Tendulkar, Kallis, Murali, Perry voted greatest international cricketers of the 21st century

Jury of 25 cricketers picks the top players of 2000-2025. De Villiers and Bumrah are the top T20 batter and bowler

Published: May 30, 2026, 5:25 PM (1 hr ago)

Jacques Kallis, Sachin Tendulkar and Muthiah Muralidaran have been named the greatest men's international cricketers of the 21st century by an all-star ESPNcricinfo jury of players and former players.

Tendulkar was voted the greatest batter, Muralidaran the greatest bowler, and Kallis the greatest all-round cricketer, for their performances in the 2000-2025 period across international formats. Ellyse Perry was voted greatest women's international cricketer of the century in a separate exercise.

The picks were the culmination of a rollout on ESPNcricinfo, where the top 25 greatest men's internationals were revealed. The selections were made on the basis of voting by a 25-member jury that included Wasim Akram, Greg Chappell, Faf du Plessis, Matthew Hayden, Angelo Mathews, Tom Moody, Eoin Morgan, Ravi Shastri, Daniel Vettori and Shane Watson.

Tendulkar, the most prolific scorer across formats in the history of the game, is the leading run-maker in Tests and ODIs; has the most hundreds and fifties in Tests; the most fifties in ODIs, and till recently held the record for most hundreds in that format.

Kallis, who ranks alongside Garry Sobers as the greatest all-round performer in the history of the game, finished with 13,289 runs and 292 wickets in Tests, which places him fourth among the all-time Test run-scorers. His international career lasted just short of two decades and he was pivotal in the South Africa teams of the 2000s and early 2010s, including the one under Graeme Smith that was ranked the No. 1 Test side in the world.

Reflecting on his career on the occasion of the award, Kallis said South Africa's back-to-back Test series wins in Australia [in 2008-09 and 2012-13] and England [2008 and 2012] were the highlights.

Among his individual Test innings, he picked his 201 not out against India in Centurion in 2010 as a standout. His first Test hundred, 101 against Australia to save the Melbourne match of 1997 for South Africa, was also special, he said. In that match, South Africa were up against a fourth-innings target of 381, and Kallis' six-hour century fetched them a draw.

Other winners at the Cricinfo Honours night in Mumbai included AB de Villiers, who was voted best T20 batter, and Jasprit Bumrah, who was picked as best T20 bowler. De Villiers finished his T20 career with just short of 9500 runs, at a strike rate of 150 before that sort of scoring came to be normalised in the format, and was a lynchpin of the Royal Challengers Bengaluru side in the IPL. Bumrah, who has won two T20 World Cups with India, and five IPL titles with Mumbai Indians, has 349 wickets in 283 matches and counting, at an economy of under 7 an over.

Perry, one of the greatest talents across all sport in the modern era, picked the 2020 T20 World Cup final in Melbourne, which Australia won to record their fifth title in six editions of the tournament, as a highlight of her career - despite not having played in the game herself. "It was a real moment and also a nod to the foundations that had been laid for women's cricket and every person that had worked hard for women's cricket and fought for its development that day."

Among the few women's cricketers to have played more than a handful of Tests in an age where the format is little seen in women's cricket, she picked out her Ashes encounters with England as special. In 11 Tests against England, she has stellar numbers, averaging over 60 with the bat and under 20 with the ball. The Canterbury match of 2015, where she took 6 for 39 in the fourth innings to get Australia a win, was a particular highlight, she said, but her finest all-round performance in the format came in Perth in 2014, against England again, when she made 71 and 31 and took 8 for 79 but her team lost. "It was probably the most phenomenal game of Test match cricket I played," she said. "We ended up losing but I just thought the challenge that that provided and the competition, and the way that every ball mattered, that was really special."

Muralidaran finished his epoch-making career with a round 800 Test wickets at an average of under 23, in 2010, and was central to Sri Lanka's status as a force in cricket in the 2000s.

Apart from Kallis, Tendulkar and Muralidaran, the other players in Cricinfo's top five men's internationals are Virat Kohli (No. 3) and Ricky Ponting (No. 5). Other than Kohli, currently active players who feature in the top 25 are Mitchell Starc (No. 17), Kane Williamson (16), Bumrah (15) and Joe Root (9).

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