Skip to main content

Watch: David Miller scores the fastest T20 international hundred

In the second of out feel good series. We look back on David Miller scoring a 35-ball hundred against Bangladesh. A look back on better times.

Greatest South African cricketers: Graeme Pollock

 If averages is your gig, then there can be no doubt that Graeme Pollock presents a very compelling case for being South Africa's greatest ever cricketer. In fact, he was voted just that in 2000, and it is debatable whether anything has happened since to bring that finding into disrepute. A crunching left-handed batsman. he had it all. The cover drive, the leg glance, the pull, the hook the cut. The ferocity. Before Viv Richards had the temerity to not wear helmets at bowlers bowling at 90mph, you could argue that Graeme Pollock was the original Master Blaster. Standing at 6'4, with a "road sweeper" for a bat, he certainly could make his presence felt. Many say Barry Richards is the greatest South African cricketer to ever lace them up. He certainly played well enough to back up that assertion in the limited opportunities he got. However, any man who played an innings Bill Lawry called the greatest knock he'd ever seen, or is acclaimed as the best left-hander ever seen by The Don himself has a particularly strong claim to being the Greatest.

PROS: His 274 vs Australia is arguably the greatest knock ever played by a South African, and if you disagree with that then there's a chance you may find his 140 vs England to be the greatest knock by a South African. It's hard to argue with the greatness of a man who only put together two all-time tons in a very abbreviated career. Even more so when that career ended with an average of 60.97.

CONS: Unfortunately, a short career means you had a short career. Sounds obvious, I suppose but it's important to note when calling someone the greatest. How often has a player who only played 12 games in a 38-game season won player of the season, no matter how incredibly superlative that season was? That's the largest drawback. Secondly, when you look at Pollock's list of opponents, it does, unfortunately, have absolutely a suspicious deficit when it comes to subcontinental opposition. Not his fault of course, but his mastery of different conditions will forever remain.

The old man isn't in the greatest health at the moment, but he certainly was the cricketing equivalent of Thor when he dropped his Mjolnir.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Watch: Hansie Cronje slaps Shane Warne all around the Wanderers

As one of the greatest cricketers in history, Shane Warne has generally had the upper hand when it came to most battles, but on this fateful day at the Wanderers, it didn't matter what he bowled, he had to fetch it in Row Z.   

Theunis de Bruyn might not be very good

The last time Theunis de Bruyn was in the subcontinent, he scored a fourth innings hundred in Sri Lanka. A fourth innings ton in the subcontinent buys you a lot of time, especially in tours to the sub-continent. The reason is pretty simple, the fourth innings of a game is when the pitch is at it's most decrepit, Asian pitches generally take turn sooner than non-subcontinental pitches, so it does reason that if you score a ton in the fourth innings in Asia, you must by definition be some sort of genius level player of spin.  That is the only reason Theunis de Bruyn is on this tour. We would not be in favour of dropping him after just the one Test, but his dismissal in the first innings, a big booming cover drive against Ravindra Jadeja, with light fading and the day nearly done, was both reckless and unnecessary. Yes, batting is about scoring runs, and as such if balls are in slots which  players identify as their strong zones, they should feel within their rights to have ...

We are keeping Quinton down

Quinton de Kock is good at cricket. Everyone who plays cricket at an international level is good at cricket, but even in that hallowed territory, one can see that Quinton de Kock is exceptionally good at cricket. He boasts no obvious weakness, and there are very few good balls which he can't turn into boundary balls. He also happens to be, both on form and reputation, South Africa's best batsman, especially now that the great Hashim Amla has retired. This presents a quandary of sorts, because while de Kock's prodigious ability to take a game away from the opposition batting at 7 is not in question, the reality is more often than not, he has had to come in and repair some very creaky holes in the ship. In the history of cricket, only one team has ever had their best batsman keep wicket. Andy Flower, the Zimabwean great, was the only man who managed this feat of endurance and focus. You could arguably place AB de Villiers on this shortlist, but he only kept for 23 Tests an...