5 most prolific batting pairs for South Africa across formats
Batting partnerships are a hallmark of any world class team and in that regard, South Africa have been blessed over the course of their cricketing history. However, in modern cricket where batsmen need to be consistent across formats and forge the same sort of effect with their batting partners, it perhaps becomes a far more difficult task.
In that regard, South Africa's best batsmen over the last two decades or so have been quite brilliant and they have taken their batting chemistry to other formats of the game with relative ease. Needless to say, it is also one of the reasons why South Africa have been one of the best teams in world cricket for most of the past two decades.
Here is a look at 5 of their best batting pairs across the three different formats of the game.
#5 AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis
If there is ever a debate about the greatest batsmen to have been produced by South Africa, then the names of Jacques Kallis and AB de Villiers will figure prominently. However, more importantly, the duo batted together across the three formats of the game for nearly a decade and perhaps formed one of the most formidable duos in world cricket.
While both were technically superb and had the ability to bat on all sorts of wickets, against all kinds of bowling attacks, their approaches to batting were different.
Kallis believed in grinding the opposition down and usually had a far more conservative style in limited-overs cricket. De Villiers, on the other hand, is a natural stroke-maker and in limited-overs cricket, took it to a whole new level. They batted together on 97 occasions and amassed 5200 runs at a brilliant average of 57.14. They put on stands in excess of hundred runs on 18 occasions and crossed the 50 run mark 14 times.