5 Batsmen who ruled No.1 Test ranking for many years

The likes of Jack Hobbs, Don Bradman, Viv Richards, Sunil Gavaskar and many more batsmen dominated world cricket during their eras. However, it was only in 1987 that the ranking system was brought in. Since then, a lot of players have reached the top of the rankings and dominated.

The likes of Steve Smith, Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson are currently battling it out to reign supreme in the longest format. Smith is topping the charts at the moment. However, there were a lot of players who ruled at the top of the ICC rankings for batsmen.

Thus, here are five such batsmen who dominated the rankings in Test format:

Kumar Sangakkara (2007, 2010-2012)

Kumar Sangakkara is a leader of all sorts of batting charts in Sri Lankan cricket. He is the leading run-getter in Test cricket (12400 runs) and ODI cricket (14234 runs). He also has scored in excess of 1000 runs in the shortest format. However, it was in the longest format that Sangakkara was the best.

In fact, he averaged 57.40 in Test cricket in a career that spanned for over a decade and a half. In December 2007, the Sri Lankan made it to the top of the ICC Test rankings for the first time which he soon lost. However, a couple of years later, he was back at the top and this time around, he dominated it for nearly three years. In 2009, he was in a battle with Gautam Gambhir for the No. 1 spot but from 2010, he completely owned the position.

Sangakkara scored a truckload of runs in the four-year period. In each of the years from 2009 to 2012, the left-hander was among the top run-getters in Test cricket. He struck 10 Test hundreds as well during this time. Hence, it was only towards the end of 2012 Sangakkara lost the No. 1 ranking to Michael Clarke. There were a couple of other instances of him losing the No. 1 ranking in between but he regained it back pretty quickly.