5 Batsmen who ruled No.1 Test ranking for many years
These players were in the form of their life when they held the numero uno position.
Sachin Tendulkar (1994, 1998-2000)
It may come as a surprise that Sachin Tendulkar has never really dominated the ICC Test rankings. The master blaster played for 24 years in international cricket and is statistically, the best batsman to have played the game. No player has more runs than him in ODI or Test cricket.
On multiple occasions, Tendulkar was the one-man army for India. He often carried the team on his shoulders, especially in the 1990s. He was batting on a different level in the last decade of the 20th century. Thus, he first got to the No. 1 rankings in Test cricket in 1994.
1998 will forever be remembered for those two ‘Desert Storm’ knocks but he was brilliant in Test cricket as well. He averaged 80.88 in that calendar year. He continued to dominate Test cricket and regained the No. 1 rank in the ICC rankings. The runs kept flowing and Tendulkar held on to the top position. However, towards the end of 1999, Brian Lara took over. But the Mumbaikar gained it back in the next year.
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