There have been many players in the history of cricket who have achieved the epitome of greatness and many of them who had a career much short-lived than expected due to factors like injuries, form, etc. But there is also a special category of players who were better than average but far from achieving top-class greatness. So today in this article we will speak about the players who could have become great players but even after playing numerous matches for their team, they never were able to break the threshold and remained on the borderline of to be called as a good player
The first player up is the so-called “Chinni Thala” Suresh Raina. This Indian all-rounder was one of the gems of Indian cricket at the peak of his career. This left-handed batsman was a crafty T20 batsman and has achieved considerable success in One-day Internationals too. He is a great of all time when it comes to the Indian Premier League and is one of the top scorers of all time in the prestigious league which gave him yet another title of “Mr. IPL”. But his international career didn’t bloom as it could have. He is also the first Indian batsman to hit a century in all three formats of cricket. He was in the 2011 CWC team and the 2013 champions trophy team but post-2015 his international career has been quite a setback. He has also captained the Indian cricket team and is the second-youngest player ever to captain India. He never had a major injury in his career but a drip in form ensured he did not get a permanent place in the starting 11. He did get a few chances in 2018 in an ODI series against England but he failed to impress. His international career is far from a comeback but he remains one of the biggest stars in the shortest format of the game: the Indian Premier League.
The second player in contention is South African captain Faf du Plessis.A right-handed middle-order batsman and part-time leg-spin bowler, du Plessis has played South African domestic cricket for Northerns and the Titans and also for Chennai’s IPL team. Du Plessis took over the Test captaincy in December 2016 and assumed the full-time captaincy in all formats of the game in August 2017 after teammate and former captain AB de Villiers relinquished the two limited-overs captaincies. In the 165 ODI’s in which he has featured in he has a mere 5000 runs combined which is too good for an average player but not good to be great. After a dismal performance in world cup 2019 and currently justifying the tag of chokers, he gave up his captaincy to shred off the skipper’s pressure off his shoulder and focus more on his batting skill in a desperate attempt to resist the run-scoring slump that he has been facing.
The third player up is another player who was believed to achieve great numbers but he too followed the average path, South African David Miller. Miller is an aggressive left-handed middle-order batsman and a right-arm off-spin bowler who has served many domestic T20 teams as well as the South African international team in all formats of the game. He has been one of the biggest assets of the African team due to his six-hitting prowess. Miller was one of South Africa’s top performers at the 2015 Cricket World Cup scoring 324 runs at an average of 65 and a strike rate of 139 during the tournament. He also scored a match-winning 49 in the WC semis but that came in a losing cause. Post-2015 there has been a dip in his form and his international career has come to a standstill. He is still one of the biggest names when it comes to the shortest form of the game: T20 cricket. He is one of the biggest stars in the KXIP IPL team and has many records with the team. He is a player more capable than what he is right now but somehow his career isn’t clicking like it should have done.
Next up is the Sri Lankan player Kusal Mendis. He is one of the emerging talents the Sri Lankan national team has He only played sixteen first-class matches before playing for the national side. In November 2017, he was named the One Day International (ODI) batsman of the year for the 2016–17 season at Sri Lanka Cricket’s annual awards. He captained Sri Lanka’s squad for the 2014 ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup. He was in his peak form in all series until 2017 in their series against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe among others. Mendis was totally out of form during the 2018 Asia Cup, where he was dismissed for not in both games against Bangladesh and Afghanistan. His place in the team was in doubt with poor performances, where he was omitted from the England tour in Sri Lanka but he was called on as a replacement, but he has not been in touch since then. His place in the team has been dicey due to a string of low scores and he will hope he can better the game in times to come.
Next up is Bangladeshi batsman Tamim Iqbal. Tamim is one of the classy Bangladesh players of all time. Tamim, a young talent of Bangladesh, who played in the 2006 U-19 Cricket World Cup in Sri Lanka, was picked for the 2007 World Cup and played against India in the group stage of the competition, scoring 51 runs from 53 deliveries, helping his team to win the match. This left-handed opener was once a dashing aggressive batsman and has also had stints at the captaincy of the Bangla Tigers. Tamim has scored centuries in all three formats of the game and is also the first Bangladeshi to score 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 & 13,000 international runs. But over time his batting prowess has gone down and so has his captaincy skills owing to which the skipper’s badge was taken away from him. Currently, he plays for the team but is not a regular selection and his position is highly temporary and with his growing age, the chances of a comeback look bleak.
Next up is Kiwi batsman Martin Guptill who is a New Zealand international cricketer who plays as an opening batsman in limited-overs formats of the game. Guptill first represented New Zealand in the Under-19 Cricket World Cup held in Sri Lanka in 2006. He made his One Day International (ODI) debut for New Zealand on 10 January 2009 against the West Indies in Auckland, becoming the first New Zealander to score a century on his one-day debut. He has been an asset to the team over the years but since the 2015 cricket world cup, there has been a serious drop in form for the kiwi. He has not been able to stand up on the standards which he was expected to be although he is one of the most successful players for his country. His performance in the 2019 world cup was too disappointing and that has affected his permanent place in the starting 11.
