Gilchrist
MELBOURNE, Australia, CMC:
CRICKET SCIENTIST Charles Davis has compared the hard-hitting Australian batsman Adam Gilchrist with West Indies batting legend Sir Vivian Richards in a study to rate the fastest scorers the game has ever seen.
Davis, who ranked Gilchrist the fastest Test scorer of all time, said there are clear similarities between the left-handed Australian and the bossy Vivian Richards, when the powerful right-hander clobbered bowlers in his heyday.
"One advantage he (Gilchrist) has, as with Viv Richards, is that he plays in a supremely dominant side. But even when he is exposed to predicaments demanding fierce resistance, his response is invariably aggressive," Davis said in an article in the new edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia.
RESEARCH FINDING
The article credited Gilchrist as the fastest Test scorer of all time, based on historic scientific research.
It is the first serious undertaking ever attempted to calculate the batting strike-rates of every Test cricketer since 1877. The full list The Hurricane Hundred is published in the 2004-05 edition of Wisden Australia, which comes out on Wednesday.
Gilchrist comfortably tops the chart with a strike-rate of 81.9. In second place is Kapil Dev.
"Today's heavier bats, smaller boundaries and buccaneering approach to batting are reflected in the fact that 30 of the fastest 100 are current players.
TOP TEN
"Four of them make the top 10: Gilchrist (No 1), India's Virender Sehwag (No 5), England's Andrew Flintoff (No 6) and Sri Lanka's Sanath Jayasuriya (No 9). Matthew Hayden and Darren Lehmann rank 11th and 15th respectively," a report on the article on the Wisden-Cricinfo website said.
