His presence in the crease. if you ask me greatest batsman ever , i have to say viv richards. I never saw bradman bat , but he probably overhyped like babe ruth. He walked like a LION in the pitch and devoured everyone. I do not know anyone scared best bowlers but richards did. Abd can hit sixer now any position now but before Richards posess that skill. He lacked motivation for records because there was no one comparable to him at the time and everyone praising him so he lost interest in that aspect. Gavaskar, tendulkar sneaked past Richards on stats. He was an emperor in every sense in cricket pitch. Everyone there to serve richards with dollys and get spanked. Sehwag does same to bowler but he lacked the presence. One of great thing about richards is that no one knew what is his weakness was. Only way to get richards out was if he threw his wicket away. Lots of batsman wait out like lara and kallis, sachin when things go bad but richards on crease there is nothing bad.

In the final analysis it is very hard to rate where Viv ranks amongst the all-time great batsmen or cricketers.An average of 50.24 hardly reflected the true greatness of Viv .Viv was at equal ease on the seaming English pitches,the bouncy Australian tracks and turning pitches on the sub-continent.To score 291 at the Oval and average over 118 in 1976 in England,to average 96.50 in Australia in 1979-80 and average 0ver 70 in Pakistan in 1980 testify this.In his time Gavaskar of Greg Chappell marginally overshadowed Viv statistically but statistics hardly reflected Viv's true dominance.At his best Viv destroyed bowling like mowing the grass on a lawn .

What goes against Viv was he did not tackle the brunt of such a weak team as much as Brian Lara ,played on as treacherous pitches as Jack Hobbs and equal the longevity of Tendulkar .He also hardly proved his prowess against great spin bowling .However adding one day cricket to me Viv would rank 3rd ,behind Bradman and Hobbs.