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With the curtain drawn on the stellar career of South African cricket legend Jacques Kallis, I thought I would look at the leading all-rounders who have graced our great game, to see how they compare with each other and where Kallis might sit upon the playing green of the greats.
Cricket is unique in that it offers its fans more stats than most other sports to provide them with support for their favourite players.
Yet as helpful as those stats can be, they can also be misleading as fans can and will pull, shake, rattle, stretch and distort those stats in order to justify the elevation of their favourite players.
Even comparing batsmen with other batsmen, or bowlers with other bowlers, is akin to tip-toeing through a minefield.
So how is it possible to compare all-rounders with other all-rounders?
To compound matters further, there are batting all-rounders and bowling all-rounders, and those who were highly competent in both areas such that they could win selection in either department alone.
The over-riding problem lies in the inherent differences in which batting and bowling are both perceived and measured.
Batting, by its nature, is infinite. A batsman can make almost any score in an innings. The only things holding him back are fitness, attention span, motivation and, perhaps most importantly, practicality.
Batting each of five days to accumulate 1000 runs might be good for the individual, but it does nothing for the team, the fans, the spectacle and ultimately, the game.
On the other hand bowling, by its nature, is finite. A bowler can only take 10 wickets in an innings, or 20 wickets in a match.
Consequently, batsmen tend to be appreciated more than bowlers, and batting all-rounders more than bowling all-rounders.
So we’re going to explore several different methodology approaches, including one I have devised myself (although I’m sure others have thought of it also) and I will leave it to readers to determine which methodology is the most accurate.
Writer Gerry Armstrong, in his wonderful book ‘The 100 Greatest Cricketers’ (2006), used his own methodology to determine the various abilities of the five great all-rounders of the 70s and 80s – Mike Procter, Richard Hadlee, Imran Khan, Ian Botham and Kapil Dev.
Because Procter, a South Africa, only played seven Tests before his country was isolated from international sport, Armstrong decided to compare the first class careers of the five players – this being the only level playing field available, so to speak.
Each player was given a ‘score’ simply arrived at by dividing their batting average by their bowling average. The higher the score, the better the player.
Armstrong argued “the basis of winning cricket matches is to score more runs than your opponents, so if you score your runs at a higher average than you take your wickets, you should be going okay”.
The results were: Procter (1.84), Hadlee (1.75), Imran (1.65), Botham (1.25) and Kapil (1.21).
I thought this was eminently sensible, since it matched my perception of the five players, who I ranked in much the same order except I would have had Imran and Hadlee swapped around.
However, when I expanded the list to include other cricketers, I was quickly dismayed to discover this methodology heavily favoured batting all-rounders.
The top five, based on their first class career, were: Warwick Armstrong (2.38), Aubrey Faulkner (2.34), Charlie Macartney (2.19), WG Grace (2.17) and Frank Woolley (2.05).
These five men are all great cricketers, but can it be truly argued they are the five greatest all-rounders, even just on their first class records?
Using the same methodology (by dividing batting average by bowling average), here is the top ten for Test cricket.
1. Gary Sobers (1.697)
2. Jacques Kallis (1.695)
3. Imran Khan (1.65)
4. Keith Miller (1.60)
5. Wally Hammond (1.55)
6. Aubrey Faulkner (1.53)
7. Charlie Macartney (1.52)
8. Stanley Jackson (1.46)
9. Shaun Pollock (1.40)
10. Asif Iqbal (1.37)
Fans of Kallis will be delighted he has run Sobers so close, and there are no quibbles with the top four.
However, the presence of Hammond, Macartney, Jackson and Asif in the top 10 provides the flaw in the system, in that it is biased towards batting all-rounders quite considerably.
There must be a better methodology.
Another methodolgy also uses batting and bowling averages, but instead of dividing them, they are subtracted. Again, the greater the difference, then the better the all-rounder.
The top 10 for Test cricket using this methodology (batting average less bowling average) are:
1. Gary Sobers (23.74)
2. Jacques Kallis (22.72)
3. Wally Hammond (20.65)
4. Stanley Jackson (15.50)
5. Imran Khan (14.88)
6. Charlie Macartney (14.22)
7. Aubrey Faulkner (14.20)
8. Keith Miller (14.00)
9. Ted Dexter (12.95)
10. Frank Worrell (10.77)
Again, an outstanding collection of cricketers but also again, this methodology heavily favours batting all-rounders.
Hammond, Jackson, Macartney, Dexter and Worrell only took between one to 1.3 wickets per Test. This suggests they are quasi all-rounders rather than truly genuine all-rounders. This system is perhaps too simplistic.
When I devised my methodology several years ago, I hit upon the idea of finding an all-rounder’s ‘productivity’, his busyness, so to speak, in a game of cricket.
Since all-rounders are involved in both scoring runs and taking wickets, there must be a way to measure their productivity. The more productive a player, the higher his quotient, the better a player he is.
However, going back to the original problem that scoring runs is potentially infinite, but taking wickets is actually finite, a way had to found to provide a value for wickets in relation to runs other than one for one.
I came up with a to:1 ratio of each wicket worth 10 runs.
I had no other reason for choosing a 10:1 ratio other than reading that when the great South African batsman Barry Richards came to South Australia in 1970/71 to play grade and Shield cricket, the Coca-Cola company agreed to sponsor him one dollar for every run and $10 a wicket. It seemed reasonable enough.
To determine a player’s productivity quotient (PQ), I had the total number of runs he had scored plus the total wickets taken (x 10), then divided this by the number of Tests he had played, to arrive at his PQ.
Unlike the previous methodologies used, this productivity quotient gives greater recognition to the bowling compartment of the game.
The top 10 Test cricketing all-rounders based on PQ (x 10) are:
1. Gary Sobers (111.63)
2. Aubrey Faulkner (102.96)
3. Jacques Kallis (97.64)
4. Eddie Barlow (97.20)
5. Wally Hammond (95.05)
6. Frank Worrell (89.22)
7. Chris Cairns (88.71)
8. Richard Hadlee (86.44)
9. Vinoo Mankad (84.75)
10. Tony Greig (86.36)
Again, it just doesn’t look right! Barlow, busy cricketer that he was, surely isn’t an all-time top 10? And where did Cairns come from? He couldn’t possibly be better than Hadlee?
I felt I was on the right track with my methodology, but I had to find the correct value of wickets to runs.
A fellow reader suggested the value should be 15:1, since a leading bowler will take about five wickets a match, while a leading batsman will score an average 75-80 runs (sometimes in a single innings, sometimes over two innings).
I thought this made sense, so I then looked at the leading 20 run scorers in history in order to gain an average runs scored per Test (as opposed to innings less not outs).
I also looked at the leading 20 wicket takers in history to determine an average of wickets taken per Test. The results were a little surprising.
This article will continue in part two tomorrow.
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