That South Africa's Jacques Kallis is the greatest all-rounder in recent memory is beyond question. And lovers of the game will debate for decades to come whether he is also the greatest cricketer of his generation - one that includes Sachin Tendulkar and Steve Waugh, among others - or the greatest all-rounder ever - for which his only real competition is Gary Sobers. That's because Kallis' record easily eclipses those of the gifted 1980s quartet of Richard Hadlee, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, and Ian Botham. When he announced, with the lack of fuss that has characterised his demeanour on and off the field, that he is retiring from Test cricket, an era in South Africa's cricket, and for the global game, ended.
Kallis' record deserves repeating. He is the only player to take more than 100 wickets, score more than 10,000 runs and hold more than 100 catches - in both Tests and one-day internationals. He took his 200th Test catch on Saturday, the second player ever to do so. Only three other players - all greats of the game, Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Rahul Dravid, have scored more Test runs; only Tendulkar has scored more centuries than Kallis' 44. And he took 292 wickets, at an average of 32.5, even though he tried to minimise the amount he bowled. By way of comparison, Gary Sobers took 235 Test wickets, at an average of 34. It is said of great all-rounders that they could be selected for their team as batsmen or as bowlers. Kallis is special because he could be selected not just for South Africa, but by cricket historians for an all-time XI on the basis of either skill - or, even, actually, for his fielding.
It is quite extraordinary that Kallis is not celebrated quite as much as are his peers. Partly, perhaps, that's because his lack of flamboyance is so marked that it is almost assertive. In a way, this is reminiscent of Rahul Dravid, the only man who held more Test catches, a man who also personified solidity and retired from a game vastly different from the one he joined; like Dravid, Kallis was at his memorable best when dug in, protecting his team from the excesses of his swashbuckling team-mates. Dravid, however, tended to play even a forward defensive stroke with a Gower-like grace that drew the eye, a high backlift swooping down to stop the ball, as if a millimetre's movement from where he wanted to place it would be an abject failure of technique. Kallis eschewed even that much flourish, making a virtue of a strict, almost Calvinist formality. But, unlike Dravid, when he chose to break loose, he had his enormous physical strength to aid him. After all, he holds the record for the fastest 50 in Test cricket, off 24 balls. The former England cricketer Angus Fraser recalls how a young Kallis, in a county cricket match, reverse-swept a leg-spinner out of the ground and onto a distant highway - twice in one innings. And, though frequently spoken of as merely a medium pacer, that was a matter of choice. When the match position deserved it - when South Africa was trying to skittle out the tail, for example - Kallis bowled venomously fast. As late as 2012, aged 37, he bowled an over to Sri Lanka's Dilhara Fernando of which five balls were faster than 140 kilometres an hour; amazingly, the sixth was the quickest, at 148. Gary Kirsten, once Kallis' team-mate and now his coach, says Kallis was the best cricketer of the modern era. And it was rightly pointed out, too, that like Dravid, Kallis performed in all conditions; he even got wickets on the pacers' graveyards that are Indian pitches.
