The widest bowler in the world

Shortly before 14:30 BST on 17 August 2012, Jacques Kallis bowled the first ball of the 21^st over of England’s first innings at Lord’s to James Taylor. It was signalled a wide by Simon Taufel to great excitement 9 000 km away in a studio in the dungeons of SABC’s Auckland Park, and probably nowhere else. The statistician (er, … me), voice trembling no doubt, announced that Kallis had become the first player to bowl 100 wides in a Test career. Perhaps this was not terribly surprising. Among the many skills Kallis had mastered was the ability to bowl ‘dry’. When South Africa were not taking wickets and needed to keep things quiet, Kallis would lumber in for a few overs and consistently bowl a line far enough outside the off-stump for the batter to decide it wasn’t worth the risk to chase after it. It was generally very effective. Of course, not even the great Kallis could master this skill to perfection, hence the occasional horizontal double-arm stretching by the umpire. But he did do it often enough that he remains the only bowler to bowl 100 wides in Test cricket, with 104 in total. Kallis is a worthy leader in this field. As an aside, this compares fairly neatly with the 97 vertical stretches that he elicited from the men in the coats for hitting the ball over the boundary.