South Africa allrounder Jacques Kallis was named the world’s top cricketer for last year after scoring more test runs than anyone else in the year.
The 32-year-old Kallis hit 1,210 runs at an average of 86.42 and took 20 wickets for just 25.75 runs each to become the fifth player to win Wisden cricket almanac’s annual award after Ricky Ponting, Shane Warne, Andrew Flintoff and last year’s winner, Muttiah Muralitharan.
The award is decided by journalists and editors at Wisden, which has been published yearly since 1864.
“Plenty of other players performed mighty deeds, but the South African surpassed himself,” Peter Roebuck wrote in Wisden’s 2008 edition, which was published yesterday. “Kallis will look back at 2007 as the year he cut loose, the year he dared to dominate a match and even a series.”
“It was the year he came to understand that greatness cannot be attained till the chains have been broken,” said Roebuck, who called Kallis “the first indisputably great African cricketer of the post-apartheid era.”
Kallis hit 987 runs in 27 one-day internationals.
Ian Bell, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ottis Gibson, Ryan Sidebottom and Zaheer Khan were named as Wisden’s traditional five Cricketers of the Year.
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