An analysis of 20 highest scorers in all 3 formats combined in international Cricket.
Modern Era Players
All of the top 20 players are from recent times. Popularity of the ODIs and amount of ODIs played in recent decades has helped modern era players to accumulate runs faster.
But, only 4 out of 20 players are currently active.
- Virat Kohli
- Rohit Sharma
- Joe Root
- Kane Williamson
Sachin Tendulkar is the leading run scorer with 34,357 in 664 matches. Tendulkar scored 6000 more runs than Virat Kohli in the second position in 105 additional matches. This is roughly 58 runs per match.
Steve Waugh even with 10,000 test runs is at the 20th position. A hero in Australia’s 1987 world cup win and a legend of Australian ODI game, Steve Waugh’s numbers seems suffered from lower frequency of the ODIs in his time.
Virat Kohli Leads Batting Averages
The Top scorer Sachin Tendulkar is only the 4th on collective batting average list. Virat Kohli earned the collective batting average of 52.7 driven by his exceptional performances in the white ball game. Kohli scored 14,000 plus runs in ODIs with average 58.71 and 4000 runs in T20Is with average 48.69.
Sanath Jayasuriya from Sri Lanka has the lowest average; 34.1. Jayasuriya earned his position in top 20 by longevity scoring 21,000 runs in 586 matches. Jayasuriya initially played in the lower middle order as a hard hitting finisher of the innings at the start of his career. That didn’t help with the battings averages.
The All Rounder
Jacques Kallis score 25,534 runs with better average than Tendulkar while collecting 577 wickets across the formats too. No other player comes close to his achievements even though it’s a bit unfair to compare with Garry Sobers who played in a very different environment.
Contributions From Different Formats
Towards current date, we can see that contribution from white-ball formats are increasing. But, with a clear exception of Joe Root who is still playing but with more attention to tests. Joe Root has the highest contribution of 62.21% from test runs.
And, Rohit Sharma has the lowest percentage of test runs with 21.39%. But, Rohit Sharma earned his place in the top 20 with his T20 performances with India; 4,231 runs, 21% of his total runs. That’s the highest T20I run contribution among the top 20. And, the he’s the only player to have over 20% of the runs from T20Is.
Virat Kohli follows the same pattens as Rohit Sharma. Kohli scored only 32% from tests but 52% in ODIs and 15% in T20Is.
Where They Are From
It seems to the countries where shorter formats are more popular has produced top scorers. Best example would be Rohit Sharma who is predominantly a white-ball player.
Another noticeable inclusion is Chris Gayle, who a legend in T20 Cricket, but less than 10% of his run are from T20Is. Majority of his runs have come from the ODI matches. This is quite the same pattern as Saurav Ganguly who also scored 11,000 plus ODI runs.
Popularity Of The Game in South Asia
The players from South Asian nations, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have played higher number of games. It is noticeable that 3 out of 4 players with the most games are from Sri Lanka. This should be attributed to the professionalism of the legends Jayasuriya, Jayawardena and Sangakkara who maintained the high levels on the game and the fitness for such long time.
Also, may be it does highlight the lack of emerging talents in the county who could challenge the top level players.
High Impact of Hashim Amla
Hashim Amla from South Africa scored almost 19,000 runs from 349 matches. It’s lowers number of matches among the top-20.
If he did not retired early from the international game, Hashim Amla could have challenged a lot more of the records.