Test Cricket All-Rounder Research Paper

For fifteen decades, the best batsmen in Test cricket batted from positions one (1) through seven (7) in their respective team’s lineup. The best of the best no doubt batted at positions three, four and five. Cricket’s old adage claims that your best batsmen should bat at number 3. However, in today’s game which batting position is most productive, and how have they varied throughout the years?
Sir Garfield Sobers is considered the greatest all-rounder of all-time. Unfortunately, many fail to recognize that he is also one of the greatest batsmen of all-time. In my restricted ranking and index analysis of the top-10 most consistently productive Test batsmen who have scored 5000 plus runs in Test cricket, Sobers ranked third and fourth respectively. Only the likes of Sir Donald Bradman and Kumar Sangakkara were ahead of him in both analyses, and only Brian Lara managed to join Bradman and Sangakkara and nudge ahead of him in the index analysis. Nevertheless, also unknown to many is that Sobers was not only the greatest all-rounder of all-time - batting, bowling and fielding – but also the greatest all-round batsmen of all-time.

Sachin Tendulkar, the player who has played the most matches and has scored the most runs in Test cricket, has never batted at the number three position. So much for the proverb, your best batsman should bat at number three (3). Sobers, on the other hand, batted at positions two through nine in his career, averaging as low as 53 to as high as 72 for the paramount batting positions three through seven. To put it into perspective, Lara’s career Test batting average was a shade below 53. Such was the dominance of the great Sobers at the key positions in his team’s