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> He's probably not as well known as someone like Gretzky in North America, so his name wouldn't immediately spring to mind on forums like this.

I think you might find there are a fairly large number of Indian, Australian and English people on this forum who will find his name does spring to mind immediately. It's more about the timezone than numbers.

> who comes next (Viv Richards or Brian Lara in my opinion)

Tendulkar.

Viv Richards was amazing at his best but declined badly. Lara's best innings were better than anyone (maybe even Bradman) but he wasn't as consistent and unfortunately he was playing in a declining team.

But I'm old enough to remember his 1993 innings of 277 at the SCG. In some ways that was enough to hold off Australia being undisputably the best team in the world for another couple of years.