Top 10 cricketers of all time | Sportstoday exclusive

10.Sir Jack hobbs

The sole Englishman to make the Wisden list, Jack Hobbs may not be as famous with the modern cricketing public as the likes of Botham, Boycott, Compton and Cowdrey - but his reputation within the game remains huge.

Hobbs was renowned for his improvisational skills and his ability to hold an innings together once the wickets started to fall around him.


Test record
5410 runs in 61 matches
Batting average 56.94
15 cnturies, 28 50s
Highest score 211


9.Imran khan

Without a doubt, Pakistan's greatest Cricket Captain..Imran Khan.
An excellent allrounder who began his career as a teenager aginst England
in 1971. Imran went on to become one of the top fast bowlers in Pakistan
Cricket. But his real success story came as a Captain. Bringing
together the Pakistan cricket team to put up dazzling performances time
after time, and maintaining harmony within the team, was his biggest
achievement. He proved to be the best all rounder of all time

Test Record
Matches - 88
runs scored - 3807
average - 37
Wickets - 362
Bowling average - 22.81

8.Sir Garfield sobers

A cricketing genius, Garry Sobers excelled at all aspects of the game, and few would argue his claim as the finest allround player in modern cricket. His exceptional Test batting average tells little about the manner in which he made the runs, his elegant yet powerful style marked by all the shots, but memorably his off-side play. As a batsman he was great, as a bowler, merely superb, but would have made the West Indies side as a bowler alone.

Tst record
Matches - 93
Runs - 8032
average - 57.78
Wickets - 235
Average - 32

7.Sunil Gavaskar

Sunil Gavaskar was one of the greatest opening batsmen of all time, and certainly the most successful. His game was built around a near perfect technique and enormous powers of concentration. It is hard to visualise a more beautiful defence: virtually unbreachable, it made his wicket among the hardest to earn. He played with equal felicity off both front and back foot, had an excellent judgement of length and line and was beautifully balanced. He had virtually every stroke in the book but traded flair for the solidity his side needed more. His record for the highest number of Test hundreds was recently overtaken by Sachin Tendulkar, but statistics alone don't reveal Gavaskar's true value to India. He earned respect for Indian cricket and he taught his team-mates the virtue of professionalism. The self-actualisation of Indian cricket began under him.

Test record
Matches - 125
Runs - 10122
Average - 51.12
50/100 - 45/34

6.Shane warne

At first there were nerves and chubbiness. Then came wild soaring legbreaks, followed by fame and flippers. For a long while there were women, then a bookmaker, then diet pills, then more women - and headlines, always headlines. Now he has come out the other end, his bluff and bluster and mischief and innocence somehow intact. The man who in 2000 was rated among the five greatest cricketers of the 20th century was, in 2006, bowling better than ever.



When Warne likened his life to a soap opera he was selling himself short. His story was part fairytale, part pantomime, part hospital drama, part adult's-only romp, part glittering awards ceremony. He took a Test hat-trick, won the Man-of-the-Match prize in a World Cup final and was the subject of seven books. He was the first cricketer to reach 700 Test wickets. He swatted more runs than any other Test player without making a hundred, and was probably the wiliest captain Australia never had. His ball that gazoodled Mike Gatting in 1993, bouncing outside leg stump and cuffing off, is unanimously esteemed the most famous in history. He revived legspin, thought to be extinct, and is now pre-eminent in a game so transformed that we sometimes wonder where the next champion fast bowlers will come from. And now a happily retired man at 38 warne played at the Indian premier league and inspired more than 10-15 souls and lead them towards their first victory this victorious man has made many victories many directly and many indirectly.

Test record
Matches - 145
Runs - 3154
Wickets - 708
Average - 25.41

5.Allan border

Allan Border parlayed three shots and a fanatical zeal about not giving away his wicket into the most durable career that cricket in his time had known. At his retirement he had featured in more Tests, more consecutive Tests, more Tests as captain and more catches than any other player - and a batting average of 50 as well. His underused left-arm spin once brought him 11 for 96 against West Indies, and he was also an artful one-day player with a deadly arm from short midwicket. Not a natural leader, nor a man of frills, he came reluctantly to the captaincy in a dark age for Australia after Kim Hughes' tearful resignation at Brisbane in 1984-85, but eventually applied himself to the task as proudly as to his batting. From the World Cup win in 1987 and regaining the Ashes two years later, Australia crusaded under Border until in 1993 they came within one ball of conquering the world by beating West Indies. After he retired from Test cricket he played in Queensland's maiden Sheffield Shield win, was named 12th man in Australia's Team of the Century, coached Australia A, and became a selector in 1998. He resigned his post in Trevor Hohns' panel in 2005 in favour of pursuing his media interests, particularly as a pay-television pundit, but he returned a year later to assist the new chairman Andrew Hilditch. Four months after re-joining he suddenly stepped down again due to expanding business commitments. His importance to the game is recognised annually when the Australian Player of the Year receives the Allan Border Medal.

Test record
Matches - 158
Runs - 11174
Average - 50.56
50/100 - 63/27

4.Brain charles Lara

The 10th of 11 children, Brian Lara learnt his game at the Harvard Coaching Clinic, where he was enrolled at the age of six, and although at school he played for Trinidad's junior football and table tennis side, it was cricket which really drew him. Aged 14, he made 745 runs at 126.16, earning him selection for the Trinidad Under-16 team. A year later he was in the West Indies Under-19 side. In 1990, aged 20, Lara became Trinidad and Tobago's youngest captain, leading them to victory in the Geddes Grant Shield. In that year he made his Test debut, scoring 44 and 6 against Pakistan. No-one since Bradman has built massive scores as often and as fast as Lara in his pomp. Even his stance was thrilling - the bat raised high in the air, the weight poised on a bent front knee, the eyes low and level. Then the guillotine would fall, sending the ball flashing to the boundary. In the space of two months in 1994, Lara's 375 and 501 not out broke world records for the highest Test and first-class scores, but sudden fame turned him into a confused and contradictory figure.


in Adelaide in November 2005, when he went past Allan Border's tally of 11174 runs to become Test cricket's most prolific scorer. Then in April 2006, after protracted dispute between the West Indies board and the players union (WIPA), he was reinstated - for the third time - as West Indies captain. Lara's leadership in the five-match one-day home series against India came in for much praise as the tourists were knocked over 4-1, but in the succeeding Test series he struggled. His captaincy was erratic - inspiring in parts, questionable on many occasions - though he later revealed that his hands were tied due to peripheral issues related to team selection.

It was a sad, but perhaps inevitable, way for such a genius to bow out.

Test record
Matches - 131
Runs - 11953
Average - 52.88
50/100 - 48/34

3.Sir vivian richards

You knew when he was coming. The outgoing batsman would already have disappeared into the pavilion, and the expectation of what was to follow filled the air. Viv kept you waiting ... time to ponder. Then he appeared, sauntering, swaggering, arms windmilling slowly. He would take guard, and then, head tilted back slightly and cudding his gum, he would walk a few paces down the pitch to tap it while looking the bowler in the eye. It was calculated menace and magnificent theatre from arguably the most devastating batsman of all time. How to bowl to him? Get him to the other end, perhaps. Hold your nerve, do not take what might follow as personal. Occasionally he was vulnerable early on if his desire to dominate overwhelmed him. But he had no weakness until his eyesight infinitesimally, but inevitably, started to let him down and those eye-shots became harder. His strengths were on the front foot. So far forward could he get that he was able to plant that right foot outside the line of off stump, at once eliminating lbw and creating his own leg-stump line from where he would flick bowlers relentlessly through midwicket. Or he might send a similar ball skimming through extra cover. Straighten the ball down the line of the stumps and the bowler stood a chance, but he rarely missed and they ran a terrible risk. His power was awesome, he hooked devastatingly and never wore a helmet, rocking back from his front-foot base to take the ball from his eyeline in front of square. Occasionally, for no apparent reason, he would block an over in immaculate fashion, seemingly in defensive position before the ball had left the bowler's hand. Then, refreshed, off he would go again.

Yest record
Matches - 121
runs - 8540
Average - 50.23
50/100- 45/24

2.Sachin ramesh tendulkar

Sachin Tendulkar has been the most wholesome batsman of his time, and arguably the biggest cricket icon as well. His batting is based on the purest principles: perfect balance, economy of movement, precision in stroke-making, and that intangible quality given only to geniuses, anticipation. If he doesn't have a signature stroke - the upright, back-foot punch comes close - it is because he is equally proficient in each of the full range of orthodox shots (and plenty of improvised ones as well) and can pull them out at will.

Though he has adopted a noticeably conservative approach in the last quarter of his career, there are no apparent weaknesses in Tendulkar's game. He can score all around the wicket, off both front foot and back, and has made runs in all parts of the world in all conditions.

widthSome of his finest performances have come against Australia, the overwhelmingly dominant team of his era. His century as a 19-year old on a lightning fast pitch at the WACA is considered one of the best innings ever to have been played in Australia. A few years later he received the ultimate compliment from the ultimate batsman when Don Bradman confided to his wife that Tendulkar reminded him of himself.

Blessed with the keenest of cricket minds, and armed with a loathing for losing, Tendulkar set about doing what it took to become one of the best batsmen in the world. This was after he was turned away from a fast-bowling camp in Chennai by Dennis Lillee.

Tendulkar's greatness was established early: he was only 16 when he made his Test debut. He was hit on the mouth by Waqar Younis but continued to bat, in a blood-soaked shirt. His first Test hundred, a match-saving one at Old Trafford, came when he was 17, and he had 16 Test hundreds before he turned 25. In 2000 he became the first batsman to have scored 50 international hundreds, and he currently holds the record for most hundreds in both Tests and ODIs - remarkable, considering he didn't score his first ODI hundred till his 79th match.

Test record
Matches - 147
runs - 11782
average - 55.31
50/100 - 49/39

1. Sir Donald Bradman

Sir Donald Bradman of Australia was, beyond any argument, the greatest batsman who ever lived and the greatest cricketer of the 20th century. Only WG Grace, in the formative years of the game, even remotely matched his status as a player. And The Don lived on into the 21st century, more than half-a-century after he retired. In that time, his reputation not merely as a player but as an administrator, selector, sage and cricketing statesman only increased. His contribution transcended sport; his exploits changed Australia's relationship to what used to be called the "mother country".

Throughout the 1930s and '40s Bradman was the world's master cricketer, so far ahead of everyone else that comparisons became pointless. In 1930, he scored 974 runs in the series, 309 of them in one amazing day at Headingley, and in seven Test series against England he remained a figure of utter dominance; Australia lost the Ashes only once, in 1932-33, when England were so spooked by Bradman that they devised a system of bowling, Bodyline, that history has damned as brutal and unfair, simply to thwart him. He still averaged 56 in the series. In all, he went to the crease 80 times in Tests, and scored 29 centuries. He needed just four in his last Test innings, at The Oval in 1948, to ensure an average of 100 ­- but was out second ball for 0, a rare moment of human failing that only added to his everlasting appeal. Bradman made all those runs at high speed in a manner that bewildered opponents and entranced spectators. Though his batting was not classically beautiful, it was always awesome. As Neville Cardus put it, he was a devastating rarity: "A genius with an eye for business."

Still Sir Don bradman remains to be the Aim Ambition and passion of many players

Test record

Matches - 52
runs - 6996
Average- 99.94
50/100 - 13/29