4 Test greats with the worst 50 to 100 conversion rate
The hallmark of any great batsman is converting fifties into hundreds and hundreds into double-hundreds. They say that after 5 years, no one is going to remember your 50s and 60s. But, it is only the hundreds that will remain in the memories of cricket fans.
However, there have been many great players who were terrible at converting fifties into hundreds. These legends made a mark in their careers but would feel they missed out on that 'All-time great' tag because of not scoring as many centuries as they should have. Here are 4 greats of the game who had the worst conversion rate in test cricket.
The conversion rate is the ratio of hundreds scored to a total number of fifties. In the modern era, the conversion rate has gained enormous importance. Once a player gets his eye in, he is expected to carry on his good form and score really big irrespective of the format. Players scoring fifties consistently but not converting them into hundreds are no longer labelled as greats.
#4 VVS Laxman (23.28%)
The man with 'golden wrists' was a stalwart in the Indian middle-order for more than 10 years. Whenever India needed someone to stand up and rescue the side after a batting collapse, Laxman has always been there. His knocks of 281 at Kolkata and 148 at Adelaide, both against Australia are some prime examples of his rescue acts.
However, not always Laxman has been able to convert his fifties into daddy hundreds like some other Indian batsmen of his era. Out of 73 times when he went past the score of 50, Laxman converted only 17 of those into triple-figures which comes down to only 23.27%.
In his career, Laxman has played 134 tests scoring 8781 runs at an average of close to 46. Surprisingly, India's test great does not have a test hundred on English and South African soil. However, with Laxman, it was more the value than the number of runs that mattered.