Top 5 No. 3 South African batsmen of all time

2 Jacques Kallis

Jacques Kallis

Although Jacques Kallis is arguably South Africa's greatest ever batsman, he batted at number 3 in only 49 of the 166 Test matches he played in his illustrious career. Kallis was perhaps the most technically sound batsman in the South African side and in addition to this, he had a defensive technique that could often make the bowlers wonder how they were ever going to get his wicket. However, that was only one side of his game. Kallis could also punish bowlers with scintillating strokeplay when he felt like and he had all the strokes in his repertoire.

Later in his career, he also added the leg side steer with a roll of the wrists over the ball and that opened up another scoring avenue for him.

In the 49 Tests that he batted at number 3, Kallis scored a total of 3335 runs at an average of 49.77 and hit 9 centuries, in addition to 16 half-centuries. His highest score of 189 not out came against Zimbabwe at Bulawayo back in 1999 and other centuries were scored against Australia, England, New Zealand and the West Indies. If he had batted at number 3 for a longer period, then Kallis would probably have had a better shot at being number 1.