Current test greats

[Markkkkk]

With the past generation of Warne,Murali, Hayden and Ponting behind us, you do you think is going to be known as one of the test greats? A great in my books is someone who will be remembered in 30-40 years like Botham, Hadlee, Bradman and their stats are unnatural.

My greats of this generation are:
Jacques Kallis
Dale Steyn
Sachin Tendulkar
Kevin Pieterson
Mahlea Jayawrdene
Kumar Sangakkara

People who are close:
Alistair Cook
Hashim Amla
Graeme Smith
Michael Clarke
Shivarine Chanderpaul


Who are your current greats of this generation?

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

I'd say KP still feels like he's close rather than a great. If asked to judge right now I wouldn't rate him outright in front of clarke if I was saying who was the better player over their career. I guess he has felt like the leading man for england for a while now though, so maybe there's that.

Dhoni, is close, massive achievements in all formats as captain for india, one of the best ever batsmen in ODI cricket and just a general celebrity aura surrounding him.

 

[Markkkkk]

I'd say KP still feels like he's close rather than a great. If asked to judge right now I wouldn't rate him outright in front of clarke if I was saying who was the better player over their career. I guess he has felt like the leading man for england for a while now though, so maybe there's that.

Dhoni, is close, massive achievements in all formats as captain for india, one of the best ever batsmen in ODI cricket and just a general celebrity aura surrounding him.

I understand KP and Clarke but Dhoni IMO shouldnt be there if you look at his stats he has an average of 39.70 which isnt very 'record breaking' if you ask me, in 40 years time if someone asked who was the great wicky keepers of the early 200s i would chose a couple of players ahead of him

 

[AbhishekS]

Dhoni comes nowhere close to be termed as a test great IMO.

And I genuinely feel that Sehwag can be counted as one of the test greats. I'm a big fan of him so I may be biased, but I find no reason for him not being termed as a test great. His achievements as an opener have been phenomenal over these years.

And even Dravid can march into that list of the current test greats.

 

[Markkkkk]

Dhoni comes nowhere close to be termed as a test great IMO.

And I genuinely feel that Sehwag can be counted as one of the test greats. I'm a big fan of him so I may be biased, but I find no reason for him not being termed as a test great. His achievements as an opener have been phenomenal over these years.

And even Dravid can march into that list of the current test greats.

Dravid has retired or else he would of been one of my first picks, Sehwag is one of the few that depending where you look it will have different results, i reckon that his stats do suggest that he is a man to remember but when someone mentions him i think of his T20 and ODI rather than his Test cricket , another person similar to him is Gayle, he has a highscore of 333 in test cricket but he wont be known for that any more then his 176+- in this years IPL

 

[KrishnamurthiN]

Why doesn't Gautam Gambhir even come in your list of close ones...?

 

[Satan666]

I understand KP and Clarke but Dhoni IMO shouldnt be there if you look at his stats he has an average of 39.70 which isnt very 'record breaking' if you ask me, in 40 years time if someone asked who was the great wicky keepers of the early 200s i would chose a couple of players ahead of him

Stinky spoke about the 'aura of celebrity' as a possible reason for Dhoni being considered a great, and to an individual who knows nothing technically about cricket they may agree, these are the people who attend matches more for the party like atmosphere. Sadly, the guys like yourself who know Dhoni's stat would state otherwise, that he isnt a great!

Also Dhoni's record as a successful captain wouldn't do much for him, remember Mark Taylor who lead the Aussies to the Caribbean in '95 defeating the West Indian team in a test series for the first time in 17 years? Taylor was at the helm when the Aussies initially transformed into an unbeatable force, yet no one consider him as a great since his batting was average.

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Dhoni comes nowhere close to be termed as a test great IMO.

And I genuinely feel that Sehwag can be counted as one of the test greats. I'm a big fan of him so I may be biased, but I find no reason for him not being termed as a test great. His achievements as an opener have been phenomenal over these years.

And even Dravid can march into that list of the current test greats.

The one thing that works against Sehwag is the bulk of runs he has scored on the Indian roads, however personally I would rate him as a great.

 

[Markkkkk]

^ Untouchable i chose everyone based on stats in test, Graeme Smith would also be one of the greats with his captaincy skills

Krish Gambhiar is good but he isnt in the same class as Jayawardene, Kallis, Tendulkar. They have been saving their teams and scoring bucket loads of runs for their countries for years

 

[phil1987]

Stinky spoke about the 'aura of celebrity' as a possible reason for Dhoni being considered a great, and to an individual who knows nothing technically about cricket they may agree, these are the people who attend matches more for the party like atmosphere. Sadly, the guys like yourself who know Dhoni's stat would state otherwise, that he isnt a great!

Also Dhoni's record as a successful captain wouldn't do much for him, remember Mark Taylor who lead the Aussies to the Caribbean in '95 defeating the West Indian team in a test series for the first time in 17 years? Taylor was at the helm when the Aussies initially transformed into an unbeatable force, yet no one consider him as a great since his batting was average.

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The one thing that works against Sehwag is the bulk of runs he has scored on the Indian roads, however personally I would rate him as a great.

Mark Taylor may not fall under all time greats but make no mistake he was a great opening batsmen who played in an era that had all those good West Indian bowlers, Donald and Pollock in S.A, Wasim Akram and W.Younis in pakistan even Gough and Caddick would not have been the easiest to face in all those Ashes test matches on English and Aussie pitches.

He played a lot more test cricket vs England and West Indies(5 test series) on fast lively pitches.

AVERAGE OPENINGbatsmen don't score 7000+ plus test runs averaging 45 and score 20 100s.(also one of the highest test scores ever made 334*)

He is one of the great opening batsmen. Those guys i see on people's list like KP and Jayawardene would have been found out a lot more if they were opening the batting vs the new ball in long 5 test series on good pitches vs high quality bowlers.

 

[Umair7]

Where is Misbah

 

[Satan666]

Mark Taylor may not fall under all time greats but make no mistake he was a great opening batsmen who played in an era that had all those good West Indian bowlers, Donald and Pollock in S.A, Wasim Akram and W.Younis in pakistan even Gough and Caddick would not have been the easiest to face in all those Ashes test matches on English and Aussie pitches.

He played a lot more test cricket vs England and West Indies(5 test series) on fast lively pitches.

AVERAGE OPENINGbatsmen don't score 7000+ plus test runs averaging 45 and score 20 100s.(also one of the highest test scores ever made 334*)

He is one of the great opening batsmen. Those guys i see on people's list like KP and Jayawardene would have been found out a lot more if they were opening the batting vs the new ball in long 5 test series on good pitches vs high quality bowlers.

He was maybe slightly above average, but great is solely your personal opinion, he had an average of 43 in tests and 32 in ODI, one of the main reason he made the squad was heavily due to his excellent captaincy skills!

 

[phil1987]

1ST of all this thread is called TEST GREATS not test and ODI greats.

Go do your research on TEST opening batsmen in the history of test cricket(100+ years) and i guarantee you will not find more than 25-30 better opening batsman than Mark Taylor.

I dont think you quite grasp how much harder it is to average 40 plus when opening the batting compared to when playing in the middle order.

Its also a lot easier to average 45 plus when opening the batting on sub-contient pitches than English or Australian pitches.

Some of the finest fast bowlers of all time played in the era when Taylor opened the batting.(POLLOCK,DONALD,WASIM AKRAM,W.YOUNIS,IMRAN KHAN,AMBROSE,WALSH,GOUGH) If you think an OPENING average of 43 vs these guys is average then you must think 95% of opening batsman in the last 100 years are average.

You are terribly ill informed if you think Mark Taylor was just an average test opener

 

[zeustrojanstark]

Maybe not now but in a matter of few years Virat Kohli will be there at the top.I think your list is perfect as of now.Maybe in the close list i would give a look to Greame Smith.

 

[Satan666]

1ST of all this thread is called TEST GREATS not test and ODI greats.

Go do your research on TEST opening batsmen in the history of test cricket(100+ years) and i guarantee you will not find more than 25-30 better opening batsman than Mark Taylor.

I dont think you quite grasp how much harder it is to average 40 plus when opening the batting compared to when playing in the middle order.

Its also a lot easier to average 45 plus when opening the batting on sub-contient pitches than English or Australian pitches.

Some of the finest fast bowlers of all time played in the era when Taylor opened the batting.(POLLOCK,DONALD,WASIM AKRAM,W.YOUNIS,IMRAN KHAN,AMBROSE,WALSH,GOUGH) If you think an OPENING average of 43 vs these guys is average then you must think 95% of opening batsman in the last 100 years are average.

You are terribly ill informed if you think Mark Taylor was just an average test opener

I based my opinion solely on test but showed his ODI stats to enhance how average of a batsman he was in general! While you research have a read on cricinfo's profile of him, which states that his place was saved in the squad due to his captaincy skills.

 

[Owzat]

This reminds me of one of those most debatable and ambiguous football topics, "who is world class?". One big sticking point is always defining "world class", or in this case "greats".

Do you have to be the best of your type? Make a World XI? Be among the best, but without defining what does and doesn't cut it you really are just asking for an argument or 20.

Take this :

i guarantee you will not find more than 25-30 better opening batsman than Mark Taylor.

Not more than 25-30 better?!?!?!? Frankly if we're talking greats I'd want them in the top 10 probably. Should have guessed this thread would be quite 'watery', what with Hayden included in the four names of past 'greats'. And I'm not sure if there are or aren't 25-30 better, quite possibly are.

Again we get into the area of definitions when talking about "average", football fans do it with Premiership footballers who are quite clearly better than average by dint of being in the top flight with a great many divisions loaded with lesser players below.....................

I mean I might describe someone like Hayden as a "great player", well actually I'd probably say very good or something a bit less excessive, but to consider him a "great", or using the word I'd prefer as interpreted to mean "legend" or one of the very best.

People talk about Anderson like he's great, he's a very good bowler but there are very few great bowlers these days, Steyn is definitely one, Harris might be or might become one, there aren't many who pick up wickets consistently without needing the ball to be doing something. Swann's a very good bowler, just shy of the top bracket in my book and just a bit better than Anderson for my money.

But that's where this kind of debate falls apart, opinions that will divide even if you all were to agree on what the definition of the qualifier "great" is. Is there a lot of point debating who is and isn't? Seems like a listing exercise that will lean over too far and topple into the chasm of pointless in which it belongs