The most valuable Test player with 10000 runs
Sunil Gavaskar was the first cricketer in the world to score 10000 runs in Test Matches. He achieved this feat against Pakistan at Ahmadabad on 7th March 1987. With the passage of time this feat has been surpassed by Allan Border, Steve Waugh, Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Jacque Kallis, Rahul Dravid and Ricky Ponting with Sachin Tendulkar being the current leader of the pack. Each of these players have attained greatness in their careers.
The question naturally arises as to who is the best batsmen among those in the 10000 run club. Some considerations taken to calculate greatness of a player are who has the best average or who has won more matches for their countries. However there is one aspect which is equally important if not the most important thing and that is the quality of attack against which the runs were scored.
Sunil Gavaksar for most part of his career between 1971 to 1987 played for probably the weakest team in the world and scored most of his runs against the fastest and best bowlers in the world like the fearsome West Indian quartet of Michael Holding, Andy Robets, Malcolm Marshall and Joel Garner. Of his 10122 runs 9522 runs were scored against top teams of the world which translates to 94.07% of his total career runs. The break of Sunil Gavskars runs scored against teams are given below:-
West Indies 2749 runs at an average of 65.45
Pakistan 2089 runs at an average of 56.45
Australia 1550 runs at an average of 51.66
New Zealand 651 runs at an average of 43.40
England 2483 runs at an average of 38.20
Gavaskars 9522 runs against the above mentioned top teams came at a average of 50.38. Those days there were good bowlers in every team against whom Gavaskar had to play. Pakistan had fast bowlers in Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz, Australians had the pace duo of Denis Lilee and Jeff Thomson, New Zealenders had Richard Hadlee and England had the pace duo of Willis and Ian Botham and therefore there were no easy runs those days while these days top players get lot of easy runs against Bangladesh and Zimbabve and Gavaksar never had the opportunity to get easy runs of them. At the fag end of his career Gavaskar got to play 7 Tests against Sri Lanka in which he scored 600 runs.
In the current Indian team we have specific roles for players for eg Dravid has to play the anchor role, while stroke players revolve around him and score runs. In Sunil Gavaskars case he had no options as he had to safeguard his wicket and put runs on the board as well.
Going by the above factors, there is no doubt that Sunil Gavaskar has to be best batsman in the 10000 run club in Test Matches.
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