Greatest Wicket Keepers of all Time

Greatest Wicket Keepers: The wonderful sport of Cricket, require various players in different positions. One of the most essential position is that of Wicket-keeper. It is a challenging task that requires immense concentration and focuses while continuously being on the lookout. The skills a wicketkeeper possesses are a keen eye, being sharp and extremely flexible. The wicketkeeper is always standing behind the wickets in gloves and pads to catch the ball and is also a fielder. Here is a listicle of some of the greatest wicket keepers of all time in cricketing history.

#10 Andrew Flower

Greatest Wicket Keepers:- At number ten is Andrew Flower, famously called as Andy. He is Zimbabwe’s best wicket keeper and players who ever wore the gloves for the team. He was responsible for a total of a massive 333 dismissals. This includes 173 from his One Day Internationals and 160 from his tests. He played for the team for 11 years. His fantastic leadership and perseverance helped the team complete with the big guns and also helped them excel.

Andrew Flower was born on the 28th of April 1968. He is a South African born former Zimbabwean cricketer who beautifully leads the Zimbabwe national cricket team. He was also Zimbabwe’s best and only wicket-keeper for more than ten years, and he was ranked by far the most elegant batsman the country has had.

The flower was born in the city of Cape Town in South Africa, and he started his high school at Oriel Boys’ High School, and Vainona High School. He played most of his career alongside his younger brother Grant Flower. He is also considered to be one of the best wicket-keeper batsmen, alongside brilliant players such as Australian Adam Gilchrist. Flower also made his international debut in a One Day International against Sri Lanka at New Plymouth in New Zealand, in the 1992 Cricket World Cup. He was a good player of spin and had made 550 runs in a Test series against India in 2000/01. This tally came in just in about four innings, and he was sadly only dismissed twice. Andrew Flower is one of the very few players to score a century on One Day International debut.

#9 Moin Khan

Moin Khan was the backbone of the cricket team of Pakistan. He helped establish the game for many significant victories. He was one of the most successful & Greatest Wicket Keepers in Pakistan history. He accumulated about 435 dismissals in his career.

#8 Alec Stewart

Alec Stewart has played over 300 matches for the Three Lions in both the types of formats of the game. Alec also has 451 dismissals to his name. He started his wicket-keeping career by switching gloves with the one and only, Jack Russel, after this, he eventually became England’s first preference. Alec is also the most capped England player in Tests as well as the second on the list for One Day Internationals.

#7 Brendon McCullum

Brendon McCullum is New Zealand’s most excellent to keep the wickets. Nicknamed ‘The Baz’ he has 530 dismissals to his name; this is a figure that no other player has come minutely close to. He is as flexible as a rubber band. Brendon also possesses the ability to grab the ball as no other man could. McCullum, unfortunately, dropped the gloves in the year 2012, after he took up the captainship for New Zealand in all the three formats of the game of Cricket.

#6 Rod Marsh

Greatest Wicket Keepers:- His full name is Rodney Marsh. He has around 355 dismissals, 124 One Day International dismissals and over 800 dismissals in his First-Class Career. The Australian was extraordinarily speedy and alert when he was on the field, and he has left a tremendous mark on the ground in the entire Cricket History with his memorable performance.

#5 Ian Healy

Ian Healy is the second Australian on the list. He took on the gloves after Rod Marsh retired from the game. Healy made his test and ODI debut in the year 1988. He has around 628 dismissals. This includes 233 in the One Day International and 395 in Tests.

Ian Andrew Healy, whose nickname became ‘Heals’ later on was born on 30th April 1964. He is an Australian former international cricketer who played for Queensland domestically. He is also a specialist wicketkeeper and a very useful right-hand middle-order batsman. He made an unparalleled entry to international cricket in the year 1988, after only a mere six first-class games. His work ethic and crisis-management skill were very much needed by the Australian team. Over the next few years, Healy was a vital member of the group as it enjoyed a continued period of success. By the time of his unfortunate retirement, Healy held the world record for most Test dismissals by a wicket-keeper, which is a great achievement.

Healy was a very handy batsman and improved dramatically during the second half of his cricket career. All of his entire four first-class centuries were scored in only Test matches. Wow! He was handy as a hitter late in the innings during One Day Internationals: he averaged a score of 21 while scoring at a rate of 83.8 runs per hundred balls. Although he was called as a potential leader of the team early in his career, a series of on-field bad behaviours counted against him when the position was vacant. He captained Australia in eight ODIs when the regular skipper Mark Taylor was injured.

#4 MS Dhoni

Mahendra Singh Dhoni is a name everyone is familiar with in the cricket world. He is an excellent player, with an impeccable skill that is coupled with alertness and the right amount of cold. He is among the Best and Greatest Wicket Keepers in the world, with a whopping 705 dismissals to his name. He gave up his whites in 2014, but he continues to lead the Indian side in the limited over the format of the game.

He made his One Day International debut in the month of December in the year 2004 against Bangladesh, and he then went on to play his first Test a year later against the country Sri Lanka. Dhoni has been the recipient of multiple awards, including the ICC ODI Player of the Year award in 2008 as well as in 2009. He is the first player to win the award not once, but twice! He won the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 2007, the Padma Shri which is India’s fourth civilian honour, in the year 2009 and the Padma Bhushan which is India’s third civilian honour, in 2018.

He was appointed as the cool captain of the ICC World Test XI in the years 2009, 2010 as well as the year 2013. He has also been selected a record whopping eight times in ICC World ODI XI teams, and 5 times as captain. The Indian Territorial Army had given the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel to Dhoni on the 1st of November 2011. He is also only the second Indian cricketer after Kapil Dev to receive this impeccable honour.

Dhoni also holds multiple captaincy records such as the most number wins by an Indian captain in Test series, One Day Internationals and the most loved T20Is, and has the most back-to-back wins by an Indian captain in ODIs. He took over the ODI captaincy from the one and only Rahul Dravid in the year 2007 and took the team to its first-ever bilateral ODI series wins in Sri Lanka as well as in New Zealand. In June 2013, when India defeated the very talented England in the finale of the Champions Trophy in England, Dhoni then became the first captain to win all three ICC limited-overs trophies which are the World Cup, Champions Trophy and the World Twenty20.

After taking up the Test captaincy in the year 2008, he led the team to a series of wins in New Zealand and in the West Indies. He also won the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in the years 2008, 2010 and 2013. In 2009, Dhoni also led the Indian team to the number one position for the first time ever in the ICC Test rankings.

#3 Kumar Sangakkara

Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene are the two names that the Sri Lankan cricket fans will always have on their mind. Both have served the country with immense dedication, Kumar Sangakkara had around 748 dismissals before he retired from the International scene in the year 2015. He holds the world record of a whopping 99 stumpings in ODIs to his name-Sangakkara. Sangakkara has also displayed great talent in the batting sector of the game by having scored over 21,000 runs including 47 centuries and 117 fifties.

Kumar is a left-handed top-order batsman, he is also a record-breaking & Greatest Wicket Keepers, even though he is no longer kept wicket at the termination of his excellent Test career. Currently, he is one of the highest run-scorer in the One Day International cricket, and he is also the sixth-highest run scorer in Test cricket.

Kumar Sangakkara is said to be one of the most polished and prudent of batsmen in cricket history. He hands down dominated the number one spot in the ICC Test batting rankings between the years 2005 and 2015.

Kumar Sangakkara was one of the critical members of the team that won the 2014 ICC World Twenty20, and he was part of the team that made the grand final of the 2007 Cricket World Cup, the 2011 Cricket World Cup, as well as in the 2009 ICC World Twenty20 and the 2012 ICC World Twenty20. He also won the Man of the Match award in the finals of the 2014 ICC World Twenty20, where he played an essential role in helping the team win their first title.

When it comes to the terms of several innings required, Kumar Sangakkara is the quickest batsman to reach the marks 8,000, 9,000, 11,000 and 12,000 runs in Test cricket. He is also the joint fastest to reach a whopping 10,000. Along with his other incredible achievements he also won the ICC Cricketer of the Year in the year 2012, Test Cricketer of the Year in the year 2012, and ODI Cricketer of the Year multiple times in both the years 2011 and 2013. Kumar Sangakkara has also won the LG People’s Choice Award not once, but twice, in 2011 as well as in 2012.

Sangakkara has been regularly featured in the World Test XI and World ODI XI and has appeared six times and three times respectively in each of them. He was also selected as Leading Cricketer in the entire World in 2012 as well as the 2015 editions of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, which made him become the second player to have won this prestigious award twice. Kumar Sangakkara was also rated as the Greatest One Day International (ODI) player of all time in a public survey that conducted by Cricket Australia in 2016.

#2 Adam Gilchrist

Adam Gilchrist is the third Australian who has made it to this list. Among the three on the list, he is the best one. He is one of the perfect glove-men in the game, Gilchrist was always on the game, and hardly ever made mistakes. Retiring in the year 2008, he had around 905 dismissals to his name which includes 416 Tests, 472 in One Day Internationals and a good 17 in the T20s.

He is exceptionally proficient with the gloves, Adam Gilchrist was a man that everyone respected, and he was the one to watch out for. He scored over 15,000 runs in his entire career, which is a significant number.

#1 Mark Boucher

Mark Boucher is famous for the number of dismissals he made in his South African Cricket career. He made a whopping 999 dismissals. He had played in all the three formats of his game and was unfortunately forced to retire from the game due to an eye injury from a ball in the England tour in the year 2012.