da doce： Herschelle Gibbs is a rare gem among international openers
Andrew Miller04-Sep-2003
Herschelle Gibbs: a rumbustious knock
Herschelle Gibbs is a rare gem among international openers. His rumbustious batting style may have been honed in one-day cricket, but it has translated perfectly into Test matches as well. Of his contemporaries, only Australia’s Matthew Hayden is anything like as effective in both forms of the game. Others, such as Sanath Jayasuriya and Marcus Trescothick, are markedly less assured when faced with Test-match conditions.Today, Gibbs clattered 20 fours and a six in his first 102 runs, which adds up to 86 in boundaries alone. At the time, only one Test centurion had made a higher percentage of their total runs in boundaries – Australia’s Gary Gilmour, who lamped exactly the same number of fours and sixes in his solitary Test century, against New Zealand at Christchurch in February 1977. But Gilmour was out immediately afterwards for 101, so he shaded that record by a fraction of a percent.With a century under his belt, however, Gibbs clearly had murder on his mind as he shifted up yet another gear. But, after one particularly chancy assault on James Anderson, that old curmudgeon Gary Kirsten felt compelled to intervene. Still, it didn’t dent Gibbs’s exuberance too much. Of his remaining 81 runs, 74% of them came in 15 crashing fours.
Player Team versus Season Fours Sixes Runs %GJ Gilmour AUS NZ 1976-77 20 1 101 85.15HH Gibbs RSA ZIM 2001-02 28 2 147 84.35HH Dippenaar RSA NZ 2000-01 21 0 100 84.00RB Richardson WI ENG 1985-86 19 1 102 80.39A Flintoff ENG NZ 2001-02 23 3 137 80.29NJ Astle NZ ENG 2001-02 28 11 222 80.18NJ Astle NZ WI 1995-96 22 2 125 80.00HH Gibbs RSA ENG 2003 35 1 183 79.78MA Butcher ENG RSA 2003 21 0 106 79.25CD McMillan NZ BDESH 2001-02 18 2 106 79.25IVA Richards WI ENG 1980-81 21 1 114 78.95RS Kaluwitharana SL AUS 1992 26 0 132 78.79CL Cairns NZ ZIM 1995-96 10 9 120 78.33CG Greenidge WI PAK 1976-77 15 3 100 78.00BC Lara WI AUS 1998-99 15 3 100 78.00CH Gayle WI ZIM 2001 34 0 175 77.71V Sehwag IND WI 2002-03 24 3 147 77.55AJ Lamb ENG AUS 1989 24 0 125 76.80JH Edrich ENG NZ 1965 52 5 310 76.77Shahid Afridi PAK WI 2001-02 16 3 107 76.64IT Botham ENG AUS 1981 27 1 149 76.51