Here are five players from the current lot who stand at the edge of a spot in the pantheon of India's top 20 cricketing greats, who haven't quite made it yet, but are likely to if they keep up their present high standards of performance.
Away average is 34.
Has won 4 out of 5 matches as captain.
Has 81 catches and 17 stumpings as wicket-keeper.
Dhoni's great promise for the future stems from the gigantic evolutionary steps he has taken as a cricketer. His rise from a (perceived) wild, long-haired, muscle-bound slogger who was good for a few tonks to a sophisticated, calm captain with a highly evolved cricketing mind has been stunning. All this in addition to being India's best wicket-keeper-batsman ever. There are enough cues that can be interpreted to believe that he is going to be a serious force in world cricket who can take India to its next era, a plane above the space that Ganguly got the team into. Why isn't he in the Top 20 list, then? It's just too soon. With 35 tests under his belt, and only 5 of them as captain, he needs to go on for a little longer before he can displace any of those currently above him.
However, his away average slips down by many notches to 40.
Has 22 five wicket hauls in 74 matches, Kumble has 35 in 132.
Averages 21 in matches India has won.
Took 32 wickets against Australia in 3 Tests at an average of 17 in 2001.
Harbhajan Singh is a tough name to leave out of the Top 20 list. He is one of only two of the durable spinners India has had in the last two decades who can be categorized as 'World Class'. What goes against him is his terrible record abroad - worse than that of Kumble's. In addition to that is his relative inconsistency; he has seldom reached the heights he has shown he can at his best. Though 2001 is a difficult act to repeat for anyone, Harbhajan is too much of a "confidence bowler" - brilliant when he gets into his groove, very mediocre when he doesn't. Not roadblocks that can't be overcome, and at 28 he is only reaching what is generally perceived to be the peak period for spinners. To top it, with 314 test wickets already in his bag, there is enough reason to believe that he will break into this list in the future on sheer force of numbers.
His otherwise high average improves to 25 in matches India has won.
His away average is 32.
Has played only 62 out of the 94 Test matches India has played since his debut.
Zaheer Khan has probably contributed more to Indian cricket than is apparent. In the Pakistan-like flood of quality fast bowlers who have cropped up in the last five years he has been the most consistent of the lot. He has delivered crucial five wicket hauls, though the best of them have come in losing causes. However, there have been too many breaks (no pun intended) due to injuries, and these have never really allowed him to gather full steam. Statistically he is good but not overwhelming, and it is difficult to pinpoint how much of the blame for this can be attributed to fitness issues which weren't entirely under his control. He still has enough time to make good the opportunities missed, and a few more years of consistent, injury-free toil could see him rise in his position in Indian cricket.
1134 of these runs have come in 2008, at an average of 71.
In matches India has won his average drops down to 41.
Gautam Gambhir has emerged, somewhat unexpectedly, as a serious force at the top of the order in the past two years. With Sehwag he has forged a rambunctious, aggressive opening pair that makes opponents regard battering rams and headaches as happy experiences, the sort of impact the world has associated with Hayden and Langer. He has shrugged off the tentative start he had in international cricket and an inherent weakness of walking across the stumps and making for an easy LBW candidate is now seen as a problem dealt with and forgotten. If he continues in this vein in the times to come, he should be slowly coming closer to the glorified heights that his friend and present opening partner currently occupies.
His away average drops to 29.
In 25 out of his 40 innings he has scores of under 25.
In the remaining 15 innings he has 5 fifties and 3 hundreds.
Yuvraj Singh entered international cricket in 1999, and made his Test debut in 2004. In this period if he had done all that his talent is capable of doing, he would have been pushing for a spot in the top 10 of the main list. For clearly, in terms of sheer talent and natural, magic brilliance, he is right up there in the same space as Laxman and Tendulkar. That he has not delivered consistently is one of India's (and his own) biggest losses. His chequered career as a Test batsman can be partly attributed to reasons not entirely his fault - he was pushed to open in one of the few chances he got, he had to jostle for space with the 'Fab-four' at a time when he would have walked in to most other middle-order line-ups in the world. But it is also true that he hasn't made the most of the chances he has got. Things seem to be changing though- he has steadied and grown as an ODI batsman. If he can carry that forward to the Tests, and he is likely to get plenty of opportunities now that vacancies are opening up in the middle order, he should be in the Top 20 in a few years time.
