Yeah crap that W.G fellow....For what they're worth, the ICC player rankings for all-rounders seem to be
(there isn't an all-time ranking, this is from me typing in many of the usual suspects):
Sobers 669
Botham 646
Kallis 616
Miller 573
Imran 518
Flintoff 501
Faulkner 501
S Pollock 490 -> we all missed him
Hadlee 483
Noble 451
Kapil 433
Vinoo Mankad 417
Vettori 412
Mushtaq M 386
(Others are much below this eg Grace)
Seems reasonable.
That's peak ratings, though mate, which explains why Botham is no.2 and Imran is so low. Basically Imran was never quite a world-class batsmen and world-class bowler at the same time but when you put his career numbers together he is second only to Sobers in my opinion.For what they're worth, the ICC player rankings for all-rounders seem to be
(there isn't an all-time ranking, this is from me typing in many of the usual suspects):
Sobers 669
Botham 646
Kallis 616
Miller 573
Imran 518
Flintoff 501
Faulkner 501
S Pollock 490 -> we all missed him
Hadlee 483
Noble 451
Kapil 433
Vinoo Mankad 417
Vettori 412
Mushtaq M 386
(Others are much below this eg Grace)
Seems reasonable.
Possibly quite right, discussion to same effect on previous page. Though I'm not sure how to bucket Kallis. He's been excellent with bat and concurrently good with ball for a long time.That's peak ratings, though mate, which explains why Botham is no.2 and Imran is so low. Basically Imran was never quite a world-class batsmen and world-class bowler at the same time but when you put his career numbers together he is second only to Sobers in my opinion.
How??if you go by stats kallis is by far the best allrounder ever. quality top order batsman and one hell of a fast bowler in his day.
261 is close to 400? And he is averaging less than 2 wickets a test, hardly a terrific front-line bowler.runs scored at high average and close on 400 test wickets thats how.
The guy made a simple lookup mistake, Kallis has 396 FC wickets.261 is close to 400? And he is averaging less than 2 wickets a test, hardly a terrific front-line bowler.
Except that simple look up mistake was being used to promote Kallis as by far the best all-rounder ever.The guy made a simple lookup mistake, Kallis has 396 FC wickets.
If you've been following - Kallis has said he doesn't want to bowl much, and seems to bowl less when things are going OK. You could call him a somewhat reluctant all-rounder of late (Imran did this too btw, later on) which mostly explains his low wickets/test.
Therefore one should also look at his SR and average.His average (~31) and SR (mid-60s) are not flash by McGrath standards and more comparable to Vaas (who definitely was a front line bowler contemporary to Kallis, and a well regarded one).
Since Kallis is a batting all rounder (in top 5 of his time in his primary area), that's all he should have to do in his secondary area (be among the top 12-15 of his time.). If he was in the top 5 of both, he'd probably be a mythical creature like Bradman, as no other all-rounder of recent times has done that. (Don't know about the early days of men's cricket. In women's cricket there are a 2-3 today in this category).
Probably a more complete all rounder package than Imran, to be relevant to this thread.Ya man very true very under-rated, in fact he is more of a complete package than Tendulkar and a sort of Darren Gough-ey type of guy, what a legend.