Where have all the ‘great’ all-rounder gone?

By Rajadhyax

There was a day when four great all-rounders were operating in international cricket at the same time. Richard Hadlee (New Zealand), Ian Botham (England), Kapil Dev (India) and Imran Khan (Pakistan) played cricket at the very same time and regaled spectators all over the world with their fine skills. Their unique ability was that their batting and bowling prowess had developed almost equally and it was very difficult to point out a weakness in them. All of them had some common features too. They all had extra-ordinary control on the ball, they were all pretty quick, they all swung the ball deceptively, and they all batted aggressively and were very decent fielders to boot.

In the bowling department Kapil’s out swinger would make an absolute shape of a banana. Botham swung the ball very late. Imran could bowl the in deeper at will. Hadlee bowled at a nagging length and got appreciable bounce off the wicket. I will never forget the sight of Indian batsman Krish Shrikanth merely fanning the ball while Hadlee made knots in his limited footwork or even the sight of the great Gordon Greenidge being beaten on countless occasions outside his off stump by Kapil in the first five overs. Imran’s in swinger would cut batsmen into half as they sucked in their stomach to avoid injury.

As far as batting was concerned they could all hit the cricket ball hard. When they came down to bat, spectators were treated to a barrage of fours and sixers. Who would ever forget Kapil hitting Eddie Hemming for four sixes in an over to avoid follow-on in a test match in England? You would also not make the folly of forgetting those invaluable innings Imran played to hold the house together in the 1992 World Cup that Pakistan won. Similarly, you would perhaps remember Botham’s remarkable eye while fielding in slips or Kapil’s rocket like throw that more often than not came on top of the stumps. Not to linger too much in the memory lane, I took a look at the present lot of international cricketers and I was in for a major surprise.

Presently the world does not have a single all-rounder whose statistics, skills, gamesmanship or aggression could come anywhere near that famous quartet. Jacques Kallis or Simon Katich are brilliant batsmen but their bowling would not exactly render five wicket hauls every now and again. The same is true for the West Indian captain Chris Gayle and Sri Lankan star Tilakaratne Dilshan. Daniel Vettori is a fantastic bowler whose batting is just about improving. Shane Watson (Australia), Mashrafe Mortaza (Bangladesh) and Dwayne Bravo (West Indies) are still to prove a lot and are in the process of trying to cement a relatively permanent place in their respective national sides. Abdul Razzak of Pakistan could have made himself a serious contender but he fell to funny selection decisions, injuries and the ODI trap rendering himself just about a useful guy, not in the league of the famous four. We can say virtually the same of Jacob Oram of New Zealand. Guys like Sachin Tendulkar and Virendra Sehwag are very clearly batsmen who can bowl a bit and do not qualify exactly as all-rounders if you look at their bowling stats. Players like Yuvraj Singh or Shakib Al Hasan are yet to prove themselves outside the limited-overs format. And in the context of the theme of this article, the less said about players like Andrew Symonds and Shahid Afridi the better.

At the end of the day we end up having no one who could be put on the same level as Kapil, Hadlee, Imran and Botham.

There is no clear-cut theory or reasoning that emerges as we try to analyse why we do not have ‘great’ all-rounders in the game today. Many subscribe to the view that such players are born and not made – and may be they are right to an extent. Yes, there are specialist-bowlers like Murlidharan, Dale Styen, Stuart Clarke, Mohammad Asif in the game and then there are specialist batsmen like Gautam Gambhir, Ricky Ponting, Ross Taylor, Mohamad Yusuf, Rahul Dravid, Mahela Jayewardene and company. The few all-rounders that we do have – and we mentioned some of them above – have not yet reaching the dizzying heights of excellence to put them on a pedestal.

Extra-ordinarily talented all-rounders bring a whole new dimension to cricket. And somewhere, we all cricket aficionados are missing it. The full-blast performances of those four greats are not to be found any longer. There have been Test matches virtually named after those four since these guys dominated all five days of the match. They were towering figures who inspired awe and turned heroes for millions. Is there a single all-rounder out there who does that in Test matches today? NO!

In sum, we all miss the services of fabulous all-rounders, guys with huge prowess, working in the international game of cricket. Sounds a bit sad, isn’t it?