Six Feet Eight, 99 Wickets and a Broken Ruler: The Question Cricket Avoids Through Marco Jansen

St George's Park, Port Elizabeth, day two of the third Test. South Africa are 110 for six, the top order has caved in, and at the crease stands a 26-year-old left-armer who is six feet eight inches tall and carries a Test batting average of 25.66. I watched that session twice from my desk in Dhaka. Once for the runs, once for the lines. By the end he had 85, dragging a broken innings towards something respectable, and in the next innings the same man was dropping the ball over the shoulders of first-class batters.

The Counterpress episode began with one blunt question: why does cricket keep buying the same ghost? Say the word all-rounder and a fixed image appears — tall, quick, left-arm, slightly unruly, smiling at the camera after the match. The field is messier than that. Our vocabulary is lazier than the field.

South Africa's all-rounder lineage is not in doubt. Mike Procter, Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener, Jacques Kallis, now Wiaan Mulder and Marco Jansen. The word attached to that list is continuity, and Kallis's 13,289 Test runs and 292 wickets sit on top of every conversation, ending it before it starts.

That continuity story hides a problem. The smoother the list looks, the bigger the gaps between the names. Procter's selection logic, Pollock's workload, Klusener's batting position — these are three different solutions, not three copies of one mould.

Look at Jansen's numbers instead. Before the third Test: 99 wickets at 20.81. That is not merely good, it is rare, particularly for a left-arm bowler of that height whose ball climbs off a length. There is no like-for-like replacement at either end, and that is the captain's real advantage.

Then the batting average: 25.66. Here the story stalls. The phrase "two players in one" is still a possibility, not a description. Praise from Faf du Plessis or Dale Steyn is sincere; the batting evidence remains thin.

Now the measurement question. The most popular way to identify an all-rounder is arithmetic — batting average above bowling average. By that test Don Bradman qualifies. So does Joe Root. The shortcut answers nothing and conceals the question.

Jarrod Kimber's line is more useful: the test is a player's effect on the entire team. I would push it further. A genuine all-rounder is someone selectable on either skill, whose presence lets a captain add a bowler without weakening the batting. That is a balance calculation, not a scorecard calculation.

Which is why bits-and-pieces players are not all-rounders. On paper both have two departments. In a captain's arithmetic they are different animals: one is an option, the other is an obligation.

Apply the hard test and the history looks stingy. A century and five wickets in the same Test has happened 41 times, across 29 players. Ian Botham did it five times. Beyond Botham, Richard Hadlee, Imran Khan and Kapil Dev, the list thins almost to nothing. Keith Miller's 2,958 runs at 36.97 and 170 wickets at 22.97, Alan Davidson's 1,328 runs and 186 wickets at 20.53 — the first man to score 100 runs and take 10 wickets in the same match, in the tied Test of 2026 — are exceptions, not the rule.

Why the exceptions are so few is the question nobody asks. Two jobs on one body, injury exposure, the franchise calendar, selection incentives that reward availability over balance. We express wonder, then go looking for the next star.

The cultural trap sits here. The imagined all-rounder is a fast bowler who can hit at the death. Outside Asia that is the default image. Ravindra Jadeja and Shakib al-Hasan belong in any all-time all-rounder list, yet the language around them changes — as though spin plus batting is a bonus and seam plus batting is a gift.

England shows it clearest. Botham, Flintoff, Stokes: the maverick template is so strong that Sam Curran, a useful left-arm bowler and inventive batter, disappears into its shadow. Moeen Ali has said repeatedly that England never fully valued him.

Australia runs differently — Andrew Symonds, Shane Watson, Mitchell Marsh, Cameron Green, Beau Webster: fine, rarely sustained. Adam Gilchrist complicates the boundary altogether: he batted in the top six in 23 of 96 Tests, and nobody calls him an all-rounder, because keeping is not a department in our template. Chris Harris of New Zealand gave balance without breaking records, so the conversation forgets him.

Empty stadiums did not kill home advantage; they revealed the referee. The all-rounder debate works the same way. The problem is not in the numbers. It is in the template behind our eyes.

Where I could be wrong. First, the unicorn framing is its own kind of hype. A player averaging 25.66 with the bat should not be called two cricketers in one until at least two more series have passed.

Second, my balance test is subjective. Team strength, era, conditions and selectorial philosophy all move the line. A genuine all-rounder for a weak side can be a specialist for a strong one.

Third, the T20 economy deserves separate treatment. Squad slots are finite, so a two-in-one player looks like value — but what leagues are actually buying is cheap bits-and-pieces cover, not genuine all-rounders. The genuine article then carries the overs, loses the rest, and turns minor niggles into major injuries.

One note from my own working life: sitting on the ICC Awards of the Decade jury in 2026, I saw how records are weighed. The department with the loud numbers dominates the conversation, and the other department's shortfall goes to sleep on a soft bed called potential.

So, a prediction with a date and a metric. If Jansen's Test batting average has not reached 30 by 31 December 2026, the phrase "two players in one" should be struck out and he should be valued as an elite bowler. And if he averages more than 20 overs per Test across the next 12 Tests while the franchise calendar runs alongside, a significant back or soft-tissue injury is expected within 18 months.

The question then is not about Marco Jansen. It is about us. Do we want someone who can do two jobs, or do we just keep buying the old photograph that no longer walks onto the field?