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Kallis Vs Dravid

Who's better?


  • Total voters
    62

hang on

State Vice-Captain
Depends on how slow. Also, on a green deck with reasonable pace, even if the ball's moving, there's runs to be had. I don't see it as well established at all, every pitch is different. If you play on enough types of pitches you see which ones are tougher to score off and which ones aren't and green decks are not the toughest.



For me, that's absolutely it. Against Australia, very few of Kallis' knocks have been influential on result of the match. Kallis would just drop anchor and the **** at the other end had to make the play. In fairness, SA have had plenty of players of that ilk (goes a long way to explaining why they've got such a poor record against Australia as a team) but the point is, players like that don't win you games as often as a bloke whose batting by its nature forces the opposition to react and change their game, especially when the opposition are equally matched. Dictating the play doesn't just result in runs for you either, it lifts the bloke at the other end.


It's not just knocks against Australia per se which influences opinion on Dravid because he's had more than his fair share of poor ones too. It's when and how he's gone about his runs. It's not a technical or statistical thing but Dravid's knocks have just been more influential in wins than Kallis', on the ones I've seen.

Kallis doing well against India vs Dravid doing poorly against SA is neither here nor there for me. It's fairly clear the Saffers bowling attack has been vastly superior to India anywhere in the world, India's wins at home and away generally driven by their batting being able to suffocate or chase down anything the opposition sets. You'd take facing Kumble/Zaheer/Harbhajan/Pathan/Sreesanth any day of the week on any pitch over Donald/DeVilliers/Pollock/Steyn, home conditions or no.

excellent points.


some other semi related thoughts on this: i think that the stats show that it is harder to bat in saf than anywhere else even for the home batsmen. is that perhaps connected to the fact that saf have had fewer top drawer ie kallis, lara, tendulkar type batsmen?

another point, if saf is that much harder to bat in, being used to batting there confers a massive advantage to home players and thus visiting players who do well there should be considered truly great, especially given the quality of bowling that has been at the disposal of the saffers.
 

Furball

Evil Scotsman
Just to back up T_C's point, Dravid's 2 tons against Australia have been monster efforts (233 at Adelaide and 180 at Kolkata) that have helped set up Indian wins from positions they had no right to win from, and most of his other biggish innings against Australia have contributed to Indian wins (93 at Perth in 08, his unbeaten 70 odd in the 2nd dig at Adelaide, a quick 91* at Sydney 04 to bat Australia out of winning the series) whereas Kallis' big innings have been in draws or defeats, and a fair few of them have been scored extremely slowly.
 

smash84

The Tiger King
I still don't see Kallis getting enough credit for playing his home games in South Africa. It's such a ridiculous disadvantage compared to playing them in India. The cases in favour of Dravid won't be especially convincing until they do a better job of addressing that point imo.
Yes but if you go by this token then SA bowlers record at home should be discounted as well and the SC bowlers should be given extra marks for performing well there.
 

Top_Cat

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Just to back up T_C's point, Dravid's 2 tons against Australia have been monster efforts (233 at Adelaide and 180 at Kolkata) that have helped set up Indian wins from positions they had no right to win from, and most of his other biggish innings against Australia have contributed to Indian wins (93 at Perth in 08, his unbeaten 70 odd in the 2nd dig at Adelaide, a quick 91* at Sydney 04 to bat Australia out of winning the series) whereas Kallis' big innings have been in draws or defeats, and a fair few of them have been scored extremely slowly.
God the Adelaide knocks were special. I mean they were against an attack including Brad Williams on a road but he actually bowled fairly well the day Dravid got the double, as did most of the Aussie attack. Reckon maybe one or two beat the bat all day and Dravid's play went from fortress to glorious cover drives if the bowlers' length got slightly full and then had the balls to hook Gillespie (I think) for 6 to get his ton. Hard to know where to bowl to a bloke in that sort of nick.

Still one of the most complete knocks I've seen live. The Kolkata knock was a different thing entirely, was memorable because he just looked so very bad until he got past 100 I think (was coming off some woeful form).
 
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Uppercut

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Yes but if you go by this token then SA bowlers record at home should be discounted as well and the SC bowlers should be given extra marks for performing well there.
I think so, yes. I think most people take it into account when assessing the records of guys like Pollock and Donald, and I'm sure I've seen it crop up in criticism of Kallis's bowling.
 

stuw

Cricket Spectator
Both are equal.But i would go for dravid because of some of his outstanding innings which kallis seldom has.
 

akilana

International 12th Man
Yes but if you go by this token then SA bowlers record at home should be discounted as well and the SC bowlers should be given extra marks for performing well there.
Of course they're always discounted and that's why Ntini isn't often mentioned when we talk about great bowlers here. On the other hand, Steyn, Donald and Pollock have great away records.

If SC bowlers should be given extra points for doing well in SC.. eg. Imran doing well in Pakistan. then SA batsmen should be given extra points for doing well in their country.
 

Uppercut

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Probably because it wouldn't be fair on the Indian fans that have finally managed to erase the traumatic experience of watching Kallis bat last winter from their collective memory.
 

robelinda

International Vice-Captain
Australia has never had any problems batting in SA. I don't know how many of you have watched SA tests in SA since 92 but its my observation that unless they are up against a strong bowling attack they generally prepare sporting wickets against teams they know have weak bowling attacks. Teams like NZ, India for instance and WI and Sri Lanka for the main part have always been faced with green tops more than other teams, when Australia tours we get flatter wickets and they are good for batting, but our bowling has always won us tests in SA and we have bowled much better than the home SA bowlers almost every series, like they are expecting to run through us easily or something, always been odd they haven't fired at home against us. Can only think of one green top we played on and that was the 2nd test 97, but it was more overcast conditions and a bit of grass that day, flattened out and we chased 270 to win.
 
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centurymaker

Cricketer Of The Year
Australia has never had any problems bating in SA. I don't know how many of you have watched SA tests in SA since 92 but its my observation that unless they are up against a string bowling attack they generally prepare sporting wickets against teams they know have weak bowling attacks. Teams like NZ, India for instance and WI and Sri Lanka for the main part have always been faced with green tops more than other teams, when Australia tours we get flatter wickets and they are good for batting, but out bowling has always won us tests in SA and we have bowled much better than the home SA bowlers almost every series, like they are expecting to run through us easily or something, always been odd they haven't fired at home against us. Can only think of one green top we played on and that was the 2nd test 97, but it was more overcast conditions and a bit of grass that day, flattened out and we chased 270 to win. Some of the pitches
Quality Post!!!
Even I once mentioned this some time ago, but people ignored it...
The best recent example of this is what england did to india this year. They left plenty of grass on the pitches and used the balls from 2010, which swing more, to target indian batsmen. This is because they knew india couldn't do the same to their batsmen as india had no one good enough to exploit these things..
Next year, I doubt england will prepare green tops for steyn and morkel. Expect to see some flat decks...
Hence, the conclusion you can draw from this is that you can't look at, for instance, Hughes' record in SA and say he performs better on "spicy" South African pitches than Dravid because they usually on different type of pitches...
 

robelinda

International Vice-Captain
Hah, plenty of typos and an odd ending, thats what you get for posting when you just get out of bed......
 

Furball

Evil Scotsman
Quality Post!!!
Even I once mentioned this some time ago, but people ignored it...
The best recent example of this is what england did to india this year. They left plenty of grass on the pitches and used the balls from 2010, which swing more, to target indian batsmen. This is because they knew india couldn't do the same to their batsmen as india had no one good enough to exploit these things..
Next year, I doubt england will prepare green tops for steyn and morkel. Expect to see some flat decks...
Hence, the conclusion you can draw from this is that you can't look at, for instance, Hughes' record in SA and say he performs better on "spicy" South African pitches than Dravid because they usually on different type of pitches...
Utter crap.
 

centurymaker

Cricketer Of The Year
Utter crap.
maybe you didn't watch the Lords, Trent bridge, and Edgbaston test.

yes they weren't green tops, but they had plenty of grass. (You rarely see much grass on pitches these days....)

Just because england ended up batting first in those conditions and doing well, doesn't mean the conditons weren't bowler friendly..
 
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Top_Cat

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Err, I think he's balking at the inference that they deliberately left grass on the deck. From memory, it was pissing down immediately before those Tests?
 

centurymaker

Cricketer Of The Year
Err, I think he's balking at the inference that they deliberately left grass on the deck. From memory, it was pissing down immediately before those Tests?
it's always raining in england.
Plus it's a reasonable inference to make that they, at least, partly did it to make life difficult for india.
 

robelinda

International Vice-Captain
Pefectly good pitches for test cricket. England bowled the same as they did against us on our flat pitches, just too my skill I'm afraid for the Aussie and Indian batting lineups.
 

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