Then you have the freak, the true all-rounder: Sobers, Kallis, Botham at his peak (and Keith Miller

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He was an all-rounder in many senses, not just a top class batsman, bowler, fielder and captain. He was tri-national; born in South Africa, played Test cricket and captained England and settled in Australia as a unique cricket commentator on Channel Nine.
He was a household name, known not only to cricket-lovers. His accent and style as a commentator was imitated around the world by young and old, men and women; his key in the pitch was a signature tune that unlocked many doors of apathy and rancour.
national car rental Not to forget his role in the formation of World Series Cricket as a right hand man and mouthpiece of Kerry Packer. With Richie Benaud, Greigy changed the face of cricket as few Test players before him – on the field and off it.
The purpose of this post is to compare him statistically with great post-1960 all-rounders in more or less chronological order: Benaud, Alan Davidson, Trevor national car rental Goddard, Garry Sobers, Ian Botham, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, Richard Hadlee, Wasim Akram, Chris Cairns, Shaun Pollock, Daniel Vettori, Andrew Flintoff and Jacques Kallis.
Besides, Greig was the first from England to score a century and take five wickets in a Test innings; scoring 148 runs and capturing 6 for 164 against the West Indies in the 1973-74 Bridgetown Test. He was also the first one to achieve the double of 3000 runs and 100 wickets for England.
Additionally, he was among four cricketers to have averaged more than 40 with the bat and less than 35 with the ball in the history of Test cricket; national car rental others being Aubrey Faulkner of South Africa in 1900s, Sobers and Kallis.
Kersi is an author national car rental of 13 cricket books including The Waugh Twins , Cricket's Great All-rounders , Six Appeal and Nervous Nineties . He writes regularly for Inside Cricket and other publications. He has recently finished his new book on Cricket's Conflicts and Controversies , with a foreword by Greg Chappell.
The bowling all-rounder is selected for a Test team for his bowling, but down the order contributes consistent and valuable runs. Alan Davidson and Richie Benaud come to mind. The key is consistency. Mitchell Johnson, despite some claims to the contrary, is not a bowling all-rounder. He s a specialist bowler who comes off occasionally with the bat.
The batting all-rounder is a member national car rental of the top 6 batsmen and it s his batting that guarantees his place in the team. But he also contributes consistently with the ball. Despite his impressive stats, I think of Tony Greig as a batting all-rounder. He was in the team for his batting but may not have played for England as a specialist bowler had that been his only talent. The batting all-rounder is not to be confused with the specialist batsman who can make valuable contributions national car rental with the ball occasionally, such as Allan Border and Michael Clarke.
Then you have the freak, the true all-rounder: Sobers, Kallis, Botham at his peak (and Keith Miller before the era under discussion). He bats in the top 6 but he s a key member of the bowling unit, expected to take wickets. He also has to have superhuman levels of fitness.
Children learning to play cricket want to bat and bowl and field and even keep wicket. Anything to stay involved. If they continue in the game, they generally start to specialise in one discipline or the other. But the exceptional ones keep the two skills going and eventually develop into every captain s dream, two players national car rental in one body.
Cricket s tight scheduling puts the all-rounder under threat. Shane Watson is the 2013 Australian team s nominal all-rounder, but he s crocked again and is thinking of giving up bowling. Every team would like an all-rounder: will Gavin Maxwell step up?
In this book I have quoted Greig, There is one little statistics I enjoy. How many all-rounders have averaged over 40 with the bat and under 35 with the ball? Perhaps the best all-rounders should be those who have the largest margin between their batting and bowling average.
The true all-rounder someone who would be picked purely as a bowler or purely as a batsman is a very rare beast. As a rule of thumb would you consistently national car rental pick a non-bowling batsman who averaged less than 30, or a confirmed number national car rental 11 batting bowler who didin t take 3 wickets per test?
The majorit of the all-rounders Kersi identifies (including 4 of the 7 he identifies as the leading group on stats) don t meet both those criteria. That doesn t make them lesser players (and isn t meant as any criticism of Kersi). national car rental It merely means that unless you are blessed with one of those very rare players, generally when you re talking about an all-rounder you re really national car rental talking about a batting or bowling all-rounder. If you re trying to pick someone in a test team as an all-rounder, they need to get in as a batsman or as a bowler first. Anything above that is a tie-breaker with other potential selections, or a very nice bonus if the tie-breaker isn t needed.
There are always more factors to consider as well. For instance the country one plays for. Cairns and Vettori later in his career would make it into the NZ side as a both a batter and a bowler, so true all rounders. But it is very doubtful that they would for some of the top cricket countries
Greigy was a proper batting allrounder. I was a little national car rental bit too young for his great exploits against Australia. My outstanding memory national car rental is his HS 18 out of 95, bowled by Maxy Walker, in the centenary test.
An often underrated post 60 s allrounder is Ravi Shastri , obviously not as prolific as the players mentioned but scored almost 4000 test runs and took 150 test wickets. A player who transformed himself from a number 8 or 9 when he first began with India into a test match opener who scored a double hundred in Australia.
Shastri s bowling suffered a bit in the last half of his career as he was often given a defensive role with the ball as the 2nd or 3rd spinner often bowling for long periods over the wicket to right handers pitching outside leg stump. Such an undervalued Indian cricketer.
I think catching is often under-rated as a part of an all-rounders make-up. It seems the best all-rounders are also the best slip-fielders and also the best captains. This means they are in the game 100% of the time, conentrating on every ball as batsman, bowler or fielder and also in between balls as captain. It must take enormous mental strength as well as physical strength.
In fact 3 Kiwis Hadlee, Vettori and Cairns (4 if you count the daylight between Hadlee national car rental and the others!). Strangely Hadlee with that batting average is the furthest from being a true all-rounder of the 3, but would Vettori national car rental or Cairns have been picked as batsmen for most of their careers?
From everything I have read about Alan Davidson I get the impression that he was a freak with the ball from 1957 to 1963 and that the swing he got from the ball was close to umplayable. Johnson as good as he is has not achieved anything like that level as a bowler that Davidson achieved. Furthermore regarding their role as batsmen. Davidson played as a no 7 no 8 batsman national car rental in an era when pitches were uncovered and there was no protective equipment. Johnson played in an era of flat wickets with maximum protective equipment. I am willing to bet that Davidsons record in first class cricket outside of test cricket as a batsman is much better national car rental than Johnsons, and this in an era when the best players aren t playing shield cricket with anything like the frequency they did in the 50 s and sixties.
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