An all-round force

He has been South Africa's answer to Glenn McGrath with the ball, and has contributed more than usefully with the bat over his ten years in international cricket. With a bowling average of 23.21 and a batting average of 31.51, Pollock is a member of the dying breed of genuine allrounders in the game. The bowling might have gone down a notch, but Shaun Pollock has every reason to be proud of the kind of numbers he has achieved in his 99-Test career.

Just 22 when he made his Test debut, Pollock impressed immediately with an outstanding series at home against England, taking 16 wickets at 23. Since then, his consistency has been his forte: in 32 series (excluding one-off matches), only four times has his bowling average gone beyond 30, but three of those instances occurred over the last couple of seasons, when his pace has visibly decreased, making him a less potent bowler.

A five-for in the last Test of his first series brought his bowling average down to 23, and it's stayed on the right side of 25 almost throughout since.

With 389 wickets, Pollock is tenth in the all-time list of leading wicket-takers, and easily the highest among all South Africans - Allan Donald, his new-ball partner for a considerable period, is next with 330. None of the others have even managed 250, with Makhaya Ntini being one short of the mark. Among South Africans with at least 100 Test wickets, only two have a better average than Pollock's 23.21.

One of his most remarkable achievements has been his wicket-taking ability in the subcontinent, where pitches are usually more responsive to spin bowling. Pollock has consistently found success here, with an average which is marginally better than his career stats. And these numbers exclude his performances in Bangladesh, where he has taken seven wickets at 10.85. Include those numbers, and his subcontinent stats look even better - 59 wickets at 21.68.

Though bowling has been his stronger suit, Pollock the batsman has been a more-than-handy lower-order performer, as an average of 31 testifies. He is among a handful of cricketers with at least 2000 runs and 150 wickets who has a higher batting average than the bowling one. At the head of the pack is Jacques Kallis, another South African who'll play his 100th Test at Centurion.

Pollock, though, has struggled to make his mark against the best team in the world: against all the other sides he concedes less than 24 runs per wicket, but against Australia it goes up to nearly 37, with a wicket every 80 balls, compared to one every 59 balls against the other teams. That's the one blot in an otherwise glittering career. (Click here for Pollock's career summary.)