Who are the most destructive cricket players in the history of cricket?
It depends on how you interpret ‘destructive’. I would interpret that as taking an opposition attack apart, neutralising it. In this sense, someone like Michael Slater, Virender Sehwag and Matthew Hayden would rate highly. Also much older players like Len Hutton and Herb Sutcliffe would rate a mention. Of course there’s the Don. He just tore openers apart. I think that if the opposition creates a now illegal tactic to limit your effect, you have to be pretty destructive. Adam Gilchrist may well be the most feared batsman of modern times. Opposition teams might have been happy keeping the score at 4 wickets down if it meant he wasn’t going to come out. He was probably the most destructive middle order batsman I’ve seen. In terms of one-day cricket Michael Bevan stands alone as the most quietly destructive batsman of all-time in his approach to just pacing himself as he systematically chased down a score or set up a huge total.
Viv Richards ODI strike rate has only been beaten by 4 batsmen – Sehwag,Gilchrist,Symonds and Jayasuriya,the amazing thing is that they are all current players,when Richards was playing 25-30 years ago bowlers dominated the game and scores were much lower, teams were often bowled out in less than 50 overs for about 200,the other guys are playing at a time when scores of 300-350,or even 400 are quite common,there were no weak teams when Richards was playing,no bowler ever dominated him,he faced Lillee,Thomson,Botham,Imran,Akram,Hadlee… Dev and Botham in their prime,he still owns the record for fastest Test century.
