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Friday, July 4, 2025

Viv names Lara, Gayle among top 10 ODI batsmen of all time

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Leg­endary for­mer West In­dies bats­man Sir Viv Richards has named three West In­di­ans in his top 10 One-day In­ter­na­tion­al bats­men of all time.

Writ­ing in his ICC World Cup col­umn yes­ter­day, Richards named Bri­an Lara, Chris Gayle and his for­mer cap­tain Clive Lloyd as three men whom he be­lieves should be in the best ever top 10 ODI bats­men.

In­dia's Sachin Ten­dulkar, Viren­der Se­hwag and Vi­rat Kohli, as well as Aus­tralians Ricky Ponting, Math­ew Hay­den and Mike Hussey as well as South Africa's AB de Vil­liers, make up Richard's best ever 10.

"The first name that comes to mind is Sachin Ten­dulkar. In a sin­gle word, I would de­scribe him as a leg­end. The play­er he was un­til very re­cent­ly, if ever there is a team picked with­out in­clud­ing him, it would be a great shame. He has al­ways been one of my favourite bats­men and I would pay mon­ey to watch him bat. He wasn't the biggest in size amongst oth­er crick­eters of the world, but all good things come in small pack­ages. And he was a fan­tas­tic bats­man."

Richards said he rat­ed Lara the same as Sachin. "I would pay to watch him bat too, and then pay again and again, and keep pay­ing, how­ev­er, many times it needs to be done. There is no oth­er bats­man in world crick­et I can re­mem­ber who picked gaps more eas­i­ly than Lara and he did that at a rapid rate, al­most as soon as he ar­rived at the crease. It is dif­fi­cult to leave him out of any bat­ting side."

In se­lect­ing Gayle, Richards de­scribed him as a bowlers' night­mare. "On his day, he can be very de­struc­tive. He can be a match-win­ner in any en­vi­ron­ment and in any match con­di­tions. If he is on song, then the op­po­si­tion can lose the match in the blink of an eye, that's how de­struc­tive he can be."

Richards al­so found space for Lloyd, his for­mer cap­tain and the man who led West In­dies to vic­to­ry in the first two World Cups in 1989 and 1993. "To­day's gen­er­a­tion of crick­et fans may not have seen him bat, but I do re­mem­ber watch­ing him play. To get a cen­tu­ry in the fi­nal of an ICC Crick­et World Cup is a great achieve­ment. He may not have as many ODI cen­turies as oth­ers but scor­ing in a World Cup fi­nal counts a lot more. Not many bats­men have done that, not to men­tion he did it while al­so lead­ing the side."

He not­ed that Ponting al­so got a cen­tu­ry in a World Cup fi­nal, but sug­gest­ed that it was not the on­ly rea­son to pick him. "He was able to play all the shots in the book but the more re­mark­able thing about Ponting was that he was a won­der­ful work­er of the ball. When he was not hit­ting fours or six­es, he could ro­tate the strike eas­i­ly. He could pick sin­gles and dou­bles at will, and that is re­mark­able for a bats­man es­pe­cial­ly com­ing in at num­ber three. It be­comes very dif­fi­cult to con­tain such bats­men."

He said Hay­den at the top of the or­der was a fear­some prospect who set things up for the mid­dle-or­der with his fe­ro­cious and pow­er­ful hit­ting.

Richards' Top 10

Sachin Ten­dulk­lar, Viren­der Se­hwag, Vi­rat Kohli (In­dia), Bri­an Lara, Chris Gayle, Clive Lloyd (West In­dies), Ricky Ponting, Math­ew Hay­den , Mike Hussey (Aus­tralia), AB de Vil­liers (South Africa).?


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