English cricketers lack of success at international level
Cricket originated in England. Lords Ground is known as the Mecca of Cricket. The first match was played between England and Australia on 15th March 1877. England also holds the world record of playing the most number of Test Matches. England have played a total of 891 Test Matches on on 19th October 2009.
Inspite of all these, English players are way behind other international player when it comes to individual career records. England is one of the rare teams in world cricket, which do not have a batsman with 10000 plus runs in either form of the game, the others being Zimbabwe and Bangladesh among Test Playing countries. Similarly among bowlers in Test matches, England do not boast of a bowler with 400 plus Test Wickets and yet again England have only minnows Zimbabwe and Bangladesh for company in this category. Let us have a look at career records of England's leading players in Tests and One Dayers .
Highest Run Getter in Tests: Graham Gooch holds the record for most career runs by an Englishman with 8900 runs. Sachin Tendulkar is the world record holder with 12773 runs. England can take pride in the fact Gooch is not far behind the leaders and still is in the top 10 list of top run getter's in Test Cricket at 9th position.
Highest Run Getter in One Dayers:- Alec Stewart holds the English record for most number of ODI runs with 4677 career runs. If you compare with Sachin Tendulkar who is the leader with 16903 runs, that is just about one third of what is scored by the highest run getter in the world. Infact Alec Stewart does not figure even in the top 50 among leading run getters in the world. Among Test playing countries only Bangladesh batsman have scored fewer runs than Alec Stewarts career tally. Infact Andy Flower, Grant Flower and Alistair Campbell of Zimbabwe have scored more career runs than Alec Stewart.
Highest Wicket Taker in Tests:- Ian Botham who held the world record for highest number of wickets holds the English record for most wickets. Muthian Muralitharan with 783 wickets has more than twice the number of wickets and is a clear 400 wickets ahead of Ian Botham. With the exception of minnows Bangladesh and Zimbabve bowlers belonging to all Test Playing nations have taken more than 400 wickets.
Highest Wicket Taker in ODIs:- Dareen Gough with 234 wickets holds the record for most number of wickets by an Englishman. Muralidharan with 512 wickets is the world record holder, which is more than twice the tally of Dareen Gough.
Another thing to be noted here that England cricketers like Jack Hobbs and Graham Gooch hold the world records for the most number of centuries and runs in First Class Cricket. Modern era cricketers like Mark Ramprakash and Hick are not far behind in chasing down those alltime first class records, but most English cricketers especially in the modern area, find cricket at international level much tougher.
Regards
Satish
Like it on Facebook, Tweet it or share this article on other bookmarking websites.