The Yellow Sand Paper..

Source- Google

Steven Smith, after being suspended along with Warner and Bencroft in the controversial ball tampering incident, is back with a bang.. and how.

The Gods must have looked upon him and allowed him to display to all of us his greatness, one more time. Last week when he scored a magnificent 144 against a strong English bowling attack, one must have wondered if he is the second greatest test batsman to play the game, after Sir Don himself.

Steve Smith Test batting record

Source- Cricbuzz

The innings appeared to be a work of art, and similar to the one that Kohli played early this year against the same English attack, where he batted with the tail and knotched up, what one would rank, one of modern times greatest innings.

So where can we place Smith amongst the all time greats. Looking at his average and comparing it with batsmen who have played the game (test cricket) so far, he comes in second only to the Don himself. However, he is mostly in the company of the pre-war era cricketing greats who were exposed to play only the purest form of cricket, Test matches. I thought it would be only fair to compare Smith with players who have played both tests as well as ODI.

The names that I came across of players, to my surprise, were greats whom I had considered classy batsmen but never had imagined them to be legends of batting. They seem to have quietly accumulated the runs and piled on those hundreds without anyone ever noticing it. Amongst many of these names I have taken Sangakara and Kallis.

Source- Cricbuzz

Perception wise I would have jumped the gun and taken Tendulkar, Ponting, Dravid and Lara and done a compare of their records with Smith’s tally. But in terms of the sheer runs that Smith has amassed in test matches and with the average that he possesses, there seems to be a gap to be bridged.

Kallis and Sangakara have immaculate records in test match and ODI cricket. Both have scored over 10,000 runs in both formats and have numbers which once a person takes note of, cannot ignore as to how astronomical their records are.

Source- Cricbuzz

Sangakara, is a modern legend coming out of the small island country of Sri Lanka. His average of 57+ in test cricket is the highest amongst all batsmen to have played test match cricket and who have scored above 10000 runs. In combination of ODI cricket and test match cricket, he is amongst the only three batsman (along with Tendulkar, Ponting) to have scored above 25k runs in both formats. With 38 hundreds in test matches, he is at no.4 in the all time list of highest no. of hundreds scored in test matches. The interesting part is that he has also scored these tonnes at a very good rate. He has taken 233 innings to score 38 hundreds. Ponting who has scored 41 hundreds has taken around 50 more innings. He has also scored 14234 runs in ODI cricket, and is the second highest run getter of all times. I think, he is perhaps the most underrated batsman amongst the greats. Perhaps the future generations who would follow the game, would rightfully give him the tag of a legend.

Kumar Sangakara’s batting stats
Source- Cricbuzz

Lets also look at what Kallis has achieved in his celebrated career. Kallis, who perhaps would be the greatest all-rounder the game has ever seen, has been playing his game with the likes of Tendulkar, Ponting, and Lara. Little has been spoken about how great a batsman he was. His ability as an all-rounder has always overshadowed his greatest gift, batting. He has scored 13000 runs with average of 55+ in test match cricket. He is also second (after Tendulkar) in terms of the most centuries made in test match cricket. He has made 45 hundreds, only 6 short of Tendulkar’s feat of 51 hundreds!!

Like Sangakara, he has almost silently and seamlessly amassed the mammoth number of runs, but has almost never been in the limelight for his batting prowess. He has only narrowly missed out in making 25,000 runs in aggregate, in both the formats together. However, his career average of 55+ in test match cricket, keeps him in second place (only after Sangakara, who has an average of 57+) among batsman who have scored above 10,000 runs. Interestingly, Tendulkar is at the third spot in this list and is followed by Lara in the fourth spot.

J. Kallis batting stats
Source- Cricbuzz

Now then, what about Tendulkar. India’s god of cricket and no discussion or dialogue can take place about cricket in India, without paying homage to this great man of the modern era. For a lot of us we can only associate Tendulkar to be the best batsman to play the game after Sir Don, which no matter how biased I am to Tendulkar, I would agree to as much. However, just to clarify, we are talking about test matches only. Tendulkar, for me is an automatic choice of being the best batsman in history to have played ODI cricket. Perhaps only Kohli who has an astonishing average of almost 60 in ODI cricket, comes as a close second. Tendulkar is to ODI cricket what Sir Don was to test matches. However, in test matches, with an average of around 53, he is almost 10 runs apart per innings with Smith who averages 62+ per innings. This is the same reason why I have not discussed about Lara or Ponting as well.

At present in world cricket we have gifted players like Williamson, Kohli, and Root as well. So, the question could be asked if it is better to compare the four of the same generation. However, I wanted to stack up only test records, where Smith (in test cricket) for a while now has been the best batsman in the world by a stretch. If one were to look at the best batsmen in ODI and test matches, together, then at present Kohli might be the clear leader of the pack, simply because of his ODI record.

So, the question I ask to you is how good is Smith.. Well, for me, with the way Smith has performed in test match cricket, for years now, I think we can now start whispering that he is a legend in the making and perhaps the best batsman in test match cricket after Sir Don himself. Perhaps if his consistency and class remains and he continues to play the game being fit, we can in a couple of years give the above statement a shout as well.

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