Jacques Kallis, Sachin Tendulkar and the price of a double shift

Jacques Kallis has long been the great cricketer filed under useful. The view doing the rounds is that his batting alone should put him beside Sachin Tendulkar, before anyone counts a wicket or a catch.

Set the later stretches of their careers side by side and the numbers go further than that. In his 89 men's Tests from December 2002 to December 2013, Kallis averaged 54.05 with the bat. Tendulkar averaged 52.16 across his 82 Tests from December 2001 to November 2013.

Did Kallis outbat Tendulkar?

Over those two spans, he did. Kallis made 28 hundreds in his 89 Tests, against 18 for Tendulkar in his 82.

Tendulkar scored faster, with a strike rate of 54.1 against Kallis's 49.8, and that slower tempo is the usual charge against the South African. It carries little weight for a man who was also bowling the overs in between.

The last Test of his run showed both sides of him. Kallis took 4/105 against India in mid-December 2013, then made 115 from 316 balls in the Boxing Day Test that followed.

Kallis carried a far heavier bowling load

Kallis bowled 1,646 overs in his 89 Tests and took 141 wickets at an average of 34.03, giving away 2.91 runs an over. Tendulkar bowled 217 overs in his 82 Tests and took 11 wickets.

Put another way, Kallis was doing the work of a top-order batter and a fourth seamer at once, and still averaged more than the man the game treats as the yardstick for batting.

Should Kallis be judged as a batter alone?

Yes, with his bowling as the bonus on top. The case against him as an all-time great usually rests on match-winning spells, and two five-wicket hauls in 89 Tests give ground there.

That is an argument about his bowling, though, and it has been allowed to shrink his batting into half of a package.

Judge Kallis on his runs alone and his average sits above Tendulkar's over those years. The wickets were the double shift, and he should never have been marked down for working it.