Tendulkar second, Kohli third as Kallis tops Cricinfo's cricketers of the century
Virat Kohli walked out for Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the IPL 2026 final on Sunday carrying a fresh tag, and not one tied to this season's runs. An ESPNcricinfo jury of 25 has voted him the third-greatest men's international cricketer of the first quarter of the 21st century, behind only Jacques Kallis and Sachin Tendulkar.
The ranking covers all formats for the 2000 to 2025 period. Kallis took top spot, Tendulkar came second, Kohli third, Muthiah Muralidaran fourth and Ricky Ponting fifth. For an Indian reader, the striking part is how much of the top order carries a home name.
Two of the top three are Indian
Tendulkar at two and Kohli at three give India two places in the leading three, and the representation does not stop there. MS Dhoni, Jasprit Bumrah, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag and R Ashwin all sit inside the top 25, a list that stretches from the batting that defined India in the 2000s to a fast bowler still leading attacks today.
Dhoni comes in at 14 and Bumrah a place behind at 15, the only seamer India have produced who belongs in any all-time conversation across formats. Ashwin closes the 25. Dravid and Sehwag, the spine and the spark of that mid-2000s side, both make the cut as well. Seven Indians inside 25 is a heavy share, and it reflects a quarter-century in which India were rarely out of the picture in any format.
Kohli the last top-five man still playing
Of the five names at the summit, four have retired. Kohli is the exception, which gave Sunday's final an odd weight. The man a global jury had just placed third on a 25-year list was out in the middle in Ahmedabad, 37 years old and still anchoring an RCB batting order chasing back-to-back titles.
He is not the only active player on the list. Joe Root sits at nine, Kane Williamson at 16, Bumrah at 15 and Mitchell Starc at 17, all of them still adding to their cases. Kohli ranks highest of that group by a distance, a reminder that a career which started in 2008 has aged into one of the most complete of the era.
The specialist awards
Alongside the overall order, the jury handed out category awards. Tendulkar was named the greatest batter of the period, Muralidaran the greatest bowler and Kallis the greatest all-round cricketer, which fits the South African topping the combined list. In the shortest format, AB de Villiers was picked as the best T20 batter and Bumrah the best T20 bowler.
De Villiers himself lands at six overall, with Kumar Sangakkara at seven and Dale Steyn at eight, a top eight that leans heavily on the players who carried South Africa and Sri Lanka through the 2000s and 2010s.
A jury, not a stat sheet
The selections came from a 25-member panel of former players and coaches rather than a formula. Wasim Akram, Greg Chappell, Faf du Plessis, Matthew Hayden, Ravi Shastri, Eoin Morgan, Daniel Vettori and Shane Watson were among those who voted, which is why the order rewards weight of career across conditions and formats rather than raw numbers alone. On the women's side, Ellyse Perry came out on top.
Lists like this are built to be argued with, and this one will be. Tendulkar behind Kallis will not sit well with everyone in India, and Kohli at three rather than two will start its own debate. What is harder to dispute is the volume of Indian names in the conversation, on a day when the highest-placed of them was still writing the next line of his own entry.
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