Here is a look at the greatest left-handed batters in men’s Test cricket, ranked according to the ICC all-time ratings.
The figures below represent the highest ICC rating each batter achieved during their Test career.
=10. Gautam Gambhir
886 v Sri Lanka, 2009
Not usually regarded as a legend of Test cricket, Gambhir had an astonishing peak between 2008 and 2009, and attained his career-best rating during this period. Between July 2008 and January 2010, he equalled Viv Richards’s world record of at least one fifty in 11 consecutive Tests (including the famous 643-minute Napier marathon): his peak rating came after the 10th Test of this sequence.
=10. Clem Hill
886 v England, 1902
A century before Gambhir, there was Hill, the first legendary left-handed Test batter. In 1902 (the year of his peak rating), he became the first to score a thousand Test runs in a calendar year, something no one would do until 1947. Hill did not play after 1911/12, when he fell out with the selectors. Had he done so, he would have scored more runs than 3,412, which remained the most in the world until 1924/25.
9. Andy Flower
895 v Bangladesh, 2001
Flower’s numbers (4,794 runs at 51.54) remained unaffected by two factors that often bring down batting averages: keeping wicket and playing for a weak team. Across 2000 and 2001, he amassed 1,944 runs at a ridiculous 84.52 – and that included the nine-hour 232 not out at Nagpur as well as the 142 and 199 not out in the same Test against South Africa. The peak rating came two Tests after the South Africa marathon.
8. Shivnarine Chanderpaul
900 v New Zealand, 2008
The top eight on this list all reached 900 rating points in their careers. A limpet at the crease, Chanderpaul – whose 5,370 runs remain a world record in Test defeats – got there after a run of 86 not out, 118 and 11, 107 not out and 77 not out, 79 not out and 50, 76, and 126 after he was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year. It was not the first time he simply refused to get out: in 2002, he went 1,051 minutes without being dismissed.
7. Brian Lara
911 v South Africa, 2004
Lara had scaled 902, even 907 during the famous Frank Worrell Trophy of 1999. In Sri Lanka in 2001, he made 688 runs even as the West Indies were at the receiving end of a clean sweep: that had taken him to 905, but no further. But in 2003 came another mountain of runs, including two double tons and a 191 in the space of six Tests. He followed this with 115 and 86 in the New Year’s Test at Newlands to reach 911. After a brief fall, the 400 not out gave him another surge, but up to “only” 895.
=5. Michael Hussey
921 v West Indies, 2008
With Hussey, two things stand out. One, he debuted at 30. And two, his ascent was so rapid that it took him a mere two and a half years to rise to this level. Indeed, he was averaging in excess of 80 even after 21 Tests. That number dropped into the 70s, but it was enough to take his rating to 921 only 23 Test matches into his career. He eventually finished with an average of 51.53.
=5. Neil Harvey
921 v South Africa, 1953
Harvey had debuted as a teenager, but his rise had just been as steep as Hussey’s, and the initial plateau lasted longer. A fleet-footed destroyer of spin and pace, he averaged in excess of 60 even after 40 Tests – but it tailed off thereafter. Fittingly, his peak rating came against his favourite opposition, South Africa, whom he took for 1,625 runs at 81.25 from 14 Tests. He reached there after a series where he amassed 834 runs at 92.67 with four hundreds in five Tests.
4. Graeme Pollock
927 v Australia, 1970
With a 2,000-run cut-off, Pollock’s 60.97 is the second-best batting average in Test cricket history, after Don Bradman’s. Several post-Pollock batters have gone past him, but the record has always returned to Pollock, who attained his peak rating in his last series, only a solitary Test before his career got over. He was on the ascent when his Test career ended. What if...?
3. Matthew Hayden
935 v England, 2002
One-half of one of the greatest Test opening pairs, Hayden’s highest rating came even before he had pummeled Zimbabwe to score his famous then-world record score of 380. In 13 Tests across seven years, Hayden averaged only 24.36, but he turned things around with a glorious tour of India in 2000/01, where he averaged 109.80 for his 549 runs at the top. Later that year, he embarked on an astonishing run where he averaged at least 59 in six consecutive series. The peak rating came during the fifth of these, after he made 197 and 103 in the Brisbane Test of the 2002/03 Ashes.
=1. Kumar Sangakkara
938 v England, 2007
There was no stopping Sangakkara once he decided to give up the big gloves in Test cricket. As a pure batter, his 9,283 runs came at 66.78 –an average that boggles the mind even if one adjusts for the batting era. He played Test cricket in 11 countries and averaged at least 34 in each of them. He peaked in 2007, a year when he averaged 138 and had a sequence of 200 not out, 222 not out, 57 and 192, and 92 and 152. He equalled Garry Sobers’ peak rating of 938 after the last of these.
=1. Garry Sobers
938 v India, 1967
Sobers raised the bar even further across two series starting with the summer of 1966. He followed the 722 runs at 103.14 in England with 342 at 114 in India, which propelled his rating to 938. While these numbers are scarcely believable across an eight-Test span, what they hide are the 34 wickets and 17 catches. After all these years, Sobers is still included in the pantheon of the greatest ever cricketers, but these months were unbelievable even by his standards.
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