Test cricket's Super Six

Brian Lara, Viv Richards, Kevin Pietersen, Virender Sehwag, Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist are the only six batsmen in Test history to have scored 5,000+ runs with an average over 45 and a strike-rate above 60.

Of the current crop of players, David Warner will most likely join this elusive company in the not too distant future. Warner has scored 4507 runs at an average of 48.98 and a strike-rate of 76.81.

A minimum of 50 : is required to be considered Great !

Yes, ketch. This was merely an exercise to shine the light on batsman that scored heavily at a fast pace, as opposed to an all-time great six. Perhaps a better title would have been Test cricket's Most Entertaining Six.

Imagine a lineup that looked like: Hayden, Sehwag, Richards, Lara, Pietersen, Gilchrist. That lineup as constructed would post 450 runs a day. At the very least, it would be one of the most entertaining lineups.

To quote the great Brian Lara After his last match, in the post-game presentation

interview he asked the fans :

"Did I entertain ? "

Where's that Viv Richards strike rate from?

I remember reading that Viv's career strike rate wasn't known because many of his early matches didn't record strike rates (recording minutes was the trend).

In 2006, when Sehwag first came to St Lucia, he smashed a huge century: 180ish runs at a 100ish strike rate.

This was when WI had no bowlers. Our bowling attack was so bad, Sarwan was bowling.

West Indies were then sent in to bat, and Anil Kumble skittered them off quickly.

India enforced the follow on and West Indies had to survive about 3 days for a draw. Lara blocks balls for a couple days - almost 400 minutes - at a strike rate of 20 or 30 and secures the draw.

The game was interesting, in the way aggressive batting and scoreboard pressure was countered by a kind of pacivity.

That is correct, Trini. The numbers are from ESPN's Statsguru with data used from the matches where balls face was recorded.

Yeah, we don't have SR stats on older players. Even proper ESPN journalists have used that stat engine to imply that Sobers and Kanhai were much slower than they were.

There's probably not much discrepancy in terms of Viv's SR though.

The Gilchrist stats surprised me. I'd forgotten he averaged 47. That's amazing for a keeper.

So what was the stats guru extrapolation formula ??

that is wayyyy too high for Viv..

The numbers are correct for the matches where balls faced were recorded. So in the matches where balls were recorded, Viv had a strike-rate of 70.19, however, there were matches (there is no notation as to how many) where balls faced were not recorded. As such, it is possible that in those matches, Viv may have scored at a lower rate (or even at a higher rate), which would alter the overall numbers to some degree.