Test batting
Top 10 Test batters of this century
The For The Love Of Cricket podcast has picked its ten best Test batters, and the order is close to the one most fans would write down: Sachin Tendulkar first, Brian Lara second, and Kumar Sangakkara sixth, between Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis. Most of those names made their runs in the 2000s, which leaves open what a run was worth in those years. Tendulkar averaged 52.5 in his Tests this century and Joe Root has averaged 50.6, which looks like a narrow win for Tendulkar. But a typical Test batter would have averaged 44.1 in the matches Tendulkar played, and only 27.8 in Root’s.
Our list covers every men’s Test since the start of 2000. The thinking is simple: each batter’s average is measured against that typical batter’s, which comes down to how much the pitches gave the batters and how good the attacks were. Runs on a flat pitch against a weak attack are worth less than runs on a difficult one against a strong attack. A hot two years is not enough to top the list either: a batter has to keep it up across a long run of Tests.
Only Test innings from 2000 onwards count, so first-class runs, white-ball cricket and earlier Tests play no part. Counting whole Test careers barely changes the order.
Why Sangakkara falls to 18th
Sangakkara’s case looks unanswerable. He averaged 57.6 in his Tests this century, far more than the other top-seven batters in those matches, and on that plain comparison with the batters around him he ranks third. Our ratings have him 18th.
The weakness in his case is where and when those Tests were played. Sri Lanka’s home pitches and the early 2000s produced very heavy scoring, and a typical batter would have averaged about 42.5 in his matches against the attacks he faced. That is a batter’s paradise next to the Tests Root has played. Sri Lanka’s batting around him was also weaker than its scoring suggested, which means outscoring his team-mates proves less than it appears to.
His opponents matter too. Sangakkara scored heavily against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, averaging 94.1 in his 20 Tests against them this century, and our ratings mark both attacks down as weak, so those runs earn him little. Against everyone else he averaged 52.8, in very high-scoring Tests: the record of a fine batter in a field that was scoring heavily too. Count whole Test careers for everyone and he drops to 26th.
Tendulkar, Ponting and the flat-pitch decade
The podcast’s number one goes the same way. Only Tendulkar’s Tests from 2000 count, the second half of his career, and most of them were played on India’s flat pitches of the 2000s. Those matches were kinder to batters even than Sangakkara’s, and our ratings have Tendulkar 51st. Rahul Dravid’s Tests for India over much the same years were more generous still, and he is 62nd. Count Tendulkar’s Tests before 2000 as well and he is still only 37th.
AB de Villiers is the nearest miss of the podcast’s ten, in 12th. Ponting, fifth for the podcast, falls much further, to 27th: his 53.7 across 135 Tests came in matches almost as high-scoring as Sangakkara’s, at a time when the batters around him were scoring freely too. A list that takes those averages at face value ends up ranking the decade as much as the batter.
Travis Head
Tenth place goes to a batter who appears nowhere on the podcast’s list. All of Head’s Tests have come since 2018, in years far lower-scoring than the early 2000s, and his matches have given batters barely more than Root’s have. So an average of 43.1, which would not normally start this kind of conversation, ranks well above Ponting’s higher one, because Head’s runs were much harder to come by.
Our ratings have him making 37% more runs per dismissal than a typical batter would have in the same Tests. He has done it across 66 of them, which is long enough to trust: Head is a batter who makes his runs in the matches where the bowlers are on top.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul
Chanderpaul batted through the same high-scoring years as Sangakkara and Tendulkar, so those years are no bar to a place here. He averaged 55 across 126 Tests for West Indies, and those matches were less generous to batters than theirs. He is ninth, the place the podcast gave to Dravid, a batter with a lower average from much easier Tests. Chanderpaul held his standard from 2000 to 2015, which is a measure of how reliable he was.
Kane Williamson
Williamson is a modern batter with a record shaped like those of the 2000s. Of the current generation on this list he has had much the kindest conditions, in Tests about as high-scoring as the ones Kallis and Chanderpaul played. The corollary is that an average of 54.1, higher than Root’s, is good enough only for eighth. He has kept it up for New Zealand since 2010, and of the modern batters in the ten only Smith has a higher average.
Virat Kohli
Kohli was tenth on the podcast’s list, behind Tendulkar and Dravid, and his Test average is lower than either of theirs. Our ratings put him seventh, well clear of both, because the Tests he played between 2011 and 2025 gave batters far less than India’s flat pitches of the 2000s had.
The batters around him show how much less. The other top-seven batters in Kohli’s Tests averaged 33.2, where those in Tendulkar’s averaged 41. With runs that much scarcer in his matches, Kohli has a much stronger Test record this century than either of the two Indians the podcast placed above him.
Rishabh Pant
Pant is a surprise inclusion: the podcast’s list had no room for him, and an average of 43.9 does not usually earn a place among the best of a century. The conditions he has batted in are tougher than people realise. His Tests, all since 2018, are the lowest-scoring set of matches played by any batter in our ten.
On averages alone he and Sangakkara look like different classes of batter. But Tests since 2018 have been far lower-scoring than those of the early 2000s, and a typical batter would have averaged only 26.8 in Pant’s. His 51 Tests make a short career beside Root’s, and a record that short has to be exceptional to rank this high. Pant’s is, and he is sixth. His record deserves a good deal more praise than it gets.
Brian Lara
Lara is the one member of the podcast’s top two who survives. Only his Tests from 2000 to 2006 count, 66 of them, and he averaged 54.4 in matches kinder than Root’s and far tougher than Tendulkar’s. Our ratings have him fifth. Counting whole Test careers, Tests before 2000 included, he rises to fourth, so the later Lara alone belongs in this company and the whole of Lara ranks higher still.
Jacques Kallis
Kallis answers the charge that this list just punishes the 2000s. His 58.7 across 134 Tests is the highest average in our ten, and higher even than Sangakkara’s over much the same years. The Tests themselves were different: scoring in Kallis’s was a good deal harder than in Sangakkara’s, Ponting’s or Tendulkar’s. The podcast had Sangakkara sixth and Kallis seventh; our ratings have Kallis fourth, the best of the batters whose runs came in that high-scoring decade.
He was bowling through those Tests as well. Kallis sent down 2,739 overs and took 239 wickets in them, a heavy workload for a top-order batter, and to score as he did alongside that much bowling makes the batting record more impressive still.
Harry Brook
Brook is another surprise inclusion, like Pant, and he sits higher still. He has played 41 Tests, all since 2022, and a batter placed this high on a record that short deserves suspicion: attacks have had only those few years to work him out, and he has yet to bat through the length of career that Root, Smith and Kallis have behind them. Our ratings put him third all the same.
The runs explain it. He has averaged 53.1, higher than Root, and of the ten only Pant has batted in harder Tests. What he lacks is the length of Root’s record, and only more Tests can supply it.
Steve Smith
Smith has the higher average of the top two, 56.6, and on most lists that would settle first place. Here the two are all but level: by our ratings Smith has made 68% more runs per dismissal than a typical batter would have in his Tests, and Root 69%.
The bowling separates them. Root has faced better bowling, partly because his most frequent opponent has been Australia’s attack and Smith’s has been England’s. Root’s Tests were lower-scoring as well. No batter of the current generation on this list has a higher average than Smith, and he has kept it up over 122 Tests since 2010.
Joe Root
Root’s average of 50.6 is no standout by this list’s standards, and both Kallis and Smith have a higher one. But of the ten, only Pant and Brook batted in Tests where scoring was harder, and neither has done it for anything like as long: Root has played 169 Tests, the most of anyone here. He has been a solid, dependable batter since 2012 and an effective one in matches that gave batters very little. Count whole Test careers and he stays first, with Smith and Brook behind him. By our ratings he is the best Test batter of the century.
Is that fair on Sangakkara?
Yes, as a judgement on his Test runs this century. Nothing here makes Sangakkara anything less than a great batter, and his average across 133 Tests is outstanding. But he scored heavily when the field around him was scoring heavily too, with almost a fifth of his runs coming against two weak attacks.
Kallis and Chanderpaul show that the era alone does not shut a batter out. Both batted through the same years as Sangakkara, in Tests that were less generous to batters than his, and both made the ten.
The podcast’s list leans towards the heaviest scorers of the highest-scoring years, and it puts Tendulkar and Lara ahead of Smith and Root. Root and Smith should be first and second. Sangakkara, Tendulkar and Ponting made their runs in batter-friendly conditions, while Root has made his across a far longer run of Tests in which runs were much harder to come by. That is the harder job, and he has done it better than anyone.