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Who is the greatest ever ODI cricketer?
Sir Vivian Richards
ESPNcricinfo – Sachin Tendulkar, Wasim Akram, Adam Gilchrist, Viv Richards and MS Dhoni are the leading contenders for the crown of the greatest one-day cricketer of all time, in an exercise conducted by the Cricket Monthly. The winner – determined by a jury of 50 players, commentators and cricket writers from around the world – will be announced in the March issue of the magazine, published next week.
The jury’s choice of the five greatest comprise two game¬changing keeper-batsmen, a magician fast bowler, and two colossal batsmen.
Adam Gilchrist’s ODI career spanned only 12 years – 1996 to 2008 – but he set a benchmark for his breed. He rattled along at 97 runs for 100 balls and confirmed his status as an all-time great with a whirlwind 149 that won Australia the World Cup final in 2007.
If Gilchrist reinvented the role of a wicketkeeper-batsman, MS Dhoni – the only current player in the top five – has emerged as one of the greatest finishers in ODI cricket. Mixing cheeky running with power-packed, inventive strokeplay, Dhoni has time and again taken India past the finish line. And he played a huge role in two big one-day finals – with the bat in the 2011 World Cup, and with inspired captaincy in the 2013 Champions Trophy.
Through the late ’70s and ’80s, one cricketer dominated the limited-overs game like no other, and helped his side to two World Cups along the way. Viv Richards averaged 47 (at a time when batsmen in the top seven averaged 29) and scored at a strike rate of 90 (in an era when the norm was 66). Well before Powerplays and fielding restrictions, Richards punished bowlers with a wide and devastating array of strokes. His electric fielding and fierce captaincy could torment opponents too.
If Richards could do anything with a bat, the same could be said of Wasim Akram with the ball. In a career that lasted nearly two decades Akram developed from a young tearaway to a masterful swing bowler who could bowl six different deliveries in an over. He finished with 502 wickets – still comfortably the most for a fast bowler. The day it mattered the most, in March 1992, he finished as Man of the Match.
In terms of longevity and batting numbers Sachin Tendulkar has no equal. Starting as a teenage prodigy who batted in the lower middle order, Tendulkar went on to become the definitive one-day opener – fire¬starting the innings and then settling down to bat long. He ended with a mammoth 18,426 runs and 49 centuries – records that may not be bettered for many years to come. And he won games with the ball too.
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