In cricket a player who can perform well with both the bat and bowl is a great asset for any team and across the history of international cricket there have been a number of cricketers that hall into this bracket.

It is difficult to specify a set of criteria to determine whether a player can be described as an all-rounder. To compare the performances of various all-rounders we can look at the subset of crickters who have scored at least 1,000 runs and taken at least 100 wickets at Test Match level. This is not a perfect criteria as there will be players who have taken part in sufficient test matches that they will be included even though they are clearly much stronger in one of the two disciplines but very handy in the other.

A total of 54 test match cricketers were identified based on this criteria (up to and including test match 2004) and a scatter plot of the performances can be seen here. The graph shows that the majority of players in the bottom left region of the graph with a handful of batsmen and bowlers at the extremes in terms of runs or wickets.

To get a better idea of the balance between wickets and runs we can zoom in on the bottom left hand region of the graph to get this display. This new graph suggests that although there have been a number of English cricketers that has scored 1,000 runs and taken 100 wickets they do not have the longevity of players from other countries.

There are naturally other measures of performance that could be used to compare this set of allround cricketers which might provided a more illuminating insight into all round performances.