London: Seven well-known retired players were inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame on Monday.
ICC Chairman Jay Shah welcomed the new inductees into the Hall of Fame during a gala event at London's Abbey Road Studios.
According to the ICC, the ICC Hall of Fame honors the greatest players in the game, people whose outstanding careers have contributed to cricket's legacy and inspired future generations.
This year, we have the honor of admitting seven truly outstanding individuals into this distinguished group. On behalf of the ICC, I send my sincere congrats to each of them and hope they appreciate this well-deserved accolade as a watershed moment in their cricket career, he said.
Matthew Hayden, a seasoned Australian batter and two-time World Cup champion, has been inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame.
Hayden scored 15,066 runs in 273 matches across all platforms, with an average of 47. 67 and a strike rate of 67. 46, including 40 centuries and 69 fifties. Matthew Hayden, a strong starting batsman who intimidated the best fast bowlers in the world, joins an exclusive group in the ICC Hall of Fame.
With a stunning 30 Test centuries and a Test average over 50, Hayden's remarkable statistics in the longest format speak for themselves. Or themselves.
MS Dhoni, India's World Cup-winning skipper, has been inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame, making him the 11th Indian cricketer to join the prestigious group.
With 17,266 international runs, 829 wickets, and 538 matches in all formats for India, Dhoni's statistics represent not only talent, but remarkable consistency, fitness, and longevity.
South African veterans Graeme Smith, Hashim Amla, and former New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori have all been honored into the ICC Hall of Fame.
In 347 games across all categories, Smith has scored 17236 runs at an average of 42. 34 and a strike rate of 69. 10, including 37 hundreds and 90 fifties, with a high score of 277.
Amla has 18,672 runs in 349 games across all forms, with a career average of 46. 56 and a strike rate of 65. 01, including 55 centuries and 88 half-centuries.
Vettori concluded his career with over 700 international wickets and approximately 7000 international runs. Vettori's career was marked by flexibility, cunning, and inconspicuous brilliance with both bat and ball.
Vettori had a fantastic career as a player, one of only three players to score 4,000 runs and capture 300 wickets in Test cricket.
Sana Mir, former Pakistan women's captain, and Sara Taylor, England Women's wicketkeeper-batter, were the two female cricketers inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame.
Mir is Pakistan's highest ODI wicket-taker and the second-highest in T20Is among women, as well as the first Pakistani woman cricketer to collect 100 ODI wickets.
Mir took 150 wickets in 121 ODIs and 89 wickets in 106 T20Is, scoring 1630 and 820 runs respectively in a 15-year career as captain for eight years.
Taylor's international career lasted just under 13 years, during which time the fashionable wicketkeeper batsman set several records and milestones for England, appearing in 226 matches and scoring a staggering 6,533 international runs, placing her near the top of the team's all-time run scorers list behind current national coach and longtime friend Charlotte Edwards.
