The beautiful thing about the game of cricket is it doesn’t demand a good physical appearance or physical structure to play the game. Whether a player is tall or short he/she can choose Cricket as their career and achieve massive success in it. The only requirement is cricketing skills.

However there is the advantage of being a tall cricketer, especially in the bowling field as a tall bowler can generate comparatively more bounce because of the high release point of the ball, Also Tall batsmen can generate more physical power due to their big and strong build but it’s not that a short heightened bowler can’t bowl a bounce and batsmen can hit a sixer.

Historically many successful players who weren’t very tall and have a strong or big build still dominated the game. It’s all about coping with your drawbacks and converting your advantages into disadvantages to succeed in Cricket.

Here are the 10 shortest players in cricket:

10. Sunil Gavaskar, India | 5.5 ft

One of the greatest ever to play cricket from the Indian side. Sunil Gavaskar was one of the top batsmen of his generation from the Indian team. He became the first batsman ever to score 10,000 runs in the purest form of the game, Gavaskar was named as one of the “Wisden cricketers of the year” in 1980.

Legend Sunil Gavaskar even after many years of retirement is named among the greatest opening batsman of all time. His batting technique was surreal to watch. Even after being a short heightened player in the era of Top West Indies aggressive bowler, he managed to score soo many runs for the team. This just shows his lionhearted approach towards the game.

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9. Tatenda Taibu, Zimbabwe | 5.41 ft

He led Zimbabwe against Sri Lanka in 2005 to become the youngest captain (20y 358d ) to lead a Test side in cricket. Taibu held this record for many years before Rashid Khan broke it by becoming captain of Afghanistan at the age of 20 years 350 days.

Tatenda Taibu made his international debut for Zimbabwe when he was just 18 years old, soon after a couple of years, he was named to be vice-captain of the team under the captain Heath streak. Taibu holds a special place in Zimbabwe cricket as he was the skipper of the side after the Black-armband protest.

The wicketkeeper-batsman played 150 ODIs and scored over 3000 runs at an average of 29.25, he also played 28 test matches scoring over 1500 runs at an average of 30.31. Taibu was a pretty fast runner and a swift wicketkeeper his small height never came between his success in the cricketing world. He retired from cricket aged 29.

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