The Great All-Rounders

All-rounders in cricket are a rare breed. It’s hard enough to master one particular skill at test level. To master two at a level that changes the game’s complexion is absolutely masterful. There have been some great all-rounders in the history of the game and there have been many who though not in the same league, have ended up contributing significantly more than a one dimensional player over fairly long periods.

The key metric is the relationship between the batting averages and the bowling averages. There are two ways of computing this –a) arithmetic difference b) ratio. I prefer the ratio, mainly because the plain difference doesn’t do justice to the bowling skills.

For example, take someone averaging 30 with the ball and 33 with the bat, and compare him with someone averaging 23 with the ball and 26 with the bat. The second player is far more devastating with the bat, and the first one in spite of being a better batsman, is not likely to be commanding his place in the side on batting alone either. Players with very high batting average (say 50) can’t really be classified as all-rounders if their bowling average is 45 or 47. No captain will give him the ball.

With the above background if we look at some of the most famous all-rounders of test cricket, we can quickly spot an elite group, followed by a second group that is clearly separated.

Note: Stokes is a current player and one can see that he clearly belongs in this club. He could get better or may slip a bit, but he’s unlikely to drop out of reckoning.

Players with a ratio of 50-80% can really be called “bits and pieces”. However, at that level too, the bits and the pieces sum up to more than one. They are often more valuable in the long run than a pure specialist. Players with a lower ratio (below 50%) shouldn’t be termed as all-rounders. After all, if someone is averaging 30 or less with the ball an average of 15-16 with the bat hardly qualifies as a dependable batsman. Similarly, if someone is averaging 30 or more with the bat, he is hardly likely to get a call from his captain if his bowling average is over 50. At best he will come in sometimes as a relief bowler or a surprise change.

Typical bits and pieces men would be men like Madan Lal (average 22.65 with the bat and 40 with the ball), Roger Binny (average 32 with the ball and 23 with the bat). They were useful, but valuable only in certain specific conditions.

Let’s look at the elite group a little more closely. It is evident that the benchmarks that they have set are pretty tough for anyone to reach. I have divided their careers into three roughly equal phases to see how they progressed.

Garry Sobers:

Sobers did not start out as a frontline bowler. However, during his 2^nd phase he developed into a pretty potent bowler and took 125 wickets in 33 tests at an average of under 28. During this phase, his divergence score was 227% The batting quality was such that for much of his career he was averaging well over 60. Sobers’ last phase was a disappointing phase where both his bowling and batting dropped considerably. His career progression looks like this –

Once Sobers discovered his bowling mojo his divergence score (on a cumulative basis) quickly shot past 150% and never dropped below it. He finally finished with a divergence score 170.

Jaques Kallis:

Unlike Sobers, Kallis started off with great bowling form. In his case, it’s the batting that took longer to reach great heights. Kallis’ phase 1 is longer (56 tests) and he was at least 13-14 points behind Sobers in the batting averages. However, his bowling was a significant level above Sobers’ in his first phase. Hs second phase, like Sobers, was his best. His batting never slipped throughout his career, though the bowling waned considerably. What is clear from the top two performers is that it’s impossible to keep up a high level of performance in both aspects of the game in the high pressure environment of Test cricket.

The two have set benchmarks for all time.

Of the two, Sobers was the more flamboyant and charismatic. It’s impossible to apply the sobriquet charismatic on Kallis. He was always the efficient professional and never a candidate for leadership. Sobers, on the other hand was a leader of men and commanded loyalty. He also brought in the crowds. His cricketing calendar was packed as he was a regular in the English county cricket and played for South Australia fairly regularly in the Australian domestic season. He was as good an athlete as any in the world, and had few peers on the cricket field.

While the first two on the elite list where more batsmen than bowlers, the next two were more bowlers than batsmen. They were the main strike bowlers for their respective sides and their bowling was so good that it completely overshadowed their batting prowess. They were exceptionally good with the bat. Much more than people noticed.

Imran Khan:

Imran debuted during the seventies when Pakistan wasn’t playing too much of test cricket. In his first phase there were three years (1972, 1973, and 1975) when he had no test cricket at all. The next 5 years saw the emergence of Imran as a world class fast bowler with a striking capability as good as any in the world. It all started with the Sydney test in Australia in 1976.

It was only in the second phase of his career that he emerged as a very dependable and capable batsman in the lower order. He also became the captain of his side and proved to be one of the great leaders in the history of cricket. His bowling also peaked during this period and his divergence ratio rivalled Sobers. 151 wickets at around 16 each was a world beating performance in the era of fearsome fast bowlers from the West Indies.

No one thought at that time that his batting would improve further. Not only did it improve, it reached dizzying levels, as he averaged nearly 60 in his last 28 tests. The bowling never flagged as he took 113 wickets during this period. Imran Khan’s trajectory is different from Sobers and Kallis. It is a continuous improvement graph. A very rare thing. Kapil Dev recently said that Imran was the hardest working cricketer he knew, and the figures corroborate the observation.

Keith Miller:

Miller is different from everyone else for one simple reason. The younger days of his life were taken away by the war and he was well into his mid-twenties by the time he made his debut. He was among the fastest of his generation and made the batsmen duck and weave. A flamboyant larger than life character, he was a great crowd puller. In all this, he was always a solid dependent bat, who could also tear apart any bowling when in the mood. Since he is from the pre-television era, few people in India even remember him. But in Australia he continues to be a legend. Not the least because of his duels with Bradman while playing for Victoria in the domestic matches in Australia.

Miller was so good as an all-rounder that his divergence scores were high throughout his career. In fact it was at the bottom when he finished at very high score of 161%. His bowling was always top drawer, right through his career. It was only the batting which started flagging a bit towards the end.

In this post, I am not looking at the others in detail. It would be too long a post. However, the phase wise break down clearly suggests that they were in the elite during at least one phase of their careers. In any case the second band is quite exceptional. It’s just that the elite group creates a band of its own.

Ben Stokes is still an active cricketer, and it would be interesting to see where he ends up.

The graph below tracks the progressive divergence of 6 of these all-rounders. The only reason why I have limited it to 6 is that the graph would get too cluttered.

It is interesting to note that someone had to play more tests than Miller to get past him.

The other great all-rounders and their phase-wise performance is given below. They were all outstanding and some of them had at phases that were at par with the elite club.