To his legion of adoring fans, Sachin Tendulkar is the epitome of batsmanship. He is practically deified in his native India, but the adulation does not stop there, as he is highly regarded all over the cricket-playing world. Amongst cricket traditionalists however, Don Bradman is unquestioned as the best batsman to ever pad up – they merely point to his Test average of 99.94, far and away the best ever, and say "QED". The two of them have probably only ever been rivaled in terms of hero-worship by WG Grace, who was probably the most famous cricketer ever, at least the most recognizable outside of the cricket world.
So let's pose the question "Which batsman has had the most impact?" Actually, since there are so many drawn games in Test cricket, let's modify the question slightly, to "Which batsman should have had the most impact?" Let's look at batting success in terms of the number of high-impact innings played, and determine impact by looking at whether or not a particular innings of significance should, all other things being equal, have resulted in a win. In this way, we can attempt to equalize the team factor, i.e. try to take away the impact of being surrounded by a successful team.
Throughout Test cricket history, we can determine how often a particular innings of significance would, or should, be expected to contribute to a win in a Test match. As an example, let's take Tendulkar. Tendulkar numbers among his achievements 56 fifties, 29 tons, of which 14 were more than 150 and five of those double centuries - historically, each 150, for example, would be expected to prove the difference in a match around 23% of the time, which, for his fourteen 150s would give him around 3.2 win contributions to his team; in other words, if a player makes fourteen 150s, he should expect around three of them to be winning innings. We can calculate this figure for each of his major innings, then add them to give a total expected win contribution for Tendulkar, then do the same for all Test batsmen based on their major innings. Finally, we can adjust for era – for example, if Trumper scored a 90 it's much more likely to have had an impact than if Kevin Pietersen does so in today's game. If we do this, we come up with the following top 30:-
NAME | TM | PROJ |
1. Sachin Tendulkar | Ind | 11.48 |
2. Brian Lara | WI | 10.04 |
3. Ricky Ponting | Aus | 9.07 |
4. Don Bradman | Aus | 7.95 |
5. Steve Waugh | Aus | 7.65 |
6. Mahela Jayawardene | SL | 7.47 |
7. Virender Sehwag | Ind | 7.38 |
8. Jacques Kallis | SA | 6.96 |
9. Rahul Dravid | Ind | 6.83 |
10. Kumar Sangakkara | SL | 6.72 |
11. Mohammad Yousuf | Pak | 5.83 |
12. Matthew Hayden | Aus | 5.33 |
13. Graeme Smith | SA | 5.25 |
14. Justin Langer | Aus | 5.03 |
15. Gary Kirsten | SA | 5.01 |
16. Wally Hammond | Eng | 4.98 |
17. Marvan Atapattu | SL | 4.82 |
18. Inzamam-ul-Haq | Pak | 4.46 |
19. Sunil Gavaskar | Ind | 4.46 |
20. Len Hutton | Eng | 4.38 |
21. Garry Sobers | WI | 4.13 |
22. Neil Harvey | Aus | 3.99 |
23. Younis Khan | Pak | 3.94 |
24. Graham Gooch | Eng | 3.92 |
25. Mark Taylor | Aus | 3.90 |
26. Herschelle Gibbs | SA | 3.78 |
27. Shriv Chanderpaul | WI | 3.76 |
28. Mohammad Azharuddin | Ind | 3.75 |
29. Jack Hobbs | Eng | 3.75 |
30. Michael Vaughan | Eng | 3.66 |
Tendulkar, Lara, Ponting and Bradman basically have 11.5, 10, 9 and 8 projected wins respectively which, considering the very small variations below them, are significant gaps. There are some surprises below the top four, but bear in mind this is measuring likely winning performances, so a mercurial batsman like Atapattu measures well despite his low average. The level of likely success of a given innings changes over time, plus this last ranking is based on totals and tends to favour players who batted in more Tests. But, that is, in the end, how we tend to measure greatness, not by percentages.
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, by this measure, is (or rather should have been) the most successful Test batsman ever.
Would love to read about where Steve Smith, Joe Root, Kane Williamson and Virat Kohli stand in this list should you decide to resume writing
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