Hashim Amla fastest to score 4000 - and we thought Viv Richards, Greenidge made runs faster...

You may not instantaneously recognize this baby-faced person – leave alone recognizing him as a Cricketer haunting the present Indian side !!

It was under Krish Srikkanth that Sachin Tendulkar made his debut….. in the last version of IPL – Cheeka was associated with Hyderabad Sun Raisers – Shikhar Dhawan made 311 runs – next to him was the baby faced Parthiv Patel who made 294 – Parthiv still is not considered to be a good ODI batsman, leave alone playing T20 !!  ~ alongside another wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock played in 3 matches – made 6 runs in all with highest of 4 and average of 2 – he was above Ashish Reddy and Ishant Sharma only……….

Quinton De Kock has been touted as the future of South African cricket - he forms a partnership at the top of the order in limited-overs cricket that Faf du Plessis has called the "right combination of flair and stability", and his keeping wicket frees up AB de Villiers. He is also honing his longer-form game to be able to push for a place in the Test team in the years to come. Yes it is the same De Kock who has made tons in both the One dayers against India in style………  somebody posted on FB that it was 35.1 that the first SA wicket fell and by 35.1 Indians were all out in the 2nd One dayer and that sums up it all. 

The other opener is not a regular opener – has Indian connection (his grand parents hail from  Surat) and made his debut in Eden Gardens, Kolkatta in Nov 204……….. made a slow start to his career and was severely criticized as possessing weak technique………. Now he is almost ungettable, scoring tons at will….the other day, a friend of mine described him as a dodgy batsman…. Not scoring fast – what a perception !!

It is Amla ~  Hashim Mahomed Amla  has been a prolific scorer………. A regular no. 3 now for South Africa ~ currently ranked by the International Cricket Council as the world's top batsman in Test and One Day Internationals (ODIs). Amla became the first South African to score a Test match triple century when he scored 311 not out against England in 2012.  yesterday against India when he scored his 59th run, Amla reached an enviable landmark … the fastest to score 4000 ODI runs..  beating Viv Richards' record by seven innings. Amla  reportedly was rather embarrassed about that.

Amla has already made 5913 runs in 123 innings in Tests besides the present 4041 runs in 81 ODI innings.  The elite 4000 club has Amla (81); Viv Richards (88); Kohli (93); Greenidge (96); Lara (100); Dean Jones (102); Sourav Ganguly (105); de Villiers (105); Geoff Marsh (106) – Greame Smith, Graham Gooch, Navjot Sidhu,  Desmond Haynes, Gary Kirsten, Yousuf Youhana, Mat Hayden,  Gambhir, Bevan, Sachin Tendulkar, Ponting …….

Talk to anybody over 40 on this….. they would immediately jump to say that Vivian Richards and Gordon Greenidge would be the topmost hitters of all time and they made runs super fast …….. but here is some statistics on that too….

In One dayers - Hashim Amla has made 4041 runs @ 53.88 with 90.18 strike rate…… Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards made 6721 runs @ 47.00 with strike rate of 90.20;  flamboyant Gordon Greenidge made 5134 runs @ 45.03 with strike rate of 64.92 !!! ~ the sixer hitting Sidhu made 4413 in 127 innings with average of 37.08 and strike rate of 69.72…… nothing against these great batsmen – they belong to a different eras …. Yardsticks are different and there cannot be a fair comparison… remember that in a ODI series down under Alan Lamb got the kit-kat award for fast innings for scoring 80 odd in slightly more balls than the runs……… now – some not so well known batsman would make it in half of that !

One man would stand tall…. The little Sachin Tendulkar – made 18426 runs in 452 innings – still had the average of 44.83 with 49 taons and his strike rate (after scoring 4.5 times more than Amla) is 86.23. Statistics will never lie………  but can give a different story depending on the analysis that you make upon them.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar