Follow UsSurprisingly, former Australian captain Ricky Ponting ignored Indian stalwarts Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli to name former South African all-rounder Jacques Kallis as the best cricketer. During his playing days, Kallis was one of the best all-rounders in world cricket, with an unreal ability to rack up runs and pick up wickets for fun.
“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 on The Howie Games podcast.
Across his international career, Kallis racked up 25534 runs, with 62 tons, the fifth-most for any player. If that wasn’t enough, the South African all-rounder was also consistently amongst the wickets, with 577 at an average of 32.14. To date, Kallis is the only cricketer in world cricket to do a double of 25,000 runs and 500 international wickets.
“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.
Unfortunately, for Kallis and the rest of the South African team, trophies were rare, and the Proteas side did not win any international titles then.
