Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Sir Donald Bradman


Sir Donald George Bradman, AC (27 August 1908 – 25 February 2001), often referred to as The Don, was an Australian cricketer, widely acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time. Bradman's career Test batting average of 99.94 has been claimed to be statistically the greatest achievement in any major sport.
The story that the young Bradman practised alone with a cricket stump and a golf ball is part of Australian folklore. Bradman's meteoric rise from bush cricket to the Australian Test team took just over two years. Before his 22nd birthday, he had set many records for high scoring, some of which still stand, and became Australia's sporting idol at the height of the Great Depression.

During a 20-year playing career, Bradman consistently scored at a level that made him, in the words of former Australia captain Bill Woodfull, "worth three batsmen to Australia". A controversial set of tactics, known as Bodyline, was specifically devised by the England team to curb his scoring. As a captain and administrator Bradman was committed to attacking, entertaining cricket; he drew spectators in record numbers. He hated the constant adulation, however, and it affected how he dealt with others.

B.S Chandrasekhar


Bhagwat Subramanya Chandrasekhar pronunciation (born May 17, 1945 in Mysore) is a former Indian cricketer who specialised in leg spin. Considered amongst the top echelon of leg-spinners, Chandrasekhar along with E.A.S. Prasanna, Bishen Singh Bedi and Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan constituted the Indian spin quartet that dominated spin bowling in the 1960s and 1970s. Viv Richards told in an interview that Chandrasekhar and Dennis Lillee were the most difficult bowlers he had faced.
Born and educated in the city of Mysore, Chandrasekhar was infatuated with cricket from a very early age. Overcoming a polio attack which withered his right wrist as a child, so that he always used his left arm for throwing, he became one of the most successful leg spin bowlers in cricket history. An unorthodox bowler with an unusually long run-up, Chandrasekhar played in 58 Test matches, and collected 242 wickets in his career. He often bowled at medium pace, substituting his leg break, for he was not a big turner of the ball, for his googly or flipper to much success. He considered Englishman Ken Barrington as the hardest batsman to bowl to.

Viv Richards


Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards (born 7 March 1952) is a former West Indian cricketer. Better known by his second name, Vivian or, more popularly, simply as Viv or King Viv Richards was voted one of the five Cricketers of the Century in 2000, by a 100-member panel of experts, along with Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Jack Hobbs and Shane Warne. In February 2002, he was judged by Wisden to have played the best One Day International (ODI) innings of all time. In December 2002, he was chosen by Wisden as the greatest ODI batsman of all time, as well as the third greatest Test batsman of all time, after Sir Don Bradman and Sachin Tendulkar.Richards was a very powerful right-handed batsman with an extremely attacking style, besides being an excellent fielder, and a handy off-spin bowler. He is often regarded as the most devastating batsman that ever played the game by cricketers, journalists, fans and others alike, and played his entire career without a helmet, across the 17 years from 1974 till 1991.
Several prominent personalities including former cricketer and legendary fast bowler and all-rounder Imran Khan and noted writer John Birmingham are of the opinion that Richards was the best ever batsman against genuine fast bowling. Many other former players of the game rate him extremely high overall as a batsman. Ian Chappell rates him the second-greatest batsman he ever saw after Sir Garfield Sobers, while for Barry Richards, Ravi Shastri and Neil Fairbrother, he remains the best batsman they ever witnessed.Wasim Akram rates Richards the greatest batsman he ever bowled to, ahead of Sunil Gavaskar and Martin Crowe.

Sachin Tendulkar


Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar  pronunciation  (born 24 April 1973) is an Indian cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is the leading run-scorer and century maker in Test and one-day international cricket. He is the only male player to score a double century in the history of ODI cricket. In 2002, just 12 years into his career, Wisden ranked him the second greatest Test batsman of all time, behind Donald Bradman, and the second greatest one-day-international (ODI) batsman of all time, behind Viv Richards. In September 2007, the Australian leg spinner Shane Warne rated Tendulkar as the greatest player he has played with or against. Tendulkar was an integral part of the 2011 Cricket World Cup winning Indian team at the later part of his career, his first such win in six World Cup appearances with India. 
Tendulkar is the first and the only player in Test Cricket history to score fifty centuries, and the first to score fifty centuries in all international cricket combined; he now has 99 centuries in international cricket. On 17 October 2008, when he surpassed Brian Lara's record for the most runs scored in Test cricket, he also became the first batsman to score 12,000, 13,000 and 14,000 runs in that form of the game, having also been the third batsman and first Indian to pass 11,000 runs in Test cricket. He was also the first player to score 10,000 runs in one-day internationals, and also the first player to cross every subsequent 1000-run mark that has been crossed in ODI cricket history and 200 runs in a one-day international match.

Sunil Manohar "Sunny" Gavaskar (born 10 July 1949) in Bombay, Bombay State (now Mumbai, Maharashtra), is a former cricketer who played during the 1970s and 1980s for Bombay and India. Widely regarded as one of the greatest opening batsmen in test match history, Gavaskar set world records during his career for the most runs and most centuries scored by any batsman. He held the record of 34 Test centuries for almost two decades before it was broken by Sachin Tendulkar in December 2005. Gavaskar was widely admired for his technique against fast bowling, with a particularly high average of 65.45 against the West Indies, who possessed a four-pronged fast bowling attack regarded as the most vicious in Test history. His captaincy of the Indian team, however, was less successful. The team at one stage went 31 Test matches without a victory.