Legendary Australian cricketer and former captain Ricky Ponting has overlooked Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli to rather choose an former South African cricketer, who was also a member of Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Kolkata Knight Riders in the cash-rich Indian Premier League, as the best cricketer to have ever played. One of the most-certainly-greatest-ever-cricketers of all time was asked for on The Howie Games podcast, and Ponting mentioned Jacques Kallis by name.
“He [Kallis] is the best athlete that’s ever played. I don’t care. I don’t care about anyone else. Full stop. 13,000 runs. 44 or 45 Test hundreds. And 300 wickets. Either one of those careers is outstanding. Just take them. You could take 300 Test wickets any day of the week, and take 45 Test hundreds. He has both. He was just a born cricketer. Unorthodox in the slips, he didn’t drop anything, was one of those slip catchers, had a funny technique-anyway, he just caught most of it. I think he’s the best and most underrated because nobody talks about him. Probably because of his personality, and character. He’s not out there. He’s low-key, you know. Hasn’t done much media work. So, he’s sort of one of those forgotten-a-bit-ones,” Ponting said.
In his international career, running from 1995 till 2014, Kallis played 166 Tests, 328 ODIs, and 25 T20Is for the Proteas-an inning of 13289 runs, 11579 runs, and 666 runs respectively-taking with him 292, 273, and 12 wickets in Tests, ODIs, and T20Is. Kallis is the third highest run-scorer in Test matches, and eighth in ODIs.
Kallis, as an outfielder, accounted for 338 catches in 519 international matches (4th most by any player) and is one of those four players who pulled off 200 catches in the five-days long version of the game.
In the IPL, Kallis was a member of RCB from 2008 to 2010 and KKR from 2011 to 2014, winning two titles under Gautam Gambhir’s captaincy. He ends up with a total of 2427 runs and 65 wickets from 98 matches in his IPL career.
