Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble Snubbed In Ravi Shastri's '5 Greatest Indian Cricketers'

NDTV

3 days ago

Legendary former India cricketer and head coach Ravi Shastri has picked his list of the five greatest Indian cricketers of all time. Appearing as a guest on the Stick to Cricket podcast, Shastri was asked to name his list by hosts Michael Vaughan, Alastair Cook, David Llyod and Phil Tufnell. Shastri proceeded to leave out some stalwarts of Indian cricket from his top five, most notably legendary Indian captains Sourav Ganguly and Rohit Sharma, as well as Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble.
Instead, Shastri named Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni in his list of the five greatest Indian cricketers.
Shastri also labelled Sachin Tendulkar as the No. 1 among the five.
"No. 1 would be Tendulkar because of the expectations and because of longevity, for having played 24 years in the game. 100 hundreds," Shastri said.
"He (Tendulkar) played every pace attack of that decade. He started playing against Wasim (Akram), Waqar (Younis), and Imran (Khan). Then went on to the Aussies. Then the English attack Broady (Stuart Broad) and (James) Anderson, and South African attack (Jacques) Kallis, Shaun (Pollock), Allan Donald. He is pure, technique-wise and following-wise," Shastri reasoned.
The list, as a result, leaves out the likes of Sourav Ganguly and Rohit Sharma, two captains who have led India to ICC trophies.
Ganguly won the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy and led India to the final of the 2003 Cricket World Cup. On the other hand, Rohit is also a World Cup final-losing captain (2019), but led India to the 2024 ICC T20 World Cup title.
Rahul Dravid - India's second-highest run-scorer in Tests and third-highest across formats - also missed out on Shastri's top five.
Anil Kumble, India's highest wicket-taker in both Tests and ODIs, also did not make it to the list.
Instead, World Cup-winning captains Kapil Dev and MS Dhoni featured in Shastri's list. Virat Kohli, India's second-highest run-scorer across formats and most successful Test captain, also features. Kohli, notably, shared a highly cherished period as India's Test captain during Shastri's tenure as head coach.
Legendary opener Sunil Gavaskar - the first man to reach 10,000 Test runs - was included by Shastri in the top five of the greatest Indian cricketers.
Gavaskar was arguably the pioneer of Indian batting and the first Indian batter to achieve legendary status. He was also part of the 1983 World Cup-winning Indian team, of which Kapil was captain.