Tallest cricket player in the world: Mohammad Irfan and the 6ft 8in club

Mohammad Irfan, at a listed 7 ft 1 in, is the tallest man to play international cricket. Below him four bowlers share a listed 6 ft 8 in — and cricket keeps no official register of heights.

Mohammad Irfan, at a listed 7 ft 1 in (2.16 m), is the tallest man to have played international cricket — and by a clear margin. Nobody else in the game’s history is credited with seven feet.

Below him the picture is much less tidy than most lists admit. Four of the five men behind Irfan are all listed at 6 ft 8 in, and cricket has no governing-body register of player heights — ESPNcricinfo’s own player profiles do not carry a height field at all. The figures below are the ones commonly published; treat the order beneath Irfan as a group, not a ranking.

Tallest cricket players

Player	Country	Listed height	International wickets
Mohammad Irfan	Pakistan	7 ft 1 in (2.16 m)	109
Boyd Rankin	Ireland / England	6 ft 8.5 in (2.04 m)	169
Joel Garner	West Indies	6 ft 8 in (2.03 m)	405
Bruce Reid	Australia	6 ft 8 in (2.03 m)	176
Kyle Jamieson	New Zealand	6 ft 8 in (2.03 m)	150
Marco Jansen	South Africa	6 ft 8 in (2.03 m)	171

Every one of them is a fast bowler, which is the whole point: height buys steepness. A ball released from nearer eight feet than six hits the pitch at an angle that turns a good length into an awkward one, and the bounce that follows is the hardest thing in cricket to play off the back foot.

Mohammad Irfan (Pakistan)

From Gaggu Mandi in Punjab, Irfan is the only cricketer whose height is measured in feet and inches without argument: 7 ft 1 in. He was also a proper bowler rather than a curiosity, regularly past 140 kmph and using the extra height to extract bounce nobody else on the field could find.

He played 4 Tests, 60 ODIs and 22 T20Is for Pakistan, taking 109 international wickets — 10 in Tests, 83 in ODIs at 30.71, and 16 in T20Is. His Test career was confined to a single year, 2013; the ODI career ran from 2010 to 2016.

Boyd Rankin (Ireland / England)

Listed at 6 ft 8.5 in, Rankin is the second-tallest to play international cricket and the only man on this list to have played Tests for two countries.

⚠️ A detail that most versions of this list get wrong, including the one that used to sit here: Rankin played one Test for England, not three. That was at Sydney in January 2014, and he took 1 wicket for 81. His other two Tests came for Ireland, in 2018 and 2019, and brought him 7 wickets.

The bulk of his career was in white-ball cricket for both countries: 75 ODIs for 106 wickets and 50 T20Is for 55. That makes 169 international wickets in all, the second most of anyone on this page.

Joel Garner (West Indies)

“Big Bird”, 6 ft 8 in, and the most successful bowler here by a distance. Garner’s yorker was famously unplayable precisely because of his height — delivered from that far above the ground, a full ball arrives at the base of the stumps having barely risen.

259 Test wickets in 58 matches at 20.97, at an economy rate of 2.47, and 146 ODI wickets in 98 games at 18.84 — 405 international wickets in total. That ODI average is the lowest of any bowler with 100 or more wickets in the format.

He also owns a record that has stood for nearly fifty years. Garner’s 5 for 38 against England at Lord’s in the 1979 final is the best bowling analysis in a men’s World Cup final. Only one other bowler has taken five in a final at all — Gary Gilmour, 5 for 48 for Australia in 1975, also at Lord’s.

Bruce Reid (Australia)

A left-armer at 6 ft 8 in, and the one on this list whose career reads as a what-if. Reid took 113 Test wickets in 27 matches at 24.63 between 1985 and 1992, with a best of 7 for 51 and a match haul of 13 for 148 against England at Melbourne on Boxing Day 1990 — but back injuries kept pulling him out of the side and his last Test came in 1992. He added 63 wickets in 61 ODIs, for 176 international wickets in all.

Kyle Jamieson (New Zealand)

At 6 ft 8 in, Jamieson made the most spectacular start of anyone here: 90 Test wickets in 21 matches at 20.23, with best figures of 6 for 48 and a match return of 11 for 117. He was Player of the Match in the inaugural World Test Championship final in 2021, taking seven wickets for 61 as New Zealand beat India at Southampton.

Add 30 ODI wickets in 23 games and 30 in 32 T20Is and he has 150 international wickets. Stress fractures have cost him long stretches — the recurring theme among very tall fast bowlers.

Marco Jansen (South Africa)

The tall bowler of the current game, and a genuine all-rounder rather than a specialist. Jansen, 6 ft 8 in and left-arm, has taken 89 Test wickets in 21 matches at 21.12 with a best of 7 for 13, plus 49 ODI wickets in 32 games and 33 in 30 T20Is — 171 international wickets, more than Rankin managed in nearly three times as many matches.

He was in the South Africa side that beat Australia at Lord’s in June 2025 to win the World Test Championship, the country’s first senior men’s ICC title since 1998. More on that in our guide to the World Test Championship.

Tallest cricketers: quick answers

Who is the tallest cricketer of all time? Mohammad Irfan of Pakistan, listed at 7 ft 1 in (2.16 m).

Who is the tallest cricketer playing today? Marco Jansen and Kyle Jamieson, both listed at 6 ft 8 in.

Why are the tallest cricketers nearly all fast bowlers? A higher release point means a steeper angle into the pitch and more bounce off a good length.

Are these heights official? No. Cricket keeps no register of player heights and ESPNcricinfo profiles do not list them, so every figure on a page like this is a reported one.

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Photo credit: Alamy