Sir Jack Hobbs

With 199 first class centuries, and 273 half centuries to his name, the nickname of ‘The Master’ aptly befits this cricketer. Sir Jack Hobbs was an opening batsman who played first class cricket for Surrey for a period of almost 30 years. His real name was John, but he came to be known as Jack through out his playing career.

His Test record was good – almost 5500 runs at 57 runs per inning, with 15 hundreds – but not as good as his first class on account of the war robbing many of his playing years away. He formed a great opening partnership with Herbert Sutcliffe, involved in 11 century stands with him.

After retirement, he took to cricket journalism and also became the second ever cricketer after Don Bradman to be knighted for his service to cricket. He was ranked third as the Wisden Cricketer of century when he received 30 off a possible 100 votes. He was also named the Wisden Player of the year twice – a record which not many can boast of – once in 1909 and the other occasion when he was the only player to be named in 1926. This was the last time, a sole player was named as the Wisden Player of the year.