Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting has ignored Indian batting greats Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli to pick former South African all-rounder Jacques Kallis as the ‘best cricketer that’s ever played’. Kallis was one of the best all-rounders in world cricket during his playing days. He led South Africa to many victories with both bat and ball.
On The Howie Games podcast, Ponting was asked about the ‘greatest to ever play cricket’ and in reply he took Kallis’ name.
“Jacques Kallis is the best cricketer that’s ever played. I don’t care. I don’t care about all the others. Full stop. 13,000 runs. 44 or 45 Test hundreds. And 300 wickets. Either one of those careers is outstanding. You can take 300 Test wickets every day of the week, and you take 45 Tests 100s. He’s got them both. He was just a born cricketer,” Ponting said.
During his glorious international career, Kallis scored 25534 runs, with 62 centuries. The legendary all-rounder also picked 577 wickets at an average of 32.14. Notably, Kallis is the only cricketer in world cricket to do a double of 25,000 runs and 500 international wickets.
Apart from his batting and bowling, Kallis completed 338 catches in 519 international matches. He is one of the four players to take 200 catches in the five-day format of the game.
“Unorthodox in the slips, didn’t drop anything in the slips, had a sort of funny technique, caught everything. I think he’s the best and the most underrated because he’s not talked about very much at all. Probably because of his personality and his character. He’s not out there. He’s low-key, yeah. Hasn’t done much media work. So, he’s sort of one of those forgotten-about ones a little bit,” Ponting said.
When it comes to IPL, Kallis was part of RCB from 2008 to 2010 and played for KKR from 2011 to 2014. He finished his IPL career with 2427 runs and 65 wickets in 98 matches.
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