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During his 19-year-long international career, the former RCB and KKR all-rounder played 519 matches and scored 25,534 runs in addition to taking up 577 wickets and completing 338 catches.
Ricky Ponting picks greatest cricketer of all time. (Picture Credit: AFP, Screengrab)
Legendary Australian cricketer and former captain Ricky Ponting has ignored Indian batting greats Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli to pick a former South African cricketer, who also played for Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Kolkata Knight Riders in the cash-rich Indian Premier League, as the ‘best cricketer to ever play.’ Ponting was asked about the ‘greatest to ever play cricket’ on The Howie Games podcast, and in reply he mentioned Jacques 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. 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.
Kallis played 166 Tests, 328 ODIs, and 25 T20Is for the Proteas during his 19-year-long international career, which kicked off in 1995 and ended in 2014, and scored 13289, 11579, and 666 runs in addition to taking up 292, 273, and 12 wickets in Tests, ODIs, and T20Is, respectively. Kallis is the third-leading run scorer in Test cricket and sits at the No. 8 position in the list of highest run getters in the 50-over format of the game.
As an outfielder, Kallis completed 338 catches in 519 international matches (4th most for any player) and is one of the four players to take 200 catches in the five-day format of the game.
In the IPL, Kallis was part of RCB from 2008 to 2010 and played for KKR from 2011 to 2014, where he won two titles under Gautam Gambhir’s leadership. He finished his IPL career with 2427 runs and 65 wickets in 98 matches.
