List Of Oldest Bowlers To Attain No. 1 Test Ranking

Oldest Bowlers To Attain No. 1 Test Ranking (Source: AFP)

The International Cricket Council developed the ICC player rating system in 1987. To date, this method has helped the apex governing body of world cricket evaluate players more effectively than by simply comparing their averages.

This method, proposed by former England captain Ted Dexter, was not meant to supersede averages or rate a player’s career, but to serve as a guide to current form.  

According to ICC’s blog on the “History of the ICC Rankings”, a century in a low-scoring victory against a great team should be valued more highly than one in a high-scoring draw on a featherbed. A bowler should be rewarded more highly for taking Sachin Tendulkar’s wicket than Chris Martin’s.

Though the ICC Rankings were introduced in 1987, they were applied retrospectively to players active before their development. This gave the ICC a historical repository of player performance, which was unthinkable before 1987.

Mitchell Starc joins the likes of the oldest bowlers to attain No. 1 Test ranking

Australia fast bowler Mitchell Starc on August 26, 2026, attained the No. 1 position in the ICC Test rankings for the first time in his career, at the age of 36. This came after his 10-wicket haul in Mackay, which helped his team win the second match of their ICC World Test Championship series against Bangladesh.

The pacer, who recently went past Chaminda Vaas to become the highest wicket-taker among left-arm pacers with the most international wickets (445, as of August 27, 2026), overtook Matt Henry and Jasprit Bumrah.

Starc, whose previous best position was second, which he first achieved after the Boxing Day Test last year, was named the Player of the Match and the Player of the Series for a tally of 12 wickets in 2 Tests.

Also read: Mitchell Starc Achieves Major Test Cricket Milestone In AUS vs BAN 1st Test

At 36, he stands out as one of the oldest bowlers to reach the summit of the Test bowling charts.

That being said, in this article, take a look at the top 5 names in the list of oldest bowlers to attain No. 1 Test ranking.

5) James Anderson - 40 years, 6 months (2023)

On February 22, 2023, former pacer James Anderson rose to the top of the ICC Men’s Test Bowlers’ rankings on the back of his seven-wicket haul for England during their emphatic 267-run victory over New Zealand in Mount Maunganui.

With this, James, then 40 years old and the then-ending Australian captain, Pat Cummins’ four-year reign as the top-ranked Test bowler.

It was the sixth time that Anderson had held the title as the premier bowler on the Test rankings, with the right-armer first scaling the heights back in May 2016 when he went past teammate Stuart Broad and Ashwin to hold top billing in a distinguished international career that commenced way back in 2003.

His rise to the top at the spritely age of 40 years and 207 days also meant he is the oldest bowler to hold the top ranking since Australian great Clarrie Grimmett did so back in 1936.

4) Sydney Barnes - 40 years, 9 months (1914)

Sydney Barnes was an English right-arm fast-medium bowler, born at Smethwick, Staffordshire. He was the son of Richard Barnes, who spent nearly all his life in Staffordshire and worked for a Birmingham firm for 63 years.

Sydney avowed his father’s dream of playing cricket by practising with diligence to perfect the leg-break. He was considered one of the greatest bowlers in the 19th century.

According to experts of that era, on a perfect wicket, Barnes could swing the new ball in and out “very late”, could spin from the ground, pitch on the leg stump and miss the off.

In 27 Test matches played between 1901 and 1914, Barnes took 189 wickets at an average of 16.43 and a strike rate of 41.60. From 1913 (when he surpassed Hugh Trumble’s 141 wickets) until 1936 (when Clarrie Grimmett took the record), he was Test cricket’s leading wicket-taker.

By almost any measure, this is one of the most astonishing records in the red-ball cricket.

3) Tich Freeman - 41 years, 2 months (1929)

Alfred Percy Freeman, known to the cricket world as "Tich", was one of the greatest slow bowlers the game has known. Though small in stature, only five feet and two inches tall, his achievements were colossal.

Tich had an excellent haul of 66 wickets in 12 Tests at an average of 25.86 and a strike rate of 56.5.

Also read: Batters Who Have Scored All Test Centuries At A Single Venue

Freeman was also one of the giants of First-Class cricket. He took 3,776 First-Class wickets from 592 matches at 18.42, which puts him second on the all-time list. He was only behind Wilfred Rhodes, who took 4,204 from 1,110 matches, in terms of number of wickets.

2) Clarrie Grimmett - 44 years, 2 months (1936)

Though he was born in Otago, New Zealand, Clarence Victor Grimmett spun his way into one of the world’s best teams, Australia. Moreover, during the early 1950s, Clarrie pretty much saved the slow-dying species of slow wrist bowlers.

He was wonderfully accurate because he was endowed with that special physical co-ordination that not even endless practice could turn into international-class.

Grimmett was part of a long line of wonderful Australian leg spinners, and he formed valuable partnerships with two of them, Arthur Mailey at the start of his international career, and Bill O’ Reilly at the end.

Grimmett was the first bowler to capture 200 Test wickets, surpassing the then record for most Test wickets, previously held by Sydney Barnes. He finished with 216 wickets in 37 Tests at an average of 24.21; that is 5.83 wickets per Test.

Just by way of comparison, Shane Warne’s average is 4.88. (Muttiah Muralitharan’s average is 6.02).

When, in 1938, he failed to gain a place in the England side led by Don Bradman, he established an Australian record of 73 wickets for a domestic first-class season two years later, at the age of 49.

1) Bert Ironmonger - 50 years, 10 months

Bert ‘Dainty’ Ironmonger, born on April 7, 1882, has gone down as the best left-arm spinner produced by Australia. Strangely, he had lost half his spinning finger in a childhood accident.

Known for his modesty, this frugal and hardworking man made his Test debut at the age of 46 and was perhaps the worst batter and fielder of his day.  

Also read: Oldest Players To Make Test Debut For India ft. Saransh Jain

By the time Bert made his Test debut, most of the other cricketers of his age would have sat back in comfortable armchairs. But his age, 46, did not stop him.

A slow-medium left-arm spin bowler, he achieved some remarkable performances during his brief Test career. 

Chief among them being that in 1931-32 when he earned a match analysis of 11 wickets for 24 runs on an awkward pitch at Melbourne and was mainly responsible for the dismissal of South Africa for totals of 36 and 45. In four matches of that Test series, he took 31 wickets for 9.67 runs each.

Lastly, Ironmonger finished with 74 Test wickets from his 14 matches at 17.97. As in his life, he exercised extreme thrift in his bowling, giving away just 1.69 runs per over.

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