The greatest internationals of the century: Nos. 13 to 11

13. James Anderson

by Andrew Miller

Overall: 991 wickets at 27.18 ave

Some players, you just know, are not built to last. Their methods and mien involve blazing across the firmament, lighting up the sky with their wondrous, ephemeral skills, and flaming out as spectacularly as they appeared.

By the winter of 2003, Anderson was shaping up as an archetype of this breed. At the age of 21, this raw, fragile purveyor of magic balls could neither articulate his talents nor deliver them to order. His meteoric six-month rise and fall was surely an unrepeatable fluke of nature.

Have appearances ever been more deceptive? More than two decades later, Anderson remains unbowed. Had England not tapped him on the shoulder in 2024, he'd still be ploughing his furrow in Test cricket at the age of 43 - a master of his craft, and an unrecognisable distillate of that wild, beguiling rookie whose talents took him from Burnley's club ranks to a break-out World Cup almost before he'd completed a full professional season.

The mind's eye still harks back to those howling yorkers of his youth, but Anderson's matchcraft has long since taken over as his defining trait. Economy, in every sense, has been his calling card for the past decade - in runs conceded and in movement extracted, as he has tailored his approach to every surface he has confronted, not least those in Asia and Australia where the naysayers said his lavish swing-based game would never find success.

And instead of a tapestry of moments, Anderson's greatness is now best expressed in his brutal weight of numbers - 704 Test wickets across 188 matches, both runaway records for a fast bowler, and a further 269 in ODIs, an England record that may never be challenged. All underpinned by a rare competitive instinct that could scarcely have been fathomed when his remarkable journey began, all those years ago.

Steven Finn on James Anderson: I was lucky enough to share a dressing room with some brilliant fast bowlers in my career, but Jimmy was certainly the most skilful that I ever played with. He was constantly looking to improve his skills by developing new deliveries or plans, and was a perfectionist who would hardly ever miss his line or length. It takes incredible resilience - mentally and physically - to play international cricket for 20 years; I'm not sure we'll ever see another fast bowler take more than 700 Test wickets.

12. Rahul Dravid

By Karthik Krishnaswamy

Overall: 18,040 runs at 46.62 ave; 78 dismissals

We don't have balls-faced records for a lot of pre-1990s Test matches, so we aren't entirely certain Dravid has faced more balls than anyone else in Test history. We can be sure, however, that Dravid, more than 13 years since his retirement, remains the 21st century's second-most-ubiquitous presence at the crease.

Crease occupation was what Dravid did best, with an elbows-out, maximalist elegance that was all his. For a period in the early-to-mid 2000s, Dravid was perhaps the best batter in the world, averaging over 60 in 66 Tests in the 2001-2006 period and scoring 15 hundreds.

His best performances in that period coincided with some of India's greatest victories: 180 at Eden Gardens in 2001, when he and VVS Laxman batted all day after India followed-on; a pristine 148 on a first-day greentop at Headingley in 2002; 233 and 72 not out in a come-from-behind win in Adelaide in 2003; 270 in Rawalpindi in 2004 to help seal India's first-ever series victory in Pakistan; and 81 and 68 on a spiteful, up-and-down pitch at Sabina Park in 2006, where India wrapped up their first series win in the West Indies in 25 years.

The hundreds stopped coming for a while thereafter, before a stunning late flourish in England in 2011, when he scored three hundreds in the midst of the doom and gloom of a 4-0 whitewash. When he announced his international retirement in 2012, he was the second-highest run-getter in Test cricket behind Sachin Tendulkar. To date, only Kumar Sangakkara has scored more runs at No. 3.

If Dravid was born for Test cricket, he also turned himself into a fine ODI player, scoring more than 7000 runs in the format this century. He was an anchor at No. 3 in his early years, and topped the run aggregates at the 1999 World Cup in that role, but perhaps his best years came later, when he turned himself into a skillful manipulator at No. 5, around whom explosive talents such as Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni flourished. Until Dhoni's arrival, Dravid often kept wicket too, doing so in 73 of his 236 ODIs this century, and giving India a level of tactical flexibility they had lacked until then.

Aakash Chopra on Dravid: Rahul Dravid's biggest quality as a batter was to bat time. That's a talent which at times unfortunately isn't even recognised as a talent. The ability to concentrate for long periods of time, grafting through the tough phases, grinding down the opposition, is where Dravid the batter was tremendous.

Another key attribute was how he responded under pressure. Just being out there, occupying the crease, taking the body blows, at times even scoring ugly runs, quashing self-doubt that keeps popping up when you get beaten, when you're struggling to get the ball off the square. The determination required then, that you can turn it around, I think that's where Rahul Dravid was outstanding. They don't make batters like him anymore.

His Eden Gardens innings remains iconic, but I two stand out for me. Adelaide 2003 and Rawalpindi 2004, where there was enough assistance for the Pakistan pacers, but he just went on batting, rock-solid in defence. As for Adelaide, the thing about the Australian team of that time was that they would force mistakes, but Rahul batted an entire day without committing an error, and Australia couldn't induce one either. He scored runs when it mattered the most. Usually bowlers win you Test matches, but Rahul Dravid the batter did it time and again, especially in the longer format.

11. Adam Gilchrist

by Andrew McGlashan

Overall: 12,645 runs at 39.52 ave; 776 dismissals

There are few cricketers who have truly changed the game. Gilchrist is one of them. He took the role of wicketkeeper-batter to a new level, to such an extent that many teams went looking for their own version. Some found players who came close, but Gilchrist was a trendsetter.

By the time of his Test debut in late 1999, he had already cemented himself as a dynamic one-day opener and it translated seamlessly to the longer format. Few have hit the ball harder with such consistency; the pull and cut were among his standout shots.

Having flayed 81 in his first innings, against Pakistan at the Gabba, he then forged one of Australia's most famous victories, in Hobart, with an unbeaten 149. Sixteen more centuries would follow, including a double against South Africa that was the fastest in Test history at the time. During the 2006-07 Ashes he plundered a 57-ball century in Perth. Only one player with more than 5000 Test runs - Virender Sehwag - has scored them faster than Gilchrist.

He was part of Australia's hat-trick of ODI World Cup victories; in the 2007 final against Sri Lanka in Barbados he emerged from a brief run of low scores with 149 off 104 balls while using a squash ball in his glove to aid his grip.

As a wicketkeeper, Gilchrist was not in the class of Rod Marsh or Ian Healy but he did not make many mistakes. He sits second on the list of those with most dismissals across all international formats. Adding to an illustrious CV was his captaining Australia to their final-frontier victory over India in 2004, when Ricky Ponting was injured.

Brad Haddin on Adam Gilchrist: When you are talking about greats of the game, you are talking about guys who changed the way you play in your position. And that's what Adam Gilchrist did for wicketkeeping. He was a great craftsman behind the stumps, but it was also the way he batted; he probably ruined the game for all of us. We had to become genuine allrounders. Gilly, he's credited with that, changing the style of what a wicketkeeper looked like. In terms of an innings, it's hard to go past the 2007 World Cup final. When he plays a knock like that, yes, you sit back in awe but, what it does, it effectively takes the game away from the opposition. It was brutal, it was under the most extreme pressure of a World Cup final and that was the class of the man - to do it on the biggest occasion.

Stats are for the 2000-2025 period

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