WHEN Bob Woolmer arrived in England with his South African team, he made two expansive claims about his well-pedigreed allrounder Shaun Pollock. Not only is Pollock the finest all-rounder in the world today, Woolmer said, he also has it in him to match the deeds of the best there has ever been, Sir Garfield Sobers.

As eyebrows hit the ceiling around the cricket world, Pollock responded in typically down-to-earth manner. `Oh, the coach has been shooting his mouth off again,' he said, although deep down he was probably quite happy that the comparison had entered anyone's mind.

But put all hype and circumstance aside, and remember that the wily Woolmer must have thought a good deal before making those comments. Certainly the first one should prompt a fair study. Allrounders in world cricket are a bit like the Asian money markets just now. The high was struck a few years ago, and the downward spiral is fairly well-entrenched. Indeed, the business of allrounders is in a deep recession at the moment.

You could make a list of allrounders playing at the highest level in Test cricket, and still be left with the bottom half of your bus ticket. India, Australia, Sri Lanka, England and Zimbabwe have none, New Zealand have Chris Cairns, the West Indies have Carl Hooper and Pakistan have Wasim Akram and Azhar Mahmood. That only leaves the South Africans Brian McMillan, Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener and Jacques Kallis.

It's not easy to qualify for the tag of allrounder, especially by the prevailing definition, which, if applied to athletics, would be the equivalent of a decathlete running like Carl lewis, jumping like Javier Sotomayor and pole-vaulting like Sergei Bubka. The traditionalists have always said that an allrounder should be able to win his place in a side as a batsman and as a bowler. It is a great definition if you are in the business of eliminating people, because very, very few people in the history of the game would qualify.

If you leave out those 19th-and early 20th-century Goliaths who could take ten wickets in a session and hit a century in half-an-hour, you would struggle to look beyond Vinoo Mankad, Garfield Sobers, Keith Miller, Ian Botham and Imran Khan. If Mike Procter had played more Test cricket, he might have joined them.

That is why I believe an allrounder should be among the best in the world in his first speciality, while still being capable of a high level of proficiency in his secondary function. So if you are a top-grade bowler, you should be averaging above 30 as a batsman, and if you are a very high-quality batsman, averaging over 40, you should be capable of taking 100 wickets in about 40 Test matches.

Even by these diluted specifications, I'm afraid our list is still very thin. Wasim Akram has a stunning 341 wickets from 79 Test matches but only averages 21.47 with the bat in spite of that colossal 257 not out against Zimbabwe in 1996–97. Chris Cairns has 103 wickets from 33 Tests, but he averages only 26 with the bat. Carl Hooper is clearly a batsman who can bowl, but even he only manages 35.10 with the bat and has a mere 80 wickets from 73 Test matches. Brian McMillan, though he probably had it in him to meet the classical definition, is seemingly in decline.

 Lance Klusener has 42 wickets from 16 games, which is probably not good enough for a front-line bowler, but he does average a very handy 28.65 with the bat. And for a man so new to international cricket, Azhar Mahmood also merits inclusion on our short-list. Initially regarded as a seam bowler, he has made three centuries in 11 Tests for an average of 52.33, and has 24 wickets to boot.

That leaves Jacques Kallis as a rival to Pollock. Here is a young man who takes some wonderful catches at second slip, is considered good enough to bat at No. 3 for his country and can bowl 40 overs in an innings if required. On current form he would have to be classed amongst the best in the world, but a tardy start is weighing him down. After Trent Bridge, he had 24 wickets from 18 Tests, and only averaged 29.59 with the bat.

Which of these three is the greatest?

So Bob Woolmer's first claim was right: before the start of the fifth Test at Headingly, his man had 83 wickets from 24 Tests and averaged 31.20 with the bat. Pollock has already moved up the order to No. 7, and if he does eventually settle down at No. 6, as expected, that will make comparisons with Sobers easier to sustain.

But Woolmer is on shakier ground here, because Garry Sobers, after 93 Tests, had hit 8032 runs at the mind-boggling average of 57.78, including 26 centuries (one of them 365 not out). That is clearly enough to put him among the great batsmen of all time, and he also took 235 wickets at 34.04 and held 109 catches! Enough reason for Pollock to be dismissive of his coach's view? At first sight, maybe. But a closer inspection reveals that Sobers was something of a late bloomer.

After 15 Tests, Sobers had 724 runs at 31.48, was without a century, and had taken only 18 wickets, despite figures of 4 for 75 in his debut innings. In fact, once he had played 25 Tests – the same number as Pollock, by the time you read this – Sobers was still languishing on 31 wickets, though by then his batting average had soared. How is this for a run of scores in that interim period: 52, 80, 365 not out, 125, 109 not out, 14, 27, 25, 142 not out, 4, 198 and 106 not out? If Pollock, who is clearly a bowling allrounder ( Sobers would qualify as a batting one, since we are handing out tags) is to get into the dream team, he would need to be taking five wickets a Test to match Sobers's batting average of 57. That would mean being in the Lillee/ Hadlee/ Marshall class as a bowler, while maintaining a batting average of 31!

So, for all his bravado, Bob Woolmer is unlikely to be proved right on both counts.

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