Jacques not King

“Gelb’s Gallery of Greats”, if it ever gets written, will no doubt include a substantial essay on Jaques Kallis but “Holmans’s History of Heroes” will not.

That’s because there are almost as many definitions of cricket greatness as there are cricket-lovers. The main cause of duplication is the faction of know-littles who believe that you can discover greatness with a spreadsheet. You may have come across the type, who in his most recognisable form declares that being an all-time great (ATG) batsman involves nothing more or less than a Test career average exceeding 50.

You can deduce excellence from a spreadsheet, but greatness is something else. Nearly all great players are excellent and most excellent players are great, but the two sets are not quite the same. Learie Constantine was a great player but his numbers are anaemic; Ken Barrington had a fantabulous Test batting average but few refer to him as an ATG.

Stephen’s paean to Kallis, like so many invitations to call him a great player, relies too much on “Look at these numbers” for me to be comfortable with it. The player I have watched over many years does not quite match the conclusions drawn.

Comparing his batting average to Sobers’s is a bit naughty. Sobers averaged in the high fifties at a time when most good batsmen averaged in the mid-to-high forties, whereas Kallis is doing it when his peers are averaging 55. He is far less comparable to Sobers than he is to Geoff Boycott, who was similarly eminent relative to his peers.

‘Boycs’ was a childhood hero of mine, so I don’t mean that comparison pejoratively, but in the end he too fell short of what I need from a batsmen to make me call him “great”. What neither Kallis nor Boycott have done – at least not often enough for anyone to notice – is really dominate a Test bowling attack, and I want to see at least occasional domination in my greats. One of the things which lifts Gavaskar above Boycott for me is the way he put West Indian bowlers to the sword in the Caribbean, even if his signature innings was the patiently resistant double hundred at The Oval in 1979.

Kallis’s bowling is even less remarkable. He is the only member of the 200-wicket club to have taken less than two wickets per match. No other member has as few as three 5-wicket hauls against major teams – the others all have at least six. Against non-minnow teams, his average is a moderate 34, and the trend is upwards, not downwards. He is a fill-in bowler par extraordinaire, but an attack featuring him as one of four specialists would look very thin indeed.

None of this is meant to belittle what he has achieved, still less to deny his enormous value as a player. Only a captain already able to call on Aubrey Faulkner, Keith Miller and Garry Sobers would be sane to leave him out, and South Africa are a very strong side because of the amount he contributes. At what he does, he is undoubtedly excellent.

To me, though, he lacks the sprinkling of magic dust which bestows greatness. If I’ve got involved with a good conversation in the bar, the news that great player has come on to bowl or out to bat causes me to quickly finish up and get outside, but hearing that Kallis is about to get going usually seems like a cue for me to get the next round in. But if his record is enough to satisfy you about his greatness, as it certainly appears it is for Stephen, then I wish you joy in him.