da aposte e ganhe： With an aggregate approaching 8000 and an average of more than 56, Jaques Kallis is easily one of the giants of contemporary cricket, and the most prolific batsman that South Africa have ever produced
da gbg bet： S Rajesh15-Apr-2006
Jacques Kallis: the rock in the South African batting line-up © Getty Images
With an aggregate approaching 8000 and an average of more than 56, Jaques Kallis is easily one of the giants of contemporary cricket, and the most prolific batsman that South Africa have ever produced. In a batting line-up that has often had an iffy look to it, Kallis has been the steadying force and their go-to man, even more so since the retirement of Gary Kirsten, the only South African to have played more Tests (101).Kallis’s start in Test cricket was anything but encouraging: 1, 7, 6, 39, 0, 2, 2 – these were the scores for Kallis in his first seven Test innings. His next three fetched him 177 – including his first hundred, in trying circumstances against Australia in 1997-98 – but then followed a prolonged slump, when his next nine Tests fetched 375 runs at 26.78. In fact, it took him all of 22 matches to get to 1000 runs, at which stage his average was a modest 30.87.
20 952 31.73 2/ 5 40 2479 43.49 7/ 12 60 3971 47.27 9/ 22 80 5967 53.75 16/ 31 99 7840 56.40 24/ 38As the table below shows, Kallis’s stats at the 50-Test mark were fairly ordinary. In his 51st, he crafted an unbeaten 157 against Zimbabwe, and that kickstarted a phenomenal run in which he amassed 660 runs and was dismissed just three times. Since then it has mostly been one almost non-stop run-fest in which he has, on an average, scored a hundred every 2.88 Tests. During this entire period, which started in September 2001, the longest streak without a hundred has been just six matches.
In first 50 Tests 2952 41.00 7/ 16 In next 49 Tests 4888 72.95 17/ 22Over the last five-and-a-half years, Kallis has easily been the most prolific batsman in the world, with an average which is four runs higher than his nearest competitor, Ricky Ponting.
Jacques Kallis 49 4888 72.9517/ 22 Ricky Ponting 57 5792 68.9522/ 19 Brian Lara 44 4761 62.6416/ 14 Rahul Dravid 52 4520 61.9113/ 21 Inzamam-ul-Haq 34 2967 59.3410/ 12And while most batsmen find the going tougher in the second innings, Kallis seems to relish the challenge, averaging nearly 60 (though it helps that out of 68 innings, he has been unbeaten in 21).
Don Bradman 30 2299 104.5010/ 8 Herbert Sutcliffe 31 1541 64.206/ 6Jacques Kallis 68 2808 59.745/ 18 B Mitchell 38 1654 57.033/ 10 Andy Flower 49 1972 56.345/ 10Whereas Kallis the batsman has grown in stature with every passing year, Kallis the bowler is clearly on the decline. Once capable of swinging it at around 140 kmph, Kallis is now clearly reluctant to exert himself with the ball. In his last 30 Tests, he only has 45 wickets at nearly 43 apiece. He still remains a force as a bowler, though, as he showed the Australians in the recently concluded series, dismissing all the top-order batsmen except Matthew Hayden at least once in the three Tests. And the 25-run difference between his batting and bowling averages puts him on top of the allrounders list, ahead of even Garry Sobers.
Jacques Kallis 7840/ 56.40 196/ 31.68 24.72 Garry Sobers 8032/ 57.78 235/ 34.03 23.75 Imran Khan 3807/ 37.69 362/ 22.81 14.88 Keith Miller 2958/ 36.97 170/ 22.97 14.00 Shaun Pollock 3372/ 31.51 389/ 23.21 8.30 Ian Botham 5200/ 33.54 383/ 28.40 5.14 Richard Hadlee 3124/ 27.16 431/ 22.29 4.87 Chris Cairns 3320/ 33.53 218/ 29.40 4.13 Andrew Flintoff 3080/ 33.47 174/ 31.45 2.02 Kapil Dev 5248/ 31.05 434/ 29.64 1.41Even though Kallis has been so prolific, a few opposition line-ups have had a fair amount of success against him: against Sri Lanka he averages just 33, and hasn’t managed a single hundred in 21 innings, while Australia and Pakistan have also kept him down to less than 40 runs per innings. (Click here for Kallis’s career summary.)