Premier Batsmen in Twenty20 cricket

So, which batsman holds the numero uno position in T20 cricket? Our expert thinks it’s time we analysed some performances of note in cricket’s shortest version.

Test matches and One Day Internationals have been around for a long time - the former for well over a century and the latter for almost 40 years. With that much history and that much information to pull from, you can talk about the greatest batsmen of all-time in these forms of the game. While there will never be consensus, a few names show up repeatedly in most people’s list - Don Bradman, Gary Sobers, Allan Border and Sachin Tendulkar usually feature on the Test list while Viv Richards, Ricky Ponting, Tendulkar and Michael Bevan come up on the ODI list. Okay, maybe Bevan doesn’t get that much credit but he really should- his numbers are stunning with an average of 53.58 with close to 7000 runs in 232 matches.

With Twenty20s, the question of the best of all-time hasn’t been raised yet. The game is still in its infancy and we don’t have thousands of matches of data to pull from. But with five years, 181 matches and three world championships out of the way, now is a good time to take a first crack at that list. And if that’s not a good enough reason for to start with this exercise here’s another one for you - columnists need something to write about when there isn’t that much cricket action going on!

We started by valuing overall performance using the Batting Momentum from the Castrol Index - a measure that considers runs scored per innings (in essence a measure of consistency) and strike-rate which captures speed of scoring. We then looked at players in international T20s (we ruled out IPLs and other domestic competitions) who had played in at least 20 matches - that seemed like the appropriate number for Twenty20s. The players were then ranked based on their batting momentum. Without further ado, here’s the list of the best T20 batsmen in the game so far.

These batsmen are the early pioneers in international T20. David Warner and Kevin Pietersen top the list; the Aussie may be ahead on points but KP has led his side to a WC triumph which counts for a lot. Overall, the list is filled with powerful big-hitters. One of them, Brendon McCullum, is the only one to have got to 1000 runs in international T20s so far. It’s still early days, but this table exemplifies what teams should look for in the modern day T20 batsmen - bludgeoners who average about 30 runs per innings at a strike rate in the 140-150 range. However, a couple of the more technically sound batsmen and elegant stroke-makers cracked the list with Gambhir in at 8 and Jayawardene at 9 which indicates  a few  ‘traditional’ players can also achieve sustainable success.

Keep an eye out for the batsmen in this list. Decades from now, fans will be talking about one of them being the greatest T20 batsman of all time.