Five batsmen who can join the 'Big 4' in ODIs
Over the years, cricket has been fortunate enough to witness players take the world by storm. There have been players who have hunted in packs and performed exceedingly well together. Be it the famous West Indian pace quartet, the Indian spin quartet (Prasanna, Venkatraghavan, Chandrashekhar, Bishan Singh Bedi), the Fab 4 of India (Dravid, Sachin, Laxman, Ganguly), the deadly duo of Wasim-Waqar, the fearsome Lillie-Marsh duo or Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd's opening pairing; each of these partnerships played a significant role in cricketing history.
But today, the ‘Big 4’ or the ‘Fab 4’ of world cricket (Kohli, Smith, Root and Williamson) are from different countries. Incidentally, each of them leads their respective countries – Kohli, Smith and Williamson captain in all formats and Root leads England in Tests. They have been magnificent for the last 2-3 years and their dominance in all formats has left everyone awestruck.
Apart from these four, there have been a few players who have been very consistent in the recent past. These players can join the ‘Big 4’ to form a bigger pool, especially in ODIs. Let’s look at 5 players who can join the ‘Big 4’ in the near future.
#5 Martin Guptill
Martin Guptill is a swashbuckling, hard-hitting batsman. The flamboyant opener has always done well in the 50-over format and is one of the batting mainstays of New Zealand today.
Guptill formed a dominating opening pairing with Brendon McCullum, but since the latter's retirement in early 2016, Guptill has taken the extra responsibility of not only giving his side brisk starts, but also batting through the innings. Guptill has been brilliant ever since the start of 2015. He has amassed more than 2500 runs in 56 games, scoring seven hundreds in the process, including a blistering 237 in the 2015 World Cup quarter-final. His strike-rate has always been in the high 90s.
New Zealand’s batting largely revolves around the right-hander and skipper Williamson. In the recent past, Guptill has time and again shown why he is one of the most destructive batsmen in the world at the moment.