4/1/24, 1:00 PM Who is a genuine allrounder? Do Kallis, Hadlee and Jadeja fit the bill?

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Who is a genuine allrounder? Do Kallis, Hadlee and Jadeja fit the bill?
Looking at it on the basis of players' batting and bowling contributions per match throws up some interesting lists

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What would Ravindra Jadeja's Test career have looked like if he had had the opportunity to bat in India's middle order? • BCCI

In his book The Greatest Since My Time, Trevor Bailey wrote that an allrounder is a player who commands a place in the XI
either as a batter or as a bowler. Another common definition accepts any player as an allrounder if their batting average
exceeds their bowling average. Among the 399 Test players who have at least 50 wickets in men's Test cricket to their name
at the time of writing, 46 satisfy this condition. Take away bowlers who bowl fewer than 20 overs per Test match on average
and 31 satisfy it. The newest addition to this list at the time of writing is Kyle Jamieson, who has 372 runs at 19.6 and 72
wickets at 19.5.

Jamieson's example points to the difficulties presented by Bailey's definition for the statistical standard. The next three
players on this list of 31, arranged by increasing batting averages, are Vernon Philander (24.0), Alan Davidson (24.6) and R
Ashwin (26.9). While these three are not tailenders, they would not command a place in their respective Test teams for their
batting alone. The allrounder remains difficult to define.

The "genuine allrounder", remains even more controversial. Is Jacques Kallis a genuine allrounder? Was Richard Hadlee one?

Considering batters and bowlers by position, the average runs, wickets and balls bowled per match in each position are in the
table below.
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