Who is South Africa's Greatest Batsman

[OverratedSanity]

Herbie Taylor deserved way more votes btw. He should be named alongside Kallis,Pollock,and Richards. Kept Barnes at bay virtually by himself.

 

[Garson007]

Herbie Taylor deserved way more votes btw. He should be named alongside Kallis,Pollock,and Richards. Kept Barnes at bay virtually by himself.

As is always the case with one person, one vote, you can only ever vote for your first choice - which is never representative of everyone's second choice.

 

[Pratters]

Gary Kirsten says hello.

Averages 43.6 in Australia against the best team at the time. No mean feat when most batsmen were averaging in 20s and 30s there.

45 in England, 50 plus in India. 58.70 in New Zealand which had the most bowler friendly wickets in the decade.

Seriously Kirsten has as much of a case as Kallis if not more. How many test openers in the 90s scored 20 test centuries, I ask you.

People just look at the average of 45 and decide ooh he can't be as good as a batsman averaging 50.

 

[Flem274*]

if barry richards is an atg then so are dempster, donnelly and all the other blokes who have pretty records from less than 10 games.

a more extreme example than mark waugh is sinclair. who would have thought the guy who batted like a god against south africa, pakistan and the windies would average 32?

Didn't mention Kallis.

Yes, Ramparakash would have scored 554 runs in 5 WSC Tests, and would have been called the better batsman when in a pairing with the great Gordon Greenidge.

There is a reason why Barry Richards is the only batsman regarded so highly who has played just 1 Test series. People aren't idiots. Bradman had him in his all time team.

ha.

There have been lots of players who looked special , dominated FC, and were tipped to be great batsmen and actually ended up being great batsmen. If you say there was a chance Barry Richards would've been a Mark Waugh, I say there was at worst just as big a chance he'd have been a Tendulkar/Lara type genius who actually fulfilled his potential.

It remains a "what if", but the stuff he did in WSC which had high quality attacks, and more importantly, was competitive cricket comparable in quality and intensity (for the most part) to test cricket, leads me to believe he'd have coped just fine.

However, I don't see how Pollock's lack of cricket compared to guys like Kallis automatically makes him worse. 23 test doesn't sound like much, and was no where close to a full career even back then, but it's surely a significant enough amount of tests to gauge how great he was. It's not like he played one series like Barry. He toured Australia and England with great success, ripped apart both those teams when he played them at home, in a career which spanned 7 years. His case really doesn't come under "what could have been" at all imo. It was an already great career before it was cut short by circumstances.

of those who are touted as great early on, more fail than succeed.

 

[viriya]

All the SA batsmen of yesteryear did not get a chance to prove themselves at high level.. it's sad but as great as Richards and Pollock were, if you go by Test greatness you have to give it to Kallis.

Oh and btw - AB should be on that list.

 

[Jono]

Yep. Sad that Dravid has somehow been relegated to a status of not quite as good as even kallis and Sanga. For me, after the trifecta of Sachin, Ponting and Lara, it's Dravid. Won us more overseas games than anyone else

Other than a few randoms on the internet, who on Earth has relegated Dravid below Sanga?

There's a chance I might do so by the time Sanga actually hangs up the gloves. Definitely not yet though.

Status update please PEWS. 12 months on.

 

[Debris]

The only answer is Kallis. Sorry, but calling Richards/Pollock better than Kallis is like calling Proctor a better bowler than Steyn/Donald. As much as he might have possibly proved to match their standards, there simply isn't enough proof to say that they would have been nearly as good as Kallis over a whole career of extensive Test cricket. And while I know the question wasn't "who is the better test batsman," Test cricket is the true test of legends. Else Ramprakash would be an ATG English batsman.

There are a couple of red flags with Kallis. His records against Australia was modest and you want to see great batsmen perform well against the best opposition. His record on the sub-continent is amazing but, other than that, I feel that he bullied lesser attacks to some extent. He also had a bit of problem with changing his play to suit the circumstances. Teams were never worried about Kallis turning the course of a game in a session. Pitches were also much better for batting when Kallis was playing. Little things but we are comparing the best.

 

[Goughy]

FWIW Pollock's Test + Rebel Test + World XI 'Tests' (Eng 1970 and Aus 1971/72) over his 25 year career looks like this and I would probably say that is a decent reflection of what was a fine player. The greater sample size does bring him closer to the norm.

47 'Tests' - 4091 runs at 54.55 with 14 centuries and 19 fifties

 

[Prince EWS]

Status update please PEWS. 12 months on.

I rate them about equally but I'm going to stick my neck out and say Sanga. That's nothing against Dravid at all but I think I tend to care about Sanga's career weak spots a bit less than most people (not just for Sanga, for all players). Pretty hard to split them now though.

 

[Teja.]

The answer to this is Herbie Taylor, sad that I'm the only one to vote for him. Had an awesome two decade long test career so nothing to do with romanticizing, I'd say the difference between him and someone like Kalls is about the same as Kallis and Lara.

 

[akilana]

Ya Taylor was amazing. He was better than Lara, Sachin etc.

 

[OverratedSanity]

The answer to this is Herbie Taylor, sad that I'm the only one to vote for him. Had an awesome two decade long test career so nothing to do with romanticizing, I'd say the difference between him and someone like Kalls is about the same as Kallis and Lara.

Yeah, mentioned him.

How about Bruce Mitchell? I think he's a bloke who's very rarely mentioned, much like Taylor.

 

[Teja.]

Yeah, he was awesome as well. Cribb's boi.

 

[Debris]

The answer to this is Herbie Taylor, sad that I'm the only one to vote for him. Had an awesome two decade long test career so nothing to do with romanticizing, I'd say the difference between him and someone like Kalls is about the same as Kallis and Lara.

I always have trouble comparing players from that era to post WWII

 

[Daemon]

what were 'matting wickets'? they used to play cricket on astro?

 

[The Sean]

FWIW Pollock's Test + Rebel Test + World XI 'Tests' (Eng 1970 and Aus 1971/72) over his 25 year career looks like this and I would probably say that is a decent reflection of what was a fine player. The greater sample size does bring him closer to the norm.

47 'Tests' - 4091 runs at 54.55 with 14 centuries and 19 fifties

I did the same thing a while back, though my main focus was on just adding the RoW Tests rather than the rebel matches. With just those World XI Tests included, Pollock's record comes back to the field quite markedly - 31 matches, 2,715 runs at 54.30 with 9 centuries. I remember looking at the Rebel "Tests" as well but my calculations had him finishing with an overall average of 57-odd, so I must have missed some of the matches you looked at.

I did a similar exercise with Barry Richards, adding his RoW and WSC matches. It's still a small sample size but it ended up reading: 15 matches, 1,330 runs at 57.82.

It should be noted that my WSC stats always include this match though it seems that these days the "official" WSC stats (insofar as anything from WSC is official) don't count it. Without that game included, Richards' record is: 14 matches 1,319 runs at 62.80.

Interestingly, Richards did far better in WSC than he did in the RoW matches of 1970, in which he got a start in virtually every innings without going on to a century in any of them - his series record over those five matches was 257 runs at 36.71. If we include the 1970 RoW Tests, which were originally counted in the official records, but ignore WSC (which - for better or for worse - never have been and never will be), Richards' record reads as: 9 matches, 765 runs at 54.64.

 

[Spikey]

it's probably AB

 

[fredfertang]

what were 'matting wickets'? they used to play cricket on astro?

Coir or jute usually - they stretched it over concrete

 

[fredfertang]

Interestingly, Richards did far better in WSC than he did in the RoW matches of 1970, in which he got a start in virtually every innings without going on to a century in any of them - his series record over those five matches was 257 runs at 36.71. If we include the 1970 RoW Tests, which were originally counted in the official records, but ignore WSC (which - for better or for worse - never have been and never will be), Richards' record reads as: 9 matches, 765 runs at 54.64.

There's a new biography of Richards appearing in March, though I'm not sure how much he might have contributed to it - he made it clear in the auto he wrote back in the 70s that he couldn't motivate himself for the RoW matches in the way that he could in that one Test series against Australia, but I think most people naively assumed in 1970 that the South Africans would toe the line, make some concessions to multi-racial cricket and be back in time for Richards and the others to have a decent career - in the event of course nothing short of regime change was needed, and by '77 that was clear, and Richards must have known that WSC was the only chance for him to build on his reputation - of batsmen I've seen for me he'll always be the greatest

 

[Jono]

Status update please PEWS. 12 months on.

I rate them about equally but I'm going to stick my neck out and say Sanga. That's nothing against Dravid at all but I think I tend to care about Sanga's career weak spots a bit less than most people (not just for Sanga, for all players). Pretty hard to split them now though.

Status update please PEWS, 8 days on.