Former India captain Rahul Dravid paid rich tributes to legendary South African all-rounder Jacques Kallis, terming him “second only to Sachin Tendulkar” as the Proteas great pushes for a fifth World Cup appearance in Australia and New Zealand, next year.
“I think he’s (Kallis) going to end up with some really record-breaking numbers. I think he’ll probably be second only to Tendulkar’s numbers overall if you look at it,” Dravid said on “Modern Masters”, a new video series on ESPNcricinfo.Com.
“He seems pretty fit in spite of his workload. The fascinating thing is the number of injuries. He’s hardly had any major injuries considering he bats, he bowls. It’s almost unheard of and he looks like he can go on for a while,” Dravid said about the 38-year-old, who is currently in Sri Lanka for the limited overs series.
The cricket aficionados were spoilt for choice during the last two decades due to some of the greatest batsmen like Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting, who graced the game during the period. But Dravid feels that by “sheer weight of his runs” — 13289 in Tests and 11574 in ODIs — Kallis makes everyone sit up and take notice of his stupendous achievements.
“For the longest time, we’ve been spoilt with the quality of batsmanship with people like Tendulkar, Lara, and Ponting who have played in the same era as Kallis. In some ways he has had to earn this right of approval by sheer weight of runs, sheer consistency of performance and by building up a record that is second to none and is probably going to surpass a lot of these greats. He’s forced you to sit up and take notice,” Dravid told Sanjay Manjrekar in the newly started video series.
A technician-par-excellence himself, Dravid also dissected Kallis’ batting technique.
“He has a little bit of an initial movement, a two-step movement. It is quite unique in some ways to South Africa. But the important thing to note is that even though he makes that initial movement or that initial shuffle of his, after that he is in a really good balanced position to go fully back or go forward as well when the ball is pitched (up).
“He has the ability to judge the line exceptionally well and leave well,” said Dravid.