These are for all Tests up to 30 Sep 2022 (except the ICC XI v Aus Test in 2005).
A total of 1888 players have played in 5 or more Tests.
It is easy enough to see who have seen the most wins. That is given in the next table. Naturally, this depends on how many Tests the player got to play in.
The first 4 are from the great Australian teams of the mid-1990s to the 2000s, headed by RT Ponting with 107. Next is SK Warne with 91.
The best by a current player is JM Anderson in 6th place with 78, followed by his partner SCJ Broad in 8th/11th place with 72.
The best by an Indian player is also 72 by SR Tendulkar (sharing the 8th/11th position with Broad, Gilchrist and Mark Waugh).
But it is more interesting to see those who did the best on a percentage basis, as we will see below.
These are those who have seen wins in all of their Tests.
It is a short list with only 4 names. The first name may not be familiar to many cricket followers of today.
Eldine Baptiste, who played in a strong West Indies team of the 1980s, saw wins in all 10 of his Tests. There are three others with 100% records in 5 Tests, and they are not particularly well-known.
GJ Bailey was more successful in limited-over matches than in Tests, and had captained Australia in 29 ODIs. His only Tests were in the Ashes whitewash of 2013-2014.
KA Archer is the elder brother of the better-known RG Archer.
Lord Hawke was a rather undistinguished batsman but got Test opportunities mainly because only amateurs could captain England in those days.
Now we look at a longer list of 38 players who saw wins in at least 75% of their Tests:
Note current players such as AR Patel and J Yadav who have 5 wins and 1 draw, giving a win percentage of 83.33 %. The only other Indian player with 5/6 is KK Nair.
And what about those who saw the least wins ?
A total of 165 players did not see any win in their careers of 5 Tests or more.
Here we list those who played 12 or more Tests without seeing a win:
The first name of B Sutcliffe of New Zealand is rather unexpected, as he was probably NZ’s best batsman for most of his 42-Test career. NZ did win a few Tests during his career, although he missed those matches. After him there is BC Strang of Zimbabwe who played in 26 Tests.
No current player here. The most Tests by an Indian player are 18 by BK Kunderan followed by 12 by PG Joshi.
Next we will take up the cases of most and least losses, followed by the cases of most and least draws.
The record of 36 was first achieved by Yuvraj vs Broad in 2007, and later equalled by K Pollard vs A Dananjaya in 2021. As you can see, they were perfect 6 X 6s without the aid of no-balls and wides. No other batsman from India has scored 26 or more.
This was first achieved by HH Gibbs (SA) vs DLS van Bunge (NL) in the 2007 World Cup. It was equalled by JS Malhotra (USA) v G Toka (PNG) in 2021. Both of these were perfect 6 x 6s.
The best for India is 32 (SS Iyer 31, R Pant 1) vs RL Chase (WI) in 2019.
Bumrah vs Broad in 2022 would be fresh in your minds. See Footnote 3 in this link
The previous record was 28 by BC Lara (WI) v RJ Peterson (SA) in 2003.
The next best for India is 26 by HH Pandya vs PM Pushpakumara (SL) in 2017.
The only entry before 1980 is the 25 by B Sutcliffe (19) and RW Blair (6) vs HJ Tayfield in 1953-and that was an 8-ball over. There was an human-interest angle here, as Blair had just learnt of his fiancee’s death in NZ’s worst rail accident. And the SA fast bowlers had injured more than one NZ batsman.
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