5 young cricketers who could be next generation superstars

Cricketing icons Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Graeme Smith and Mahela Jayawardene have all retired from the game in the last 2-3 years, leaving a huge void in international cricket currently. The above mentioned ones were not just great cricketers but also thorough gentlemen, enriching the game of cricket on the whole.Whenever there is such an exodus of top quality cricketers, questions are always raised about whether players of a similar ilk can be produced in the future. But the game ultimately does move on, and Im sure we will be waxing lyrical about the next generation of cricketers in 10-15 years' time.Here are 5 young players with the potential of taking the world cricket by storm in the next few years:

#5 Jos Buttler

Jos Buttler, without a doubt, is one of the most enthralling batsmen to watch in world cricket at the moment. A product of T20 cricket, the wicketkeeper-batsman is one of a handful of cricketers with the ability to hit the ball 360 degrees, making him almost impossible to bowl to.

The highlight of his brief international career till date is the breathtaking hundred he scored against Sri Lanka in an ODI at Lord’s, a couple of months back, to almost win England the match from a desperately hopeless situation. That hundred showcased to people that he is far more than just a T20 specialist.

With Matt Prior’s decline in the last one year, he has managed to grab the wicket-keeping slot in Test cricket, which illustrates the rapid strides Buttler has made in his cricket over the last 6-8 months. While whether he has the credentials for Test cricket remains to be seen as yet, there is no doubt that he can go on to become an England great in the shorter formats, and, who knows, he might well have it in him to play a similar role to the one Adam Gilchrist played for Australia in Test cricket. Let’s not forget that Gilchrist’s wicket-keeping was also very much a work-in-progress when he started his Test career, but he made tremendous improvements in his glovework with time, to become one of Australia’s greatest cricketers of all time.