Heroes... all of them. Review on Five Best Cricketers

Note:

Well I am a great cricket buff and have always have had my favorites among players and teams. Though I would always love India to win, I love cricket even when they lose, if the game was good that is. I can watch both the shorter and longer varieties of the game day in and day out without worrying about the teams involved. Now coming back to favorites, like any celebrities there have been favorites who have been on my list for short durations, at the peak of their form and career like for example Ravi Shastri ( I know a lot of you out there hate him, but to me, he is one of the most tactical cricketing brain India, has ever produced.), Mohd. Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Martin Crowe, Arvinda de Silva, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mustaq... the list is endless.

But then as I said they reined supreme in my mind for shorter durations. The list that is given below is made up of the cricketers who have stayed long enough in my heart to make me believe that they were of a different class altogether.

Best Batsman: There a few contenders for this spot in my opinion. Sunil Gavaskar for his determination, Gundappa Vishwanath and David Gower for their grace, Steve Waugh for his ability to perform under pressure, Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar for their genius... but in my opinion if there was a batsman who had all of this and more then it was Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards. What I like very much about him was that he played only one game - positive cricket. He was always attacking, always looking to score always giving his 100 %. He had his failures, but never let them bog him down. He was rarely spotted without a smile on his face. But beneath that smile there was arrogance and disregard for any attack in the world, which was there for everyone to see.

Best Bowler : If bowling was about sheer speed then I would have had to give it to either Brett Lee or Shoaib Akhtar, if it were about spinning the ball a mile, guile and deception, then it should have been given to Muthiah Muralitharan or Shane Warne, if it was about sheer persistence well the claimants would be Kapil Dev ( who played most of his career on pitches that rarely suited him) or Sir Richard Hadlee (who played along side a team that had not many match-winners), If bowling was about sheer numbers the I guess the winner would have been Courtney Walsh... but I believe that bowling is about discipline. It is about being able to do most of the above to be the best bowler and in my opinion the one person who can claim that spot is none other than the person who was nicknamed ''Whispering Death '' and also been known as ''the Rolls Royce of Bowlers''... Michael Anthony Holding. The gentlest of person outside the cricket field, Holding was a nightmare to his opponents. He was fast, he was on target and more importantly he never gave anything away. It is a testimony to this great fast bowler that he rarely over stepped... neither while bowling nor in the case of his career. He left the team when he was at his prime due to an injury. In fact he has 249 test wickets to his credit, I would have known a dozen international cricketers who would have hung around the test scene for another three or four series just to make that 250 wickets.

Best All rounder : The onset of one-day international cricket has underlined the importance of cricketers who are good at more than one aspect of the game. Not that there were no all rounders before it. But what ever said and done, truly great all rounders are a rare species. Kapil dev, Ian Botham and Sir Richard Hadlee from the past, Wasim Akram, Sanath Jayasuria, Jacques Kallis from the present lot are all brilliant sportsmen who belong to this category. Robin Singh and Michal Bevan are brilliant all rounders but restricted to the shorter variety of the game. The mercurial Imran Khan would have been a great pick or for that matter the always sober Chris Harris, but the person who is going to walk away with this honor in my opinion is none of them who have been mentioned above, but Chris Cairns. Like most players mentioned above he too can win matches single handedly, but what is more he can do it even when he is not a 100% fit. He is my selection because for long he has been the only world class player from New Zealand, which is a team of bits and pieces players who revolve around this man, while most other players on that list were part of teams that had other stars, Chris Cairns has often been the lonely star of his team. I only wish he was more fit and we could see more of him.

Best Wicket Keeper: A wicket keeper is probably one of the least appreciated player on the field. Like a famous commentator put it ''we only remember the drops and the misses, rarely do we look at the difficulties involved in this job.'' He and Umpires are the only ones on the field who have to keep concentrating on the game right throughout, from the first to the last ball. He also has to keep crouching and standing up for each and every delivery. A safe keeper is a major requirement for any team, a keeper who can bat well is a boon. There have been a series of keepers in my opinion in the world cricket who have done this job admirably. Syed Kirmani, Ian Healy, Alec Stewart, Jeff Dujon, Moin Khan, David Houghton and Andy Flower are few names that just pop up. But the undoubted best in my opinion is Australia's current wicket keeper, Adam Gilchrist. For followers of cricket I need not even begin to explain why I chose him. A brilliant keeper who ensures that the ball cant pass him even a couple of meters either side of him, who has kept brilliantly to the best of pace and spin bowlers with aplomb, he is a demolishing batsman to say the least, almost as dangerous as the best batsman elect Sir Richards.

Best Fielder: When I started watching cricket, I remember that fielding was never considered an important part of the game. There were the occasional brilliant fielders but more common were the likes of players who would never come out to field if they scored a century in the previous innings (some of whom, today sit in commentary box and give great lectures about fielding being an art). But we will leave them aside as we are talking about the best fielders here. Of early Indians I remember as good fielders, were players like Maninder Singh and K. Srikkanth. I guess the emphasis on fielding started building up after the African teams like Zimbabwe and South Africa (re)entered the sport. Today there are some brilliant fielding teams and some great individual fielders. I had missed this player in my original list, Mohd. Azharuddin was a brilliant fielder, one of the very best India has ever produced and the world has seen (Niraj Thank you for reminding). The final three in contention for this slot are of course not any surprises. Ricky Ponting and Herschel Gibbs are sheer brilliance but Jhonty Rhodes is my man for his magical fielding. I know there will not be much to argue about this selection.

The final list.....

Jhonty Rhodes

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