Most underrated cricketer of all time: five Test greats nobody looks up

At Lord's in 1935 a South African opener made 164 not out in the second innings, and his side beat England in England for the first time. Ninety years on, hardly anyone looks him up. That opener was Bruce Mitchell, and he is the most underrated cricketer of all time. Angus Fraser, Herbie Taylor, Daryll Cullinan and Vernon Philander come closest behind him.

Mitchell sits 47th of 538 Test batters on our all-time ratings, built on every men's Test since 1877. Virat Kohli is 43rd, four places above him. Between January 2016 and September 2026 Kohli's Wikipedia page was read 62.7 million times, 31 times what a batter of his rating from his era usually gets. Mitchell's was read 17,326 times. Two batters of much the same standing, and one of them has all but vanished from view.

Underrated here means the distance between how good a man was and how well he is remembered. How good he was is how far his record stood above the other players in his own Tests, allowing for the strength of the attacks and batting he faced. How well he is remembered is how often his Wikipedia page has been read since 2016, against what a player of the same standing from the same era usually gets, since older players are read far less whoever they were. Each of these five draws less than a quarter of the readers his record should bring.

Bruce Mitchell, South Africa's forgotten opener

Mitchell opened the batting and bowled leg-spin for South Africa between 1929 and 1949, and played in every Test the country played in that time. Our ratings have him making 34% more runs per dismissal than the other top-seven batters in his Tests.

His two greatest innings came on the grounds English cricket knows best. The Lord's hundred of 1935 came in a win that ought to have fixed him in the game's folklore for good, and at The Oval in 1947 he made 120 and 189 not out, batting for more than 13 hours in the match, to become only the second South African to make two hundreds in a Test. Wisden had already named him a Cricketer of the Year in 1936.

Memory has been less generous than Wisden. He lost the years from 1939 to 1946 to the Second World War, serving with the Transvaal Scottish in East Africa, and played for a side that won few Tests while the cricket world looked at England and Australia. The ICC Cricket Hall of Fame has never called. The readers who should be finding him mostly never do: his page gets 14% of what a batter of his standing from his era usually gets, the biggest gap of anyone. Put another way, roughly one in seven of the people his record should draw ever arrive.

Angus Fraser and the West Indies years

Fraser is the one Englishman of the five, and the one most of our readers will have watched. He played 46 Tests between 1989 and 1998, with two and a half years lost to a hip injury, for an England side that lost most series in the 1990s. Our ratings put him 30th of the 349 Test bowlers, and Wisden made him a Cricketer of the Year in 1996.

He saved his best for the strongest side of his day. His wickets against West Indies came at 23.70 in the years of Ambrose, Walsh and Lara, against a career average of 27.32. His 8 for 75 at Bridgetown in 1994 set up West Indies' first Test defeat there for more than half a century, and at Port of Spain in 1998 he took 8 for 53 and 11 for 110 in a match England still lost.

That lost Test at Port of Spain is the shape of his whole career. His finest spells seldom ended in a series win anyone retells, and a bowler is remembered for the matches he won as much as for the figures he took. Eleven wickets in a defeat is the kind of performance that stays in the scorebook and slips out of the memory, which is why a bowler who was still on television every summer gets only 16% of the Wikipedia readers his standing and era would usually bring.

Herbie Taylor and the series of Sydney Barnes

Taylor captained South Africa in 18 of his Tests between 1912 and 1932, batted mostly on the matting pitches at home, and made all seven of his Test hundreds against England. Our ratings place him 45th of the 538 Test batters, just above Mitchell.

The series that made his name was against England in 1913-14, when Sydney Barnes took a Test-record 49 wickets at 10.93. With the finest bowler of the age at his most destructive, Taylor made 508 runs, the most by anyone on either side and 227 clear of the next South African. The First World War then took five years out of his Test career, and he won the Military Cross in it, before Wisden made him a Cricketer of the Year in 1925.

Neville Cardus, writing in the 1955 Wisden, had no doubt where he belonged: 'H. W. Taylor must be counted one of the six greatest batsmen of the post-Grace period.' Cardus saw him bat. Seventy years later, with Taylor's page drawing 18% of the attention a batter of his standing from his era usually gets, almost nobody reading about cricket has gone looking for one of the six greatest batsmen of the post-Grace period.

Daryll Cullinan, more than Shane Warne's bunny

Cullinan's reputation rests on a sliver of his career, the seven Tests against Australia in which he made 153 runs at 12.75 and fell to Shane Warne four times. He is remembered as Warne's bunny, and he was honest about it once he had retired: 'Warne was too good for me.' Those who do look him up, and only 23% of the readers a batter of his standing from his era usually gets do, mostly come for that story.

Taken whole, his record makes the bunny tag look absurd. His 275 not out against New Zealand at Auckland in 1999 was then South Africa's highest Test score, and our ratings place him 38th of the 538 Test batters, the best of the three batters here. He was never a Wisden Cricketer of the Year.

He also started late through no fault of his own. He had been the youngest South African to make a first-class hundred, at 16, yet the ban on South Africa kept him out of Test cricket until he was 25, so the game never saw his early twenties. Warne was too good for him in seven Tests; in the rest, Cullinan was too good for most of the bowlers he faced, and that is the part nobody tells.

Vernon Philander, the third man in a great attack

Philander is the best player of the five by our ratings, 18th of the 349 Test bowlers, having taken 32% more wickets for his runs than the other bowlers in his Tests. He played 64 Tests between 2011 and 2020, batted at No. 8, and took the new ball in an attack with Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel.

He announced himself on debut at Cape Town in 2011 with 5 for 15 as Australia were bowled out for 47, and kept up that pace so well that his 50th Test wicket came in his seventh Test, with only Charlie Turner, back in 1888, having got there faster. By 2013 he was top of the ICC Test bowling rankings.

His page has the most readers of the five, 609,153 since 2016, yet that is still less than a quarter of what a bowler of his standing from his era usually gets, because the fame in that attack went to the men either side of him. Philander was the one who took his wickets for the fewest runs, and the role of third man in a great attack is the one that history files under the other two names.

Why four of the five are South African

The reasons the five were overlooked mostly come from one country. Mitchell and Taylor played when South Africa won few Tests and the cricket world looked at England and Australia, so their best days were played out in front of people who were watching something else. Cullinan lost his early twenties to the ban, and Philander stood in Steyn's shadow.

Fraser's reason is English. He bowled for a side that lost most series in the 1990s, and the memory of that decade belongs to the men who beat England rather than the men who bowled for them. Every one of the five did his best work where the spotlight happened to be pointing the other way.

Why Bruce Mitchell is the most underrated of all

Philander had the finest record of the five, and Cullinan the finest among the batters, but both are at least remembered, one as Steyn's partner and the other for the wrong reason. Taylor has Cardus on his side, and Fraser has a generation of England supporters who watched him toil. Mitchell has slipped furthest from view, with a smaller share of the attention his record deserves than anyone's.

Bruce Mitchell is the most underrated cricketer of all time. The ICC Cricket Hall of Fame should put that right first, by inducting the opener who stood unbeaten at Lord's on the day South Africa first won in England, so that people start looking him up again.