ICC inducts players from pre-World War one era to 2015 into its Hall of Fame

Ahead of the inaugural World Test Championship (WTC) final, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has inducted 10 cricketers into its Hall of Fame. These inducted legends have all contributed to the history of Test cricket and will now join the illustrious list of 93 other ICC Hall of Famers. 

All inductees have been categorised into five eras-- Pre World War One era, Inter-war era, Post-War era, ODI era and modern era. Monte Noble, Aubrey Faulkner, Learie Constantine, Stan McCabe, Vinoo Mankad, Ted Dexter, Bob Willis, Desmond Haynes, Andy Flower and Kumar Sangakkara are a part of this celebrated list. 

Kumar Sangakkara, who scored more than 12,000 runs in Test cricket, becomes only the second Sri Lankan cricketer after Muttiah Muralitharan to get inducted. Back in 2019, Sangakkara also became the first non-British person to be appointed president of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).

Meanwhile, Andy Flower becomes the first player from Zimbabwe to enter the ICC Hall of Fame. The southpaw is arguably the greatest batsman in Zimbabwe's history, scoring 4,794 Test runs at 51.54. Unfortunately, his career came to a premature end in 2003 when he wore black armbands to protest against the death of democracy in Zimbabwe. 

Speaking on Vinoo Mankad's induction, fellow ICC Hall of Fame member, Sunil Gavaskar in an official release said: "Vinoo Mankad's legacy has been to tell the aspiring Indian cricketer to believe in oneself. He was a great proponent of self-belief. He was the one who kept saying to me that you need to keep scoring runs and keep at it. When you get a 100, let that be the knock on the selector's door."

While Mankad is the only Indian in the 2021 list, there have been six other Indians who have been inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame from 1932 till date. Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Bishan Singh Bedi were the first three Indians to be inducted into the class of 2009. Thereafter, Anil Kumble joined the list in 2015, followed by Rahul Dravid in 2018 and Sachin Tendulkar in 2019.

List of Indian cricketers in the ICC Hall of Fame 

The ICC announced the Hall of fame in its Dubai headquarters in January 2009. Since then 103 cricketers -- male and female -- have been inducted. Till now, the maximum inductees into the ICC Hall of Fame have come from England (30) and Australia (29). Not a single Bangladeshi has been inducted yet.

In 2020, Jacques Kallis, Lisa Sthalekar, and Zaheer Abbas were inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame.

Featured photo : Arif Ali / AFP