Top 5 seam-bowling all-rounders of all time

#1 Sir Ian Botham

Ian Botham

A tally of 383 wickets in 102 Test matches and 145 in 116 one day internationals in a career spanning 15 years made English all-rounder Sir Ian Botham one of England's greatest seam bowlers of the late 1970s and 1980s. He was the architect of some of England's greatest Test victories, many of them against arch-rivals Australia and he was capable of turning a match on its head, both with the ball and the bat.

Botham was a carefree cricketer who liked to take the attack to the opposition and his ability to attack unreservedly is reflected in his strike rate of 60.71 in Test cricket. However, that is not all. He also scored 14 Test hundreds and 22 half-centuries at an average 33.54 and notched up 5200 runs in the format. One of his most memorable Test match innings is probably the 148 balls 149 he scored at Headingley in the 1981 Ashes to turn the Test match and the series on its head.

Botham was England's most prominent sportsman in the 1980s and his exploits as a seam-bowling all-rounder are beyond comparison.