5 successful limited-overs cricketers who have failed in Tests
Not all players manage to perform well in all formats in their respective departments. Some batsmen fail in Tests due to tricky conditions while some fail in limited-overs due to the need of scoring quick runs. The failures in a specific format are common in the bowlers as well who struggle to deliver a variety of deliveries when it comes to white-ball cricket while lack of discipline shown over the ball could cost in Test cricket.
Here are the five players who failed in Test cricket despite been proven performers in limited-overs cricket:
5. Shaun Marsh:
Shaun Marsh played almost the same amount of innings in both Tests and ODIs but his 50-over format numbers look better than the red-ball cricket. In 72 ODI innings, Shaun scored 2773 runs at 40.77 averages with help of seven tons and 15 fifties. However, in 68 Test innings across 38 matches, Shaun Marsh amassed 2265 runs only having struck six hundreds and 10 fifties.
4. Imran Tahir:
Imran Tahir’s wait to play Test cricket ended in 2011 when South Africa faced Australia in the famous 2011 Cape Town Test. Tahir was in his 30s by then and had claimed 585 wickets in first-class cricket. The leg-spinner played 20 Tests between 2011 and 2015 where he picked just 57 wickets and had a bowling average of 40.24. Tahir turned out to be a revolution for the Proteas in the limited-overs as he picked up 173 wickets in 107 ODIs at 24.83 and a total of 63 wickets from 38 T20I games at 15.04 but was never settled in Tests.
3. Shai Hope:
Shai Hope stood as the hope of the West Indies batting line-up in Test cricket following his twin centuries in the Headingley Test against England in 2017. Unfortunately, those two hundreds turned out to be Hope’s only triple-figure scores in the whites. His average has consistently dropped in these three years and is placed at 26.27 across 34 Tests. Interestingly, Shai’s Test average is nearly half of his ODI batting average of 52.20. Hope finds a 50+ score in Tests every 9th innings but it is three innings when it comes to ODI format.
2. Mohammad Sami:
Mohammad Sami was a trustable bowler for the Pakistan team with the white ball during the 2000s. The speedster claimed 121 wickets from 87 ODIs at 29.47 and also took 21 wickets from only 13 T20Is at 18.42. However, in Test cricket, Sami has got one of the worst averages for any player with 50+ wickets. Sami featured in 36 Tests where he ended up with 85 wickets at an average of 52.74. Sami’s wickets/innings of 1.29 in Tests is much less than that of his record in white-ball formats.
1. Martin Guptill:
Martin Guptill’s difference in ODI and Test average reads 13 which is the highest for any player with a minimum of 2500+ runs in both formats. In 183 ODIs, Guptill smashed 6843 runs at 42.5 average but only 2586 runs at 29.38 across 47 Test matches. If we compare his Test and T20I record, the shorter format one will stand out. Guptill scored 2536 runs across 88 T20Is at 32.51 average. He scored only 50 runs more in Tests than in T20Is despite having a difference of four innings.
