Who is the GOAT??

A friend of mine and I were having a discussion around who is the GOAT wicketkeeper-batsman in test cricket. We, however, considered only two batsmen for this. Kumara Sangakkara from Sri Lanka and Adam Gilchrist from Australia. We couldn’t agree on who was better of the two. I was leaning towards Gilly while my friend thought it was Sanga who was better of the two. I decided to take it a step forward and look at the various aspects that can determine who is better. Let us start off with their overall statistics -

Details	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	BF	SR	100	50	4s	6s	Ct	St
Gilchrist	96	137	20	5570	204*	47.60	6796	81.95	17	26	677	100	379	37
Sangakkara	132	229	17	12305	319	58.04	22695	54.21	38	52	1479	51	182	20

If one were to consider just the overall statistics, there is no question of who the superior player is. However, what also needs to be considered is that Sangakkara has played more than 60% of his matches as a specialist batsman for Sri Lanka rather than as a Wicketkeeper-batsman. Taking that into consideration, we should look at their records as specialist wicketkeepers -

Details	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	BF	SR	100	50	4s	6s	Ct	St
Gilchrist	96	137	20	5570	204*	47.60	6796	81.95	17	26	677	100	379	37
Sangakkara	48	81	4	3117	230	40.48	5988	52.05	7	11	419	9	124	20

Now, this tells us a completely different tale, doesn’t it? Gilly has played all his matches as a wicketkeeper while Sanga has played only 1/3^rd of his matches as a wicket-keeper. Gilchrist has a better average (7 runs per innings) and far better strike rate (82 vs 52). Even as a wicketkeeper, Gilchrist has more dismissals per match (4.33 per match) over Sangakkara (3 per match). Even if you look at the absolute number of runs scored by each, and extrapolate Sanga’s to match the number of matches played by Gilli, Sanga would probably have scored more than what Gilli has. But that can be drilled down to the position in which they play. Sanga has primarily batted at number 3 while Gilli at number 7 and this has ensured that Sanga has batted in almost both innings of a test match while Gilli has managed only 1.4 innings per match.

Another aspect that Gilchrist was outstanding at was his ability to build his innings around the tail-enders. 73% of Gilchrist’s innings (100/137) has been at the number 7 position which meant he had to play a lot more with the tail-enders while Sanga played 90% of his innings at number 3 with the top or middle order.

Another disadvantage that Gilli had against Sanga was that he made a late debut (at the age of 28 against 23 for Sanga) and that took off a few good years from his career. Who knows how much better his stats would have looked had he made an early debut! Sanga, without doubt, is a far better batsman, but, if I were a selector of a World XI and wanted a wicket-keeper batsman, I would go with Adam Gilchrist. For me, he is definitely a far better wicketkeeper-batsman! What do you think?