Sir Viv Richards has been crowned the great­est one-day crick­eter ever by a ju­ry of 50 em­i­nent play­ers, com­men­ta­tors and writ­ers as­sem­bled by the Crick­et Month­ly.

An as­ton­ish­ing 29 of 50 ju­rors picked Sir Viv as their first choice, giv­ing him a land­slide vic­to­ry over four oth­er ODI leg­ends: Sachin Ten­dulkar, Wasim Akram, Adam Gilchrist and MS Dhoni.

The con­test for sec­ond place was a close af­fair be­tween Ten­dulkar and Akram. Ten­dulkar, own­er of 18,426 runs and 49 cen­turies, even­tu­al­ly pre­vailed by a hair's breadth over Akram, the most ex­cep­tion­al left-arm bowler the game has seen. Round­ing off the top five were Gilchrist at No 4 and Dhoni at No 5.

In all, 21 crick­eters re­ceived at least one vote from the ju­ry: six Aus­tralians, five In­di­ans, four Pak­ista­nis, two West In­di­ans, two South Africans, a Sri Lankan and an Eng­lish­man.

There was no dis­pute over the great­est, though.

Through the late 1970s and 80s Richards was way ahead of his con­tem­po­raries. He thrived in dif­fer­ent con­di­tions, against a va­ri­ety of at­tacks, and raised the bar in the key match­es. In an era be­fore big bats, small bound­aries and field­ing re­stric­tions, Sir Viv tor­ment­ed bowlers with his pow­er and au­dac­i­ty.

"He bat­ted at Nos 3 or 4, main­tained a strike rate of 90 and an av­er­age of 47 and did it in his sleep over 15 ex­haust­ing years of dom­i­nance," writes for­mer New Zealand cap­tain Mar­tin Crowe in his trib­ute to Richards in the March is­sue of the Crick­et Month­ly. "Ar­guably, cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly for me, his 189 not out in Man­ches­ter in 1984 is the great­est one-day in­nings of them all."

Few walked to the crease ooz­ing as much swag­ger as Sir Viv, who nev­er wore a hel­met even when fac­ing the fastest bowlers. "I felt strong about my pres­ence, you know," said Richards in an in­ter­view to the Crick­et Month­ly. "Some­times pres­ence sends a mes­sage, 'Hey, I am ready.' It's just the du­el be­tween you and the bowler."

The Crick­et Month­ly's 50-mem­ber ju­ry in­clud­ed leg­endary crick­eters Ian Chap­pell, Clive Lloyd, Mar­tin Crowe, Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting and Graeme Smith; vet­er­an com­men­ta­tors Tony Co­zi­er, Mark Nicholas, Mike Haysman and San­jay Man­jrekar; and writ­ers Gideon Haigh, Mike Cow­ard, Suresh Menon and Mike Selvey.

"No one does num­bers bet­ter than us," said ES­P­N­cricin­fo's ed­i­tor-in-chief Sam­bit Bal, "but we al­so know that num­bers don't al­ways tell the full sto­ry. Which is why we re­ly on the cu­mu­la­tive wis­dom of those who should know for our awards.

"And the World Cup was a good oc­ca­sion to as­sem­ble a grand ju­ry, drawn from dif­fer­ent eras and coun­tries, to pick the great­est ever one-day crick­eter. It's hard to ar­gue with the top five the poll has thrown up: be­tween them they en­cap­su­late the best of ODI crick­et across the ages and al­so its evo­lu­tion."

Richards played in 187 ODI match­es and scored 6,721 runs, for an av­er­age of 47. He had 11 cen­turies and 45 half cen­turies.