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Who is India's best ever Test cricketer?

Who is India's best ever Test cricketer?


  • Total voters
    50
  • Poll closed .

adharcric

International Coach
Not by an enough of a margin.
Disagree, but you're telling me you rate Kumble ahead of Jack Hobbs (3), Viv Richards (5) and Brian Lara (6) as well? Just going by CW's verdict in the Ranking the Batsmen thread I facilitated a a few years ago.
 
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silentstriker

The Wheel is Forever
Same as I said with Tendulkar - as talents? No. Impact on the team? Probably more than all three. At least more than Viv RIchards and Brian Lara. Bowlers simply win more matches. If I were starting a team, aside from Bradman, I'd pick bowlers first. They'll help you win more games than batsmen could.
 

Precambrian

Banned
While I appreciate the efforts of Dev, Gav and Kumble, I think for the sheer volume and prolific nature of his contributions, it has to be SRT.
 

bagapath

International Captain
it has to be sunil gavaskar. first for believing and then for demonstrating that an indian cricketer could be the best in the world in his discipline. of course, the famous indian cricketers before him, mankad, gupte, merchant and hazare received praises from the western cricket crtics. but they were seen as special talents coming from a colony learning its first steps in international sports. we've seen all those patronizing, stereotyping terms. "oriental" "wristy magic" "not one christian stroke" (on ranji) for decades.

gavaskar didnt need anyone to patronize him. he went about doing his business believing he was the best in the world. he didnt want to go the vishwanath or bedi way. stylish, graceful, but one rung below greatness. no. that wont do for him. sunil gavaskar brought bloody mindedness to indian cricket. he never shirked from a fight. never talked of defeat. never admitted anyone else was better than him in opening in test match cricket (post retirement he did speak highly of hobbs and hutton). he scored runs everywhere and against all the best bowlers in show. slowly, the appreciation turned into awe. acknowledgement of talent turned into respect.

and, boy, did he have an attitude!! if ganguly took off his shirt in lords, it was simply because he had seen another indian before him get away doing worse things. like threatening to throw off a match for an lbw decision he didnt agree/ grind the opposition down with every legitimate tactic available to avoid defeat/ turn the MCC membership down/ call Lords just another cricket ground/

with so many indians doing well in many different fields in this decade we tend to forget the days when the only living indians known outside the country were indira gandhi and sunil gavaskar.

kapil admitted to looking upto him for advice and guidance for a good part of his career. for making them believe indians could dominate fast bowling, he was the inspiration for amarnath, vengsarkar, shastri and, yes, dravid and sachin too.
 
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weldone

Hall of Fame Member
1. Tendulkar
2. Gavaskar
3. Kapil
-------------------daylight-----------------
4. Dravid
5. Kumble

(of course not considering Merchant, Nissar and Amar Singh since this thread is about test cricketers...)
 
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Uppercut

Request Your Custom Title Now!
A wonderful player mate - but even if he did count, you consider 15 Tests and less than 1000 runs makes him a greater Test cricketer than Tendulkar/Gavaskar/Kapil Dev?
Hmmm, well, if he really was better at playing cricket, why would it matter how many tests he played?
 

Precambrian

Banned
Hmmm, well, if he really was better at playing cricket, why would it matter how many tests he played?
Heck of lot of speculation involved then. Not to mention arbitrary judgements. And I don't think anyone have seen him actually play. And Ian Bell has a on drive to die for.
 

Uppercut

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Heck of lot of speculation involved then. Not to mention arbitrary judgements. And I don't think anyone have seen him actually play. And Ian Bell has a on drive to die for.
That's certainly not to say he couldn't have been their best though.
 

zaremba

Cricketer Of The Year
A wonderful player mate - but even if he did count, you consider 15 Tests and less than 1000 runs makes him a greater Test cricketer than Tendulkar/Gavaskar/Kapil Dev?
Tricky. Tests were different in those days, and much less frequent of course.

I just think that bagapath's description of Gavaskar should in fact be applied to Ranji.
it has to be sunil gavaskar. first for believing and then for demonstrating that an indian cricketer could be the best in the world in his discipline
Bagapath goes on to refer to the colonial / patronising comments made about Ranji's play - most famously "not one Christian stroke". However even if such views were expressed about him they don't in any way diminish him as a player. In particular they didn't stop him "first believing and then demonstrating that an indian cricketer could be the best in the world in his discipline". He did both of these things.

As to believing that he could be the best, he said so: there's the old story about when he and C.B. Fry were asked who was the greatest batsman of all time. He turned to Fry and said "I think, Charles, that I was better than you on a soft wicket."

As to being the best, he was.

And as to not playing for India, well I think that this shouldn't stop Indians claiming him as their own for the purposes of this kind of discussion.

Finally, and here we're going off on a real tangent, a word about the views expressed about him. Yes he was called "wristy", but this seems to have been an accurate description of his method of batting. I don't see anything wrong with that. And even though some other comments were couched in language which, a century on, seems rather jarring to the modern ear, those who wrote about him at the time did so with universal admiration. It is to England's credit that his colour and nationality did not prevent him from making a career here and being selected to play for England.
 

Lillian Thomson

Hall of Fame Member
Tendulkar by light years. As good as some of the others in the poll are Tendulkar is one of the few true geniuses in cricket history.
 

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