The Next Greatest Cricketer of All-Time!

The Next Greatest Cricketer of All-Time!

The reason My Heading Goes..as the Next best..because..frankly Sir Don bradman & Sir Garry Sobers are In A league of their Own…!!!

This generation…Might completely Disagree with me..as to them Tendulkar..is the Greatest Ever….If Not better than bradman..still they won’t rate him less than Don!!“

Ppl from the 70s & 80s…Will Route For Sir Viv Richards…But I Find Someone Ahead of King Viv…That Too from his own Generation…& That man is “Sir Richard Hadlee”

Let me First present the Pool from Which I Selected hadlee…The others Where Pretty near!!
Viv Richards, Sunil Gavaskar, Brian Lara, Shane Warne, Imran Khan, Wally Hammond, Len Hutton, Wasim Akram, Jack Kallis, Rahul Dravid, Malcolm Marshall, Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh, Waqar Younis, Curtly Ambrose, Allan Donald, Glenn McGrath & of course Sachin Tendulkar..!

So to Start With…let us forget hadlee’s batting Skills..we look at him simply as a Bowler.

Richard hadlee Played for 17 Long years….Thatz way beyond The Expiry date Of A fast bowler..!!!
Hadlee..Took 36 five Wicket halls..in 86 tests & That’s the Most By Any Fast bowler!
followed by McGrath(29)…In as many as 124 test matches!!

Hadlee Took 2.87 Wickets Per Inning…Again the best In the Business

Lillee 2.68
Imran 2.54
Marshall 2.49
Waqar 2.42
McGrath 2.31
Akram 2.28
Ambrose 2.26
Holding 2.20
 

In the 86 tests That he Played..he Bagged 35% of the Wickets taken by New Zealand
In 22 tests That New Zealand Won With Hadlee in the team..Hadlee took 173 Wickets at an average 13.06..!!
Again the best..after compared with pacers with minimum 150 wickets in winning games.
No Cricketer Ever…Took All the Pressure On his Lone Shoulders the Way..Hadlee took!
So Now..That Was About Numbers..!!

But it’s the Words that make A great Turn Into The Greatest..!!

When Graham Gooch summed up the challenge of batting against the New Zealand team of the 1980s, he described it thus: "Richard Hadlee at one end, Ilford 2nds at the other."

As a 22 year Old When hadlee Started Out..he Was A Extremely Quick Fast bowler!!! But he learned The Art of bowling By Shortening His run-Up….& Using The Corridor of uncertainty as His biggest Weapon!!Geoff boycott Described him as The greatest corridor bowler Ever!

The Corridor of Uncertainty is That Area just Outside the off Stump Of A batsman..Where The batsman Can Be in A State of.“To be or Not To be”…or To Be More Specific… “To Play or not To Play” & hadlee Was capable of Moving The Ball in both Directions..Making The batsman’s life impossible..& that Too at A Sharp pace..which is late 130s to mid 140s.

Now Let’s come To his batting

Hadlee scored 3000+ runs at 27.16..Which is Better than Wasim But Less than Imran,Botham & Kapil!

As An All-Rounder…Statistically he Proves To be better than Kapil & Botham..But Imran Proves to be ahead of Hadlee…as he was better with the bat..in that group…but I feel Even though Hadlee Was Not As Rounded All-Rounder As Imran…But the fact that Hadlee could bat Was just A Bonus…His Bowling is Enough For Me to rate him as the Next Greatest Cricketer of All-Time!