• Welcome to the Cricket Web forums, one of the biggest forums in the world dedicated to cricket.

    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join the Cricket Web community today!

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us.

Jacques Kallis vs Allan Border

Who was the greater test batsman?

  • Jacques Kallis

    Votes: 28 50.0%
  • Allan Border

    Votes: 28 50.0%

  • Total voters
    56

Bolo.

International Captain
And who actually batted in a weaker lineup needing him to do so, unlike what is claimed about Kallis.

However, I do think Border batting lower in the order is a fair critique. Not sure why he did so.
Unless you are batting at the top, where it doesn't matter so much, the weaker your lineup, the more you need to accelerate as you will be running out of parners. See Chanders.
 

subshakerz

International Coach
Sutcliffe and Waugh will be extremely surprised to learn that no great bat changes his style. I never really watched him, but he was by all accounts free flowing pretest.

Stop misrepresenting what I am saying. I am talking about the weakess in the top order. RSA had a top order collapse in what felt like pretty much every test before Kallis came right. The lower order was good enough to recover it most of the time, but you can't pretend needing to recover from frequent top order collapses is not an issue that teams really want to solve.
Yeah but your whole argument is that a weak top order caused Kallis to bat conservatively for his career. Its a flimsy argument.

If that is true, why couldnt he just accelerate later in the innings once things are settled down? Why couldnt he bat more freely when Gibbs and Kirsten had a solid combo going for a while? Why did he need to maintain the same pace throughout his innings? If your side bats deep, why go in a shell?
 

subshakerz

International Coach
Unless you are batting at the top, where it doesn't matter so much, the weaker your lineup, the more you need to accelerate as you will be running out of parners. See Chanders.
I agree. I think both Chanders and Border should have batted higher up unless there was a reason for them to bat so down I am missing.
 

Bolo.

International Captain
Yeah but your whole argument is that a weak top order caused Kallis to bat conservatively for his career. Its a flimsy argument.

If that is true, why couldnt he just accelerate later in the innings once things are settled down? Why couldnt he bat more freely when Gibbs and Kirsten had a solid combo going for a while? Why did he need to maintain the same pace throughout his innings? If your side bats deep, why go in a shell?
Na, my position is that Kallis taking on the role of conservative bat early career was an advantage. It shaped him into a bat that struggled to accelerate, which I have always criticized him for.

It just makes no sense to criticise him in relation to border in this regard, seeing as he was worse at accelerating and batting in more match situations when he needed to be accelerating... Kallis was typically fine with his one paced batting due to seldom running out of partners, playing with bowlers that struck fast, and (late career) playing for a team that played for a lot of draws to ensure series results.
 

subshakerz

International Coach
Na, my position is that Kallis taking on the role of conservative bat early career was an advantage. It shaped him into a bat that struggled to accelerate, which I have always criticized him for.

It just makes no sense to criticise him in relation to border in this regard, seeing as he was worse at accelerating and batting in more match situations when he needed to be accelerating... Kallis was typically fine with his one paced batting due to seldom running out of partners, playing with bowlers that struck fast, and (late career) playing for a team that played for a lot of draws to ensure series results.
Yeah my critique of Kallis as a slowmo is more of a general one. I agree that it wouldnt be a frontline argument against Border, though I think SA suffered more from Kallis' style than Australia with Border.

For main arguments, it is what I mentioned in the beginning of this thread, Border has a better away record and faced better quality bowling overall. I find Kallis' record in England almost unforgiveable as a top tier ATG and I am surprised his fanboys never bring it up.
 

Gob

International Coach
Yeah my critique of Kallis as a slowmo is more of a general one. I agree that it wouldnt be a frontline argument against Border, though I think SA suffered more from Kallis' style than Australia with Border.

For main arguments, it is what I mentioned in the beginning of this thread, Border has a better away record and faced better quality bowling overall. I find Kallis' record in England almost unforgiveable as a top tier ATG and I am surprised his fanboys never bring it up.
That record is also surprising since he looks to have the ideal technique for England.

Same can be said for Williamson so looks can be deceiving
 

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
Sanga was even more of a prank batsman and overrated hack. As such, he was not fit to shine the shoes of Kallis. Kallis, although far superior to Sanga, was also a prank batsman and overrated hack when compared to Border and was not fit to shine the great man's shoes. None of them, and I think you'll agree with me here, are fit to shine Lara's shoes, because said shoes are perfect and don't require shining at all.
?
 

Red_Ink_Squid

Global Moderator
The main critique with Kallis was that he,as the main bat in his side, only had one mode of slow batting and couldnt step up gears when needed to, which occasionally cost SA. This is pretty obvious to anyone who watched him in the 2000s.

Do you dispute this?
This is quite reasonable and it's fair enough to point out that Kallis struggled to accelerate.

The problem is your other posts haven't been depicting him as a great who 'occasionally' played bad innings, you've been spinning a narrative that his entire MO was somehow detrimental to his team and he's not in the same league as players whose records are worse than his.

I mean, look at this:
Border's brand was gritty, back-to-the-wall and uncompromising. Kallis' brand was timid, conservative and safety-first.
Yes it was very timid of Kallis to score all those thousands of runs at the top of the order that won his team a stackload of Test matches.

Kallis' brand was being one of the most reliable scorers of centuries in the history of the sport, while being a legit Test class bowler. Trying to spin that as a negative is crazy.
 

trundler

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Nah he had 0 gold innings in DoG's ranking. Even on an objective stats based criteria Kallis has a dearth of standout innings. Subjectively, he has no innings like Dravid/Smith's work in England, Ponting at Old Trafford/Perth or YK's work in SL/India. He has been artificially and retrospectively elevated to rival Ponting on here when he was less of a threat than Dravid/Younis frankly. Ps I am not one to fall for the marquee series effect but it's just true.

Still undecided because Border didn't win matches either, ftr.
 

Coronis

International Coach
He got some pretty big scores in his innings if I remember correctly. Might hold a couple of records, from what I've been told.
So? The bloke was up and down through his career. Not really a great example of maximizing runs and certainly not a point he has over Tendulkar.
 

shortpitched713

International Captain
Nah he had 0 gold innings in DoG's ranking. Even on an objective stats based criteria Kallis has a dearth of standout innings. Subjectively, he has no innings like Dravid/Smith's work in England, Ponting at Old Trafford/Perth or YK's work in SL/India. He has been artificially and retrospectively elevated to rival Ponting on here when he was less of a threat than Dravid/Younis frankly. Ps I am not one to fall for the marquee series effect but it's just true.

Still undecided because Border didn't win matches either, ftr.
TBH, bowlers win matches for mine so I'm not sure I like this argument. Batsmen save matches, and help build the totals that are a necessary, but not sufficient condition, for the bowlers to then go and win the match.
 

shortpitched713

International Captain
So? The bloke was up and down through his career. Not really a great example of maximizing runs and certainly not a point he has over Tendulkar.
"Maximizing" in the sense I was referring to deals with cashing in when you're hot, or the runs are available. It doesn't have anything to do with consistency in this sense. The fact that Lara has got some huge totals, to me means that he's got this in him. For Tendulkar, the point I made was that him not taking advantage of the "easier" conditions in the later half of his career counts against him in this sense, and can not simply be brushed aside as some want to.
 

Coronis

International Coach
"Maximizing" in the sense I was referring to deals with cashing in when you're hot, or the runs are available. It doesn't have anything to do with consistency in this sense. The fact that Lara has got some huge totals, to me means that he's got this in him. For Tendulkar, the point I made was that him not taking advantage of the "easier" conditions in the later half of his career counts against him in this sense, and can not simply be brushed aside as some want to.
Ah so you mean ignoring stuff like injuries and age and ignoring Lara’s troughs, in that case I agree.
 

Top