Top 4 All Rounders Ever

[Migara]

Surely Botham, considering that his peaks with bat, bowl and field coincided, should be considered the best all-rounder, certainly better than Khan who started a bowler and finished a batsman.

Botham in his prime was number 1 as he excelled in all departments at once.

If that is the case Mushtaq Mohammed was the best all rounder. 7 wickets in one match and a century against WI of late 70s. Botham could only have that in his dreams.

 

[Faisal1985]

Surprised that a lot of people don't rate Imran in top 4....

 

[Sanz]

Now this is a tricky question. Most of the times the question is about the top 3 all rounders ever. And the answer is unanimous - Gary Sobers, Imran Khan, Keith Miller. At least that's the opinion I share, don't know about you guys.

No the answer is not unanimous. I will take Botham and Kapil Ahead of Miller and Imran.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

The answer could be unanimous if someone takes off the glasses of bias.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

Surprised that a lot of people don't rate Imran in top 4....

Most of the people do,actually.Amongst those who don't,some of them have different criteria for judging & ranking allrounders as compared to most of the people(who do rate Imran highly) & I respect their opinion but other than that whoever doesn't rate him is biased to the bone & make lame excuses for not doing so.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

If that is the case Mushtaq Mohammed was the best all rounder. wickets in one match and a century against WI of late 70s. Botham could only have that in his dreams.

Spot on.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

Surely Botham, considering that his peaks with bat, bowl and field coincided, should be considered the best all-rounder, certainly better than Khan who started a bowler and finished a batsman.

Thats not true because 1980 onwards,Imran was a complete allrounder at excelled at both departments but doesn't have lot of 100s because he batted in the lower order for most of his career.Nearly 4000 runs & 363 wickets proves it.

 

[jeevan]

Surprised that a lot of people don't rate Imran in top 4....

Imran was (chronologically speaking) first a great bowler with quite decent tail ender batting graduating to being a good bat, but dropping off in bowling (he had a long career for any one, let alone a pacer. 21+ years at the international level).

Amongst the 4 contemporaries, Botham was easily ahead of the rest for mine if you apply the definition of making the cut separately on your bowling skills and on your batting skills.

If you take the sum of peak bowling over career and peak batting over career, not necessarily at the same time, then yes Imran has a very strong case but his peaks were separated by a lot. Botham peaked in both possibly in the same series.

Edit: It turns out, not quite by that much in time. Going by stats, he peaked as a bowler in the early 80's and as a batsman in ~ 87.

 

[jeevan]

Thats not true because 1980 onwards,Imran was a complete allrounder at excelled at both departments but doesn't have lot of 100s because he batted in the lower order for most of his career.Nearly 4000 runs & 363 wickets proves it.

That's part of the point. A true all rounder would bat at #6 by being among the 6 best bats in the team, sometimes like Kallis, Sobers - higher. Vettori & Shakib, for e.g. now occupy the #6 slot.

It could be said that Pakistan of the late 70's early 80's was a strong team. But, we are talking of all time great status here. So, for e.g. Wally Hammond is not even mentioned as a candidate, though he probably didn't get as many chances to bowl being contemporary with Larwood, Tate, Verity (not to mention having to bowl mostly to Bradman, McCabe,Ponsford & Woodfull).

 

[Burgey]

Watto FTW..

 

[howardj]

Grace, Rhodes, Faulkner, Noble.

Classic case, in my view, of trying to be too intellectual and making older players out to be better than they were.

Sobers, Imran, Dev, Kallis.

Miller and Botham were also good.

 

[jeevan]

For what they're worth, the ICC player rankings for all-rounders seem to be
(there isn't an all-time ranking, this is from me typing in many of the usual suspects):

Sobers 669
Botham 646
Kallis 616
Miller 573
Imran 518
Flintoff 501
Faulkner 501
S Pollock 490 -> we all missed him
Hadlee 483
Noble 451
Kapil 433
Vinoo Mankad 417
Vettori 412
Mushtaq M 386

(Others are much below this eg Grace)

Seems reasonable.

 

[G.I.Joe]

Classic case, in my view, of trying to be too intellectual and making older players out to be better than they were.

Sobers, Imran, Dev, Kallis.

Miller and Botham were also good.

haha, no. I've got Faulkner in my team on the cw auction draft. I'm just trying to build up some rep for him around here before the vote.

 

[The Sean]

Thats not true because 1980 onwards,Imran was a complete allrounder at excelled at both departments but doesn't have lot of 100s because he batted in the lower order for most of his career.Nearly 4000 runs & 363 wickets proves it.

362 TBH. You call yourself an Imran fan?

 

[zaremba]

Classic case, in my view, of trying to be too intellectual and making older players out to be better than they were.

Sobers, Imran, Dev, Kallis.

Miller and Botham were also good.

So all the top all-rounders of all time have played since WW2? That's as hard to believe as the claim that none did.

 

[GIMH]

For what they're worth, the ICC player rankings for all-rounders seem to be
(there isn't an all-time ranking, this is from me typing in many of the usual suspects):

Sobers 669
Botham 646
Kallis 616
Miller 573
Imran 518
Flintoff 501
Faulkner 501
S Pollock 490 -> we all missed him
Hadlee 483
Noble 451
Kapil 433
Vinoo Mankad 417
Vettori 412
Mushtaq M 386

(Others are much below this eg Grace)

Seems reasonable.

Freddie 6th, have a bit of that

 

[JBH001]

Sobers
Kallis
Botham
Miller

 

[mohammad16]

Surely Botham, considering that his peaks with bat, bowl and field coincided, should be considered the best all-rounder, certainly better than Khan who started a bowler and finished a batsman.

Botham in his prime was number 1 as he excelled in all departments at once.

Botham was a great all rounder but Khan wasnt just a good bowler, he was a great bowler and a very good batsmen. For me Khan ahead of Botham.

 

[stephen]

Sobers is a given. 2nd picked player in an all time world XI and picked to fill the #6 and 5th bowler slot.
Imran and Miller are players that are incredibly difficult to separate. Both spearheaded their relative attacks and both were fine batsmen. If anything, Miller was probably slightly more naturally talented and Imran developed his game slightly better. Having them at #2 and #3 of all time is perfectly fine by me.

So that leaves who we pick at #4 out of (probably):
Kallis
Dev
Faulkner
Botham
Hadlee
and maybe a couple of others.

My tendency is to pick Kallis, though Botham was by far the best match winner of the lot. I don't know enough about Faulkner to really rate him higher than the others. Hadlee was not good enough a batsman for me to rate him higher as an allrounder than the others. Kapil Dev was an awesome player as well and had to bowl on the dead pitches of India for his career. Despite me taking that into account I don't think he was quite as good a bowler as Botham or Hadlee.

So for me it comes down to Kallis and Botham. Given that we pick teams to win matches I would probably lean towards Botham. I know I would rather face a team with Kallis in than a team with Botham in and that seals the deal for me. I'd probably rate Kallis at #5 on the list though.

 

[thierry henry]

sobers, imran, miller and kallis. Obvious 4 for mine.

qft