The announcement of Jacques Kallis’ retirement from Test cricket was much in sync with the way the man has always pursued the game — no fuss, just a case of head ruling the heart. The only allowance for emotion from him was when he said that it wasn’t an easy decision.

The year will be now best remembered as one which saw two of the modern giants of the game, Sachin Tendulkar and Kallis, walking into a golden sunset. While the Indian batting legend’s exit witnessed one of the most protracted and emotional farewells in sporting history, the South African’s will be a much more low-key affair — though it’s time for us to do more.

It was only a few years back that cricketing media suddenly woke up to the debate on the greatest all-rounder of all times — pitching Kallis alongside Sir Garfield Sobers. It’s a debate much akin to the Tendulkar or Don Bradman variety, and there is a need to put things in perspective keeping in mind the different generations and contexts that they have strutted their stuff in.

For those of us who grew up watching their cricket in the 1960s and 70s, there simply was no greater entertainer than Sobers. The romance and mysticism that surrounded Caribbean cricket during that era explains a lot of his magnetism — while his superhuman feats with the bat and ball are also well documented.

With his collar up, the aggressive flair in his batting and the sheer variety of his bowling — he was a high-quality fast medium bowler as well the inventor of the chinaman delivery — which elevated him to virtually a status of magician. If Sir Gary had been all about Caribbean machismo, Kallis is more of the working-class hero who accumulated his records through the virtues of discipline, hard work and consistency.

The weight of statistics will surely tilt the scales in favour of Kallis, but only just. A product of the 1990s when South Africa had just taken their tentative steps back to international cricket after two decades of isolation, the South African management under the likes of Mike Procter and Bob Woolmer thrived on the mantra of teamwork and planning. Kallis was the quintessential product of that team ethos, a philosophy which bordered on being ‘effective’ rather than spectacular.

It’s particularly relevant to refer to a soundbyte from Kallis to drive home my point. Replying to a stock question about his reaction on scoring 10,000-plus runs in both forms of the game, he told my colleague that when you keep on playing for such a long period of time, some of these records are bound to happen.

Typically Kallis, you may say. It surely takes more than just playing for a ‘long period’ of time to end up as the fourth highest scorer in Test cricket with 44 centuries and 292 wickets.