Batsmen with most number of Ducks (zero) in International Cricket

Recently, Faf du Plessis bagged his first International duck in South Africa’s first Test against West Indies. Earlier, he had played 107 innings and scored 3707 runs before he getting out for a zero in an International match. Du Plessis broke the record of his team mate AB de Villier,s who had played 84 innings and scored 2681 runs before getting out on a zero.

The above information was about the batsmen who played most number of matches before recording their first duck. However, today we will take a look at the batsmen who recorded most number of ducks in their International career (Min Qual: 10000 runs):

Player	Matches	Innings	Runs (Min 10000)	0’s
Sanath Jayasuriya (Asia/SL)	586	651	21032	53
Mahela Jayawardene (Asia/SL)	638	714	25554	46
Shahid Afridi (Asia/ICC/Pak)	493	480	10728	41
Chris Gayle (ICC/WI)	404	476	17263	39
Ricky Ponting (Aus/ICC)	560	668	27483	39
Younis Khan (Pak)	380	444	15946	39
Herschelle Gibbs (SA)	361	417	14661	37
Steve Waugh (Aus)	493	548	18496	37
Marvan Atapattu (SL)	360	416	14036	35
Inzamam-ul-Haq (ICC/Asia/Pak)	499	551	20580	35

*Stats updated till 22 December, 2014

On the whole, if we look at players with most number of scores of zero, then it would be Muttiah Muralitharan to top the list with 59 ducks, but having bowlers in this list would be a little unfair towards them, therefore, we looked at a minimum qualification as 10000 international runs for players to be included in this list.

However, it is Sanath Jayasuriya with 53 scores of 0 in his career and this makes him top the list of batsmen with most number of International Ducks. Overall if we take a look at list, we can find that top 3 positions are occupied by sub-continent teams and there are 6 batsmen from the sub-continent in the top 10. Thankfully, no Indian batsmen features in this list!

With Chris Gayle having a slightly longer career ahead of him, we can definitely expect him to go higher in this list. 

 

Image Courtesy: ibnlive