5 reasons why Chris Cairns is the most underrated cricketer of his time

#2 Bowling prowess

Cairns was a lively fast-medium bowler

New Zealand awards the Winsor Cup for its finest bowlers in first-class cricket. Chris Cairns won it four time – only Chris Martin (5 wins) and the legendary Sir Richard Hadlee (12 wins) have more. A lively fast-medium bowler, Cairns was adept at moving the ball off the seam and bowling the lethal reverse swing. Such were his abilities to reverse-swing the ball that Sachin Tendulkar recalled an incident from the 1999 Mohali Test when he had to watch the Cairns run-up and bowling grip before relaying a coded message to Rahul Dravid who was the striker. The later part of his career witnessed Cairns improvising with the slower off-cutter in limited overs cricket.

Cairns is one of just four New Zealand bowlers to have picked 200 or more Test wickets. With an average of 29.4 and a strike rate of 53.6, he is second only to Sir Richard Hadlee (22.29 & 50.8). Despite his 361 wickets, even the talismanic Daniel Vettori (34.15 and 79.3) trails Cairns in the Test bowling averages and strike rate respectively.

With 13 fifer’s, Cairns also has more career Test five-wicket hauls when compared to his more illustrious all-rounder contemporaries in Jacques Kallis (5) and Andrew Flintoff (3) - a clear indication that his bowling performances weren’t in any way inferior to his peers.