over 4 is on the low side for a guy with a sub-21 bowling average and is the reason I rate Donald above peak Pollock as a pure bowler.

The flair he didn't have, and coupled with his later decline lead him to be forgotten in subjective analysis. It's a little criminal to not even see him get an honourable mention in threads dedicated to the "best of years XYZ" because of this, despite him being at most fractionally behind his contemporaries as a bowler, as well as borderline specialist bat quality (2 of the mainstays of the South African lineup in this period- Cronje and Rhodes- averaged less than 2 runs more than him, and he outperformed most of the batsmen with shorter careers).

 

[SeamUp]

I've always found match winning performances 'important' but well over rated here. A crucial 3-for or 4-for could be just as match winning.

If you have shown consistency over a long period of time in helping 10 other players in a team sport win a lot of games then I also will acknowledge the average mean.

You get 3-for and a 3-for compared to 5-for and 1-for you still contributed to 6 wickets.

 

[smash84]

a crucial 3-fer could be match winning, but usually isn't. you can get 3 wickets first innings, 2 wickets in the second each match and have a wpm of 5 in our career but that might just be a very non-memorable career.

 

[Bolo]

Memorable, maybe not. Great... not necessarily any less so for not being memorable- see SeamUp's comment. 5 wpm is going to help your team win a lot of matches, even if you can't ever say you have won a match for your team.

 

[smash84]

Memorable, maybe not. Great... not necessarily any less so for not being memorable- see SeamUp's comment. 5 wpm is going to help your team win a lot of matches, even if you can't ever say you have won a match for your team.

I disagree. My point is that 5 wickets like a 3-2 each match will probably not win you matches. You need to get those big wicket hauls in to get your team over the line, especially if there is a paucity of good bowlers in the team. Which is what probably happened with pollock. Once the support at the other end wasn't as great he couldn't really be that much of a match winner. as opposed to someone like a Steyn

 

[AndrewB]

He had quite a high strike rate (and low economy rate) for an opening bowler: 59.0, against (pulling out some of the big names with comparable averages) mid-high 40s for Waqar, Marshall, Imran, Donald, Hadlee; low 50s for McGrath, Lillee, Holding, Willis; mid 50s for Wasim, Ambrose, Anderson, Walsh. I've seen some people regard that as a mark against him.

 

[Bolo]

If your bowling attack is a one man army you would value standout performances more. The stronger the attack becomes, the less necessary the standout performances become.

Steyns early inconsistency was probably better for the team he played in because for most of his career he was a one man army. The standout performances were needed to win tests.

I'm not sure if Pollocks consistency was an advantage, but I definitely don't think it was a particular disadvantage. He had Donald alongside him going at 4.6 wickets a match. If Pollock had been the hypothetical 3/2 bowler and Donald had been similarly consistent, this would have left 5 wickets per innings for a quality attack of 4 other bowlers to get- not much of a stretch, and you are almost always going to get a side out twice, even if no bowler ever takes a 4fer. Two 3/2 bowlers is 2 5fers a match, and this is going to win a boatload of games, even if you don't have the quality or sheer number of bowlers to fall back on that the 90s south Africa did.

Later career Pollock would have been a different story. After about 2002, the rest of the attack wasn't capable of getting 7-8 wickets per innings. But after Pollock's back went in about 2003 (the year Donald retired) he was a shell of a bowler. His distribution of wickets wasn't really relevant because he was hardly getting any.

 

[Bijed]

I've always found match winning performances 'important' but well over rated here. A crucial 3-for or 4-for could be just as match winning.

If you have shown consistency over a long period of time in helping 10 other players in a team sport win a lot of games then I also will acknowledge the average mean.

You get 3-for and a 3-for compared to 5-for and 1-for you still contributed to 6 wickets.

Yeah, largely agree with this. I feel that the inconsistent but sometimes destructive types get (rightly) the praise for their match-winning performances, but that this seems to somewhat gloss over the (often reasonably numerous) times where they've basically been a liability.

 

[Bolo]

He had quite a high strike rate (and low economy rate) for an opening bowler: 59.0, against (pulling out some of the big names with comparable averages) mid-high 40s for Waqar, Marshall, Imran, Donald, Hadlee; low 50s for McGrath, Lillee, Holding, Willis; mid 50s for Wasim, Ambrose, Anderson, Walsh. I've seen some people regard that as a mark against him.

Yup, there's no question he's below the ATG bowlers career wise. But a lot of this is due to his post-injury ineffectiveness, and I was more trying to draw attention to how good he was early career. People focus on peak performances of allrounders in particular, but overlook just how good peak Pollock was.

 

[cnerd123]

He's not rated that high because he was mild mannered. End of.

> Mild mannered
> South African
> Not an eye-catching style
> Consistently good vs swinging between bad and great

Keep the same career record - you give him Ben Stokes' personality, put him in one of the Big 3, have him suddenly bowl really quick/with big swing/with a weird action whilst slogging the ball everywhere, and make him have a few more big performances in exchange for a few more ducks and bad spells, and he'd be right up there with Sobers, Botham, Dev, Khan, Hadlee, etc.

 

[ankitj]

He is up there with them already I think. Definitely above Kapil.

 

[watson]

He is up there with them already I think. Definitely above Kapil.

Not sure about ‘definitely’.

I can still remember the 80s Kapil and he was a very fine player in both Tests and ODIs.

 

[Bolo]

Above Dev and Botham in my mind. Putting him below Sobers, Khan, and Hadlee isn't much of a criticism- they are all in the top handful to have ever played.

 

[SeamUp]

I remember just expecting Pollock to just strike with the new ball he was that good. Moved the ball both ways with swing or seam.

Like Vern today but with extra pace and bounce and a better batsman who could bat 4,5,6 provincially easily.

Remember this. If only we could get an ODI bowler like this again :

 

[AndrewB]

An interesting question would be who had the most time at #2, either as a bowler or a batsman, without ever being #1.

Sorry, I meant to answer this after the "We're not #1 draft" ended.

Longest time at #2 for batsmen never ranked #1:


.1........GA_Headley.4580
.2........W_Bardsley.3372
.3........WR_Hammond.1081
.4...........WW_Read..873
.5......AC_Bannerman..613
.6.......Lord_Harris..481
.7......CG_Macartney..399
.8........AL_Hassett..367
.9..........DL_Amiss..293
10........NC_O'Neill..280
11........RB_Simpson..245
12...........V_Kohli..242
13..........RA_Smith..175
14........MC_Cowdrey..174
15.......VS_Ransford..165
16.......AC_MacLaren..150
17...........RA_Duff..141
18.........AR_Morris...78
19.........ER_Dexter...77
20............R_Abel...74
21....Hanif_Mohammad...70
22........KC_Wessels...63
23...KS_Ranjitsinhji...61
24...........AN_Cook...56
25..Mushtaq_Mohammad...49
26......WW_Armstrong...42
.............DC_Boon...42
28.........VS_Hazare...38
29..........GC_Smith...23
30.........DL_Haynes...21
31.........CA_Pujara...18
32.......Saeed_Anwar...16
..............H_Jupp...16
34.......Salim_Malik....9
35.........IJL_Trott....8
36........WL_Murdoch....7
...........MJ_Slater....7
38.........GP_Thorpe....3
39........AJ_Stewart....1

Longest time at #2 for bowlers never ranked #1:


.1......WW_Armstrong.2555
.2...........E_Jones..884
.3......J_Lillywhite..642
.4.......GD_McKenzie..627
.5...........M_Ntini..618
.6..........T_Emmett..613
.7.........WJ_Whitty..565
.8...JM_Blanckenberg..498
.9..........F_Morley..481
10.........RJ_Harris..391
11..........GP_Swann..352
12........AEE_Vogler..318
13...........K_Higgs..301
14.......Wasim_Akram..295
15........MG_Johnson..229
16.........BR_Taylor..214
17.......Saeed_Ajmal..207
...........Kapil_Dev..207
19........TW_Garrett..171
20........DVP_Wright..160
21...........G_Geary..154
22..........SR_Clark..116
23..........CA_Walsh..104
24......HMRKB_Herath...95
25........HV_Hordern...94
26.........GOB_Allen...56
27.........WH_Cooper...48
28.....Mohammad_Asif...36
29..BS_Chandrasekhar...34
30.........JT_Hearne...28
31..........A_Kumble...22
32...........RM_Hogg...19
33........RO_Schwarz...14
..........NAT_Adcock...14
.........RO_Collinge...14
...........NJN_Hawke...14
37..........TA_Boult...13
38.....Shoaib_Akhtar...10
........JR_Hazlewood...10

 

[Dendarii]

30..........K_Rabada...33

You might want to change that one...