Top 50 cricketers of the 21st Century: The current stars set to rewrite history by 2030

The top 50 cricketers of the 21st Century have been revealed – but where will spearhead Pat Cummins sit once his playing days come to an end?

Lord’s, 2010. A chubby leg-spinner, batting at No.8, makes his low key international debut. It passes without fanfare.

By the end of the decade that same man lays a genuine claim to the title of the greatest Test batsman on the planet. The ‘best since Bradman’ even, by many people’s reckoning. He doesn’t even bowl in the nets these days (though shadow bats in his sleep).

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Steve Smith has been labelled the best since Bradman. Picture: Getty Images

A lot can change in 10 years.

In that time Steve Smith, the erstwhile tweaker from that day in West London, and his Indian counterpart, Virat Kohli, have emerged as two of the most dominant batsmen not just of their age but of any in cricket. A handful of generational quicks, too, have announced themselves across the globe during a new golden age of fast bowling.

Our list of the greatest male cricketers of the 21st Century is a snapshot in time. An appraisal of an era rooted in a moment. Were we to revisit it in 2030 the list will undoubtedly be redrawn.

By then Smith may have gobbled up any number of batting records and end up at the top of the pile – if he can overcome his Indian rival, who trumped the Australian champion to be crowned the ICC’s player of the decade last month.

Pakistan’s Babar Azam (26) and New Zealand’s Kane Williamson (30) have embedded themselves in the world’s Big Four batsmen and are coming into the primes of their careers.

Pat Cummins is on track to the break into the top ten. Picture: Getty Images

The likes of Australia’s Pat Cummins and India’s Jasprit Bumrah have exemplary records in their relatively nascent careers that have them on track to be all-time greats of the game, but their pure body of work is limited enough to have seen them miss out by a coat of varnish.

However both would be prime candidates to soar up the rankings in the next decade, with Cummins’ record of 150 wickets @ 21.26 putting him in truly elite territory.

After making his Test debut at 18, Cummins missed a stunning six years of international cricket through injury as a youngster – but he is Australia’s ironman these days, and should he push through at a high level into his late 30s like Glenn McGrath, he could finish as one of the finest pacemen of all time.

That is, if he’s not overshadowed by teammates Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, who both have worthy claims of finishing their careers among the game’s greats.

A similar path beckons for Bumrah, who at 27 is the same age as Cummins but as a late bloomer has taken all three formats of the game by storm.

In another decade, he could have World Cup wins, 350 Test wickets and be India’s greatest ever paceman.

As we move further and further away from the 1990s, the pre-2000 records of Warne, Tendulkar, Ponting McGrath, and Kallis will dim further and the achievements of the newer generations will see them soar up our list.

Virat Kohli is the best cricketer of the decade. Picture: AFP

Then there’s the superstars we’ve barely heard of – who could be the Kohlis, Steyns and Smiths of their generation.

The likes of Cameron Green and Shubman Gill, who’ve made their Test debuts this summer, and 15-year-old Afghanistan spinner Noor Ahmad or 22-year-old Pakistani Shadab Khan haven’t scratched the surface of their potential – but have shown enough to make everyone take notice.

As we’ve already seen in the Boxing Day Test, Gill has the makings of an excellent Test batsman. His first class average of 73 is scary good and at 21 he has enormous potential to soar up the rankings should he be a mainstay of the Indian team for the next decade.

And Green? Well if he’s as good as we believe him to be, Australia could have their hands on a fair dinkum version of Jacques Kallis. Can he be the mythical all-rounder Australians have waited 70 years for? The sort of generational talent who can average 50 with the bat and take 300 wickets? If it’s possible, a spot in our top 20 beckons in ten years time.

Of course, he’ll have to do well to match the achievements of Ben Stokes, who at 29 has already done enough to be recognised as an all-time England great. By the time he hangs up the boots, he could sit alongside Kallis, Garry Sobers, Keith Miller and Imran Khan as one of the greatest all-rounders in history.

Stokes has used the one-day game to break into the public conscious, showing the value of having an impact across multiple formats. In the 1970s and 80s, it was Test or bust as far as determining your legacy. This list draws heavily on some ODI greats, recognising the rise of the 50-over format.

But in a further 10 years, with young players coming through the ranks as T20 specialists, the posters on bedrooms walls could be of cricketers who’ve never faced a red ball in international cricket.

Because the past two decades have also been the birth of the T20 era, when the shortest form of the game moved from novelty to money-spinner and is only likely to become more prominent in our future.

At 22, Rashid Khan has already taken the T20 world by storm. For a generation of fans he’s one of the game’s most recognisable faces. In a decade, he could quite feasibly be recognised as not just the best T20 player of his generation – but one of the best of all time.