Kallis - File

LONDON (AP):

SOUTH AFRICA all-rounder Jacques Kallis was named the world's top cricketer for 2007 after scoring more Test runs than anyone else in the year.

The 32-year-old Kallis hit 1,210 runs at an average of 86.42 and took 20 wickets for just 25.75 runs each to become the fifth player to win Wisden Cricket Almanac's annual award, after Ricky Ponting, Shane Warne, Andrew Flintoff and, last year's winner, Muttiah Muralitharan.

The award is decided by journalists and editors at Wisden, which has been published yearly since 1864.

"Plenty of other players performed mighty deeds, but the South African surpassed himself," Peter Roebuck wrote in Wisden's 2008 edition, which was published yesterday. "Kallis will look back at 2007 as the year he cut loose, the year he dared to dominate a match and even a series."

Kallis did just that in Pakistan in October, with two of his five centuries of 2007 coming in the first Test in Karachi, as South Africa won by 160 runs.

He followed that with 59 and 107 not out in Lahore to help complete a 2-0 series sweep, and in November smashed 186 and 131 in successive innings to help his team sweep New Zealand 2-0.

"It was the year he came to understand that greatness cannot be attained till the chains have been broken," said Roebuck, who called Kallis "the first indisputably great African cricketer of the post-apartheid era".

Kallis also hit 987 runs in 27 one-day internationals.

Ian Bell, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ottis Gibson, Ryan Side-bottom and Zaheer Khan were named as Wisden's traditional five Cricketers of the Year.

Bell scored more runs that any other player in England's one-day side, while Chanderpaul equalled Test cricket's record of scoring 50 or more in seven straight innings. He also helped West Indies to their first away Test win, over a team other than Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, in more than seven years, and dominated the side's one-day series win in England on his way to 912 one-day runs at an average of 76.

The 39-year-old Gibson took 10 wickets for 47 for English county side Durham against Hampshire and was made England bowling coach after a stellar season. Zaheer dominated India's Test series win in England with 18 wickets at 20 each, and Sidebottom established himself as England's premier strike bowler - six years after making his only previous Test appearance.