An
all-rounder is a
cricketCricket is a bat-and-ball team sport that is first documented as being played in southern England in the 16th century. By the end of the 18th century, cricket had developed to the point where it had become the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being...
player who regularly performs well at both batting and
bowlingA bowler in the sport of cricket is usually a player whose speciality is bowling, analogous to a pitcher in baseball. A bowler who is also a competent batsman is known as an all-rounder....
. Although all bowlers must bat and quite a few batsmen do bowl occasionally, most players are skilled in only one of the two disciplines and are considered specialists. Some
wicket-keeperThe wicket-keeper in the sport of cricket is the player on the fielding side who stands behind the wicket being guarded by the batsman currently on strike...
s have the skills of a specialist batsman and have been referred to as all-rounders, but the term
wicketkeeper-batsman is more commonly applied to them.
There is no precise qualification for a player to be considered an all-rounder and use of the term tends to be subjective.
An
all-rounder is a
cricketCricket is a bat-and-ball team sport that is first documented as being played in southern England in the 16th century. By the end of the 18th century, cricket had developed to the point where it had become the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being...
player who regularly performs well at both batting and
bowlingA bowler in the sport of cricket is usually a player whose speciality is bowling, analogous to a pitcher in baseball. A bowler who is also a competent batsman is known as an all-rounder....
. Although all bowlers must bat and quite a few batsmen do bowl occasionally, most players are skilled in only one of the two disciplines and are considered specialists. Some
wicket-keeperThe wicket-keeper in the sport of cricket is the player on the fielding side who stands behind the wicket being guarded by the batsman currently on strike...
s have the skills of a specialist batsman and have been referred to as all-rounders, but the term
wicketkeeper-batsman is more commonly applied to them.
Concept
There is no precise qualification for a player to be considered an all-rounder and use of the term tends to be subjective. The generally accepted criterion is that a "genuine all-rounder" is someone whose batting or bowling skills, considered alone, would be good enough to win them a place in a
first-classFirst-class cricket refers to the class of cricket matches of three or more days scheduled duration, between two sides of eleven players and officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...
team. By this definition, a genuine all-rounder is quite rare and extremely valuable to a team as he effectively operates as two players.
Confusion sometimes arises when a specialist bowler performs well with the bat. For example, the great West Indies pace bowler
Malcolm MarshallMalcolm Denzil Marshall was a West Indian cricketer. Primarily a fast bowler, Marshall is regarded as one of the finest pacemen ever to have played Test cricket. His Test bowling average of 20.94 is the best of anyone who has taken 200 or more wickets...
sometimes produced a good innings, but not often enough for him to be considered an all-rounder. Instead he would be called a "useful lower order batsman". Equally, a specialist batsmen may be termed a "useful change bowler" and a good example of this type is
Allan BorderAllan Robert Border, AO is a former Australian cricket captain. His playing nickname was "A.B.". He played 156 Test matches in his career, a record until it was passed by fellow Australian Steve Waugh. Border still retains the world record for the number of consecutive Test appearances of 153...
who once took eleven wickets in a Test match in 1989 when conditions suited his occasionally used left arm spin
[http://www.cricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/63499.html].
One of the main constraints to becoming a recognised all-rounder is that batsmen and bowlers "peak" at different ages. Batsmen tend to reach their peak in their late twenties after their technique has matured through experience. Conversely, fast bowlers often peak in their early to mid twenties at the height of their physical prowess. Other bowlers, mostly spinners but also fast bowlers who can "swing" the ball, are most effective in their later careers.
Essentially, an all-rounder is better at bowling than batting or
vice-versa. Very few are equally good at both and hardly any have been outstanding at both. Thus the terms "bowling all-rounder" and "batting all-rounder" have come into use.
One commonly used statistical rule of thumb is that a player's
batting averageBatting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball measuring the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters, respectively. The two statistics are related, in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages....
(the higher the better) should be greater than his
bowling averageBowling average is a statistic measuring the performance of bowlers in the sport of cricket.A bowler's bowling average is defined as the total number of runs conceded by the bowler divided by the number of wickets taken by the bowler, so the lower the average the better. For fast bowlers in Test...
(the lower the better). Only three all-rounders have Test batting averages of more than 20 greater than their bowling average: Sobers, Kallis and Hammond.
Keith MillerKeith Ross Miller MBE was an Australian Test cricketer and a Royal Australian Air Force pilot during World War II. Miller is widely regarded as Australia's greatest ever all-rounder. Because of his ability, irreverent manner and good looks he was a crowd favourite...
had a good
TestTest cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. It is generally considered the ultimate test of playing ability in the sport.The name "Test" may have arisen from the idea that the matches are a "test of strength and competency" between the sides involved...
batting average of 36.97 and an outstanding bowling average of 22.97, so he would be termed a bowling all-rounder.
Garfield SobersSir Garfield St Aubrun Sobers AO is a former cricketer who captained West Indies. His first name of Garfield is variously abbreviated as Gary or Garry. He is widely regarded as cricket's greatest ever all-rounder, having excelled at all the essential skills of batting, bowling and fielding...
had an outstanding Test batting average of 57.78 and a good bowling average of 34.03, so he would be termed a batting all-rounder. Closer to the ideal of a genuine all-rounder is
Ian BothamSir Ian Terence Botham, OBE is a former England Test cricketer and Test team captain, and current cricket commentator...
who had averages of 33.34 (batting) and 28.40 (bowling), neither of which is outstanding. No all-rounder in history has achieved outstanding career averages as both batsman and bowler in Test cricket. Sobers is widely regarded as the "greatest-ever all-rounder" but, as the figures show, even he was much better at one discipline than the other. However Sobers was described as a great batsman; and a very good bowler: his distinctive contribution was that he was able to bowl medium fast seam as well as wrist spin, having originally entered the West Indies team as a finger spinner. 90 out of the 100 judges of the 5 Wisden cricketers of the Century selected Sobers in their five picks.
An all-rounder who missed out on Test Cricket due to the apartheid era of the 1970's and 80's was the South African
Clive RiceClive Edward Butler Rice is a former South African international cricketer who, during the 1980s, was considered one of the best all-rounders in the world: he left the game with a career batting average in first class cricket of forty and a bowling average of 22...
. His first class batting average is 40.95 and bowling average was 22.49. He won the "Silk Cut Challenge" event for all-rounders against Ian Botham and Richard Hadlee during the 1980's.
Fielding prowess
A further consideration when assessing a player's all-round ability is the standard of his fielding. Sobers, for example, was a very athletic field and a safe catcher.
Frank WoolleyFrank Edward Woolley was an English cricketer, one of the finest all-rounders the game has seen. In a career lasting more than thirty years, he scored more first-class runs than anyone but Sir Jack Hobbs and took over 2,000 wickets at an average of under 20...
is the only fielder to take 1000 catches in first-class cricket (i.e., excluding wicket-keepers). In addition, Woolley took over 2000 wickets at an average of less than 20 and only
Jack HobbsSir John Berry Hobbs , generally known as Jack Hobbs, was an English cricketer, who played for Surrey and England. Renowned as a very modest and self-effacing man, he was popularly referred to as "The Master". As a batsman, he scored more runs and more centuries in first-class cricket than any...
has scored more runs.
http://stats.cricinfo.com/ci/content/records/284268.htmlhttp://stats.cricinfo.com/ci/content/records/283362.htmlhttp://stats.cricinfo.com/ci/content/records/283196.html
Notable all-round feats
V E Walker of
MiddlesexMiddlesex county cricket teams have been traced back to the 18th century but the county's involvement in cricket goes back much further than that. Given that the first definite mention of cricket anywhere in the world is dated c.1550 in Guildford, it is almost certain that the game had reached...
, playing for
All-EnglandIn cricket, the term All-England Eleven has been used for various non-international England teams since the 1739 English cricket season and it indicates that the "Rest of England" is playing against, say, MCC or an individual county side....
versus Surrey at
The OvalThe Brit Insurance Oval, still commonly referred to by its original name of The Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, London. In the past it was also sometimes called the 'Kennington Oval'...
on 21, 22 & 23 July 1859, took all ten wickets in the Surrey first innings and followed this by scoring 108 in the England second innings, having been the not out batsman in the first (20*). He took a further four wickets in Surrey’s second innings. All-England won by 392 runs.
On 15 August 1862,
E M GraceEdward Mills Grace was a member of the famous cricketing Grace family and the elder brother of W G Grace and Fred Grace....
carried his bat through the entire
MCCMarylebone Cricket Club was founded in 1787 as a private members' club dedicated to the development of cricket. It owns, and is based at, Lord's Cricket Ground near St John's Wood in north London. MCC was formerly the governing body of cricket in England and across the world...
innings, scoring 192 not out of a total of 344. Then, bowling
underarmIn cricket, underarm bowling is as old as the sport itself. Until the introduction of the roundarm style in the first half of the 19th century, bowling was performed in the same way as in bowls, the ball being delivered with the hand below the waist...
, he took all 10 wickets in the Kent first innings for 69 runs. However, this is not an official record as it was a 12-a-side game (though one of the Kent batsmen was injured).
The first player to perform the
doubleA cricketer is said to achieve the double if he scores a thousand or more runs and also takes a hundred or more wickets in first-class matches during the course of a single season. The feat is extremely rare outside England because of the smaller number of first-class matches played in most other...
of 1000 runs and 100 wickets in an English season was W G Grace in 1873. He scored 2139 runs at 71.30 and took 106 wickets at 12.94. Grace completed eight doubles to 1886 and it was not until 1882 that another player (C T Studd) accomplished the feat.
In the
1906 English cricket seasonThe 1906 English cricket season saw the Championship decided on the very last day with Kent just pipping Yorkshire for the title. George Hirst achieved the unique feat of a "double Double", i.e...
,
George Herbert HirstGeorge Herbert Hirst , often known as George Herbert, was a professional cricketer for Yorkshire and England.-The early years:...
achieved the unique feat of scoring over 2000 runs and taking over 200 wickets. He scored 2385 runs including six centuries at 45.86 with a highest score of 169. He took 208 wickets at 16.50 with a best analysis of 7/18. In the same season, Hirst achieved another unique feat when he scored a century in both innings and took five wickets in both innings of the same match. Playing for
YorkshireYorkshire County Cricket Club, who represent the historic county of Yorkshire, are one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English domestic cricket structure...
versus SomersetSomerset County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Somerset. Its limited overs team is called the Somerset Sabres. The club has its headquarters at the County Cricket Ground, Taunton....
at Bath, Hirst scored 111 and 117 not out; and took 6/70 and 5/45.
George GiffenGeorge Giffen was a cricketer who played for South Australia and Australia. An all-rounder who batted in the middle order and often opened the bowling with medium-paced off-spin, Giffen captained Australia during the 1894–95 Ashes series and was the first Australian to score 10,000 runs and...
(1886, 1893 and 1896) and
Warwick ArmstrongWarwick Windridge Armstrong was an Australian cricketer who played 50 Test matches between 1902 and 1921. An all-rounder, he captained Australia in ten Test matches between 1920 and 1921 and was undefeated, winning eight Tests and drawing two...
(1905, 1909 and 1921) achieved the double in an English season three times, the most by members of touring teams.
Alan DavidsonAlan Keith Davidson, AM, MBE is a former Australian cricketer of the 1950s and 1960s. He was an all rounder: a lower order hard hitting left-handed batsman, and an outstanding left-arm fast-medium opening bowler...
was the first player to take ten wickets and score a hundred runs in a Test match. Playing for Australia
versus West Indies at Brisbane in 1960-61, he took 5/135 and 6/87; and scored 44 and 80. He was playing throughout with a broken finger.
See also
- Batsman
- Bowler (cricket)
A bowler in the sport of cricket is usually a player whose speciality is bowling, analogous to a pitcher in baseball. A bowler who is also a competent batsman is known as an all-rounder....
- Double (cricket)
A cricketer is said to achieve the double if he scores a thousand or more runs and also takes a hundred or more wickets in first-class matches during the course of a single season. The feat is extremely rare outside England because of the smaller number of first-class matches played in most other...
- Fielder
- Wicket-keeper
The wicket-keeper in the sport of cricket is the player on the fielding side who stands behind the wicket being guarded by the batsman currently on strike...
- Cricket terminology