No 1: Rashid Khan

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Tom Moody on what makes Rashid Khan a T20 great

"Batters win you games, bowlers win you tournaments" is an accepted cricketing truth. Nowhere is it challenged more, though, than in T20s, where a more accurate learning might be that batters win you games and tournaments, and the bowlers, well, don't they make for a cuter spectacle than bowling machines?

Accordingly, our list of the top 25 greatest T20 men's cricketers has only five specialist bowlers in it. And not that it makes for a definitive conclusion but scan the list of cricketers who have won the most T20 titles and see how many specialist bowlers you can spot in the top 25 (two).

So the fact that a bowler tops this list we've compiled should be the first indication of how extraordinary Rashid is. And this isn't some revenge-of-the-underclass or archly contrarian pick. Rashid takes wickets and he takes them quickly. He is the leading wicket-taker of all time in the format now, with a strike rate under 17 balls per wicket, and he concedes fewer than seven runs an over doing so. Given how batter-dominant the format is, these are miracle numbers.

Also, he wins things: six title-winning campaigns now across the world, and in the best leagues; title wins in which he has played a full part or been heavily involved (but not necessarily played the final).

Our traditional understanding of legspin has tended to revolve around - perhaps even been restricted somewhat by - some outsized individual exponents. Abdul Qadir showed us a new world. Then Shane Warne and Anil Kumble created two vaster, and very different, worlds. All leggies are unique - or at least they are the least replicable of cricket's species - and to that maxim, Rashid adheres.

There's the odd action that doesn't quite get the attention it merits for its oddness. The arm so high isn't strange, but it's not straight like with Kumble or Qadir; he brings it through with a slight and unusual bend that should make it all harder, and it's so perpendicular, it has to overcome the obstacle of his own shoulder and head. His grips are fundamentally different too, the ball sitting closer to the top of his fingers, so that, as Rashid himself says, he's a fingerspinner more than a wristspinner. Bowling legspin is hard enough anyway, with the potential for so much to go wrong, and Rashid's action feels like it is making it harder still.

At the end of that scuttling approach, what all this does is give him his superpower. Kumble was quick. Samuel Badree was quick. Imran Tahir is quick. But Rashid is quicker than them all, so quick that he calls himself a spin-fast legspinner (and little surprise that Shahid Afridi was an early hero). We used to think flight was essential for leggies; Rashid has made it redundant. And he wants stumps or pads, not edges or miscues. Nobody comes close to his haul of bowleds and leg-befores in T20s. With this line, it helps to not spin big, but it also places a premium on length. Get it wrong and the whole thing could fall apart. Get it right and Rashid Khan.

Imagine, as a batter, this challenge: first line up the action and quick release, then pick through the different grips for the googly (which even super slo-mo replays barely do, they're so subtle) and another two variations, a line that needs playing, and a length that can't be easily swept or cut, at around 92kph. Big bats, thick edges, small boundaries have rarely mattered less.

Rashid took 93 wickets at an economy rate of 6.33 for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL in his five seasons with them © BCCI

All of which explains the career we see before us (present travails notwithstanding) and in particular, across a six-year period from 2016 to 2022 when he was peerless.

Just look at the headline numbers. Highest wicket-taker across all the leagues is a given; second-best economy rate and fourth-best average among those who took at least 100 wickets in that period. And how is this for consistency: in the 26 tournaments he played in that period, in only two did he average over 25 and only three times did he concede over 7.5 runs an over.

Sure, we say, in T20s batters win you games and tournaments. But for the last decade or so, it's been wise to put an asterisk against that in those games and tournaments in which Rashid Khan is taking part.

Stats in factfile sidebars are for all T20 matches, minus internationals, and current as up to the start of the 2025 IPL. League wins cover tournaments of four teams and above, and include seasons where the player appeared in at least one match for the winning team

Osman Samiuddin is a senior editor at ESPNcricinfo

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.