Tendulkar second-best ever: Wisden

The Bible of cricket, Wisden, has rated batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar as the second greatest Test batsman ever, behind the legendary Don Bradman of Australia.

In the shorter version of the game he was behind West Indian legend Viv Richards, who was rated the best ever. Tendulkar was placed ahead of several cricketing idols, including Brian Lara of the West Indies, Mark Waugh of Australia and Saeed Anwar of Pakistan.

Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan and Pakistan's Wasim Akram were rated the best bowlers in Tests and one-dayers respectively.

While Muralitharan pipped many stalwarts like Richard Hadlee, Shane Warne, Dennis Lillee and Courtney Walsh, all of whom finished in the top ten, Akram was followed by Allan Donald, Waqar Younis, Glenn McGrath and Joel Garner.

Besides Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar (8) and Sourav Ganguly (6) were the other two Indian batsmen in the list for their exploits in the Test and one-day arena respectively.

However, no Indian bowler, including the legendary Kapil Dev, could find a place in the top-ten bowling list.

According to Wisden, while preparing the list the expected score for a top performer was around 1000 points and the Don, who had a batting average of 99.94, managed 1349.

Tendulkar got 921.5

points. Among the current players, only Lara got a place in the Test list with 881 points.

Similarly, in the one-dayers, Richards got 1132.5 points while Tendulkar 1119.3 points, almost 90 points more than the third-placed Lara (1036.8).

Amongst the current one-day players, Michael Bevan (5) managed 1016.7 points followed by Ganguly with 1012.6. Jacques Kallis (1001.2) and Anwar (997.7) took the last two spots in the top-ten list.

Test Batsmen:
Don Bradman
Sachin Tendulkar
Viv Richards
Garry Sobers
Allan Border
Jack Hobbs
K Barrington
Sunil Gavaskar
Greg Chappel
Brian Lara

Test Bowlers:
Mutthiah Muralitharan
Richard Hadlee
S Barnes
Shane Warne
C Grimmett
Glen McGrath
Dennis Lillee
Malcolm Marshall
Imran Khan
Courtney Walsh

One-day Batsmen:
Viv Richards
Sachin Tendulkar
Brian Lara
Dean Jones
Michael Bevan
Sourav Ganguly
Mark Waugh
Zaheer Abbas
Jaques Kallis
Saeed Anwar

One-day Bowlers:
Wasim Akram
Allan Donald
Waqar Younis
Glenn McGrath
Joel Garner
Saqlain Mushtaq
Mutthiah Muralitharan
Shaun Pollock
Shane Warne
Dennis Lillee