10 greatest batsmen/bowlers is largely an opinion call, really.
Cricket has been played since the mid 1700s and test cricket since late 1800s...however, cricket didnt become a professional sport till the late 1950s and as such, there are some considerable discrepancy in comparing players from pre WWII eras and today.
There are two viewpoints on this matter. One, is that most of the pre-war players were inferior to the post war players, as it is pretty evident that they lacked the professional environment, advanced coaching/training methods, the overall spectrum of players were less competitive ( ie, gap between good and poor was much bigger) and overall skills ( barring a few exceptions) was at a lower level.
The other viewpoint, is that if the pre-war players had the same opportunity ( ie, they were born in the modern era), they would've done just fine.
My personal viewpoint is with the former notion, since i believe that you can compare only what is concrete ( ie, how they actually played, etc.) and not indulge in conjencture and i see no reason to believe that everyone from back then would've made a completely linear transformation.
Also for bowlers, its pretty hard to compare pacers to spinners and as such, you cannot give a very good rating that involves both pacers and spinners in the same rating. As such, i've made them into 2 seperate lists. I've also provided their nationalities.
Bearing that in mind, here are my choice for 10 great bowlers/batsmen with both viewpoints in mind( This is my opinion in terms of ordering, though it is just an opinion and open to ambiguity, apart from Bradman as #1) :
Viewpoint #1 : Pre War players were mostly crap:
Batsmen:
#1. Don Bradman RHB - Australia
#2. Sachin Tendulkar RHB - India
#3. Sunil Gavaskar RHB - India
#4. Viv Richards RHB - West Indies
#5. Gary Sobers LHB - West Indies
#6. Greg Chappell RHB - Australia
#7. Brian Lara LHB - West Indies
#8. Steve Waugh RHB - Australia
#9. Alan Border LHB - West Indies
#10. Rahul Dravid RHB - India
Bowlers(Pacers) :
#1 . Malcolm Marshall RF - West Indies
#2. Richard Hadlee RFM - New Zealand
#3. Curtley Ambrose RF - West Indies
#4. Glenn McGrath RFM - Australia
#5. Imran Khan RF - Pakistan
#6. Michael Holding RF - West Indies
#7. Wasim Akram LF - Pakistan
#8. Fred Trueman RF - England
#9. Joel Garner RF - West Indies
#10. Alan Donald RF - South Africa
#10. Raymond Lindwall RF - Australia ( sorry, i just cannot differentiate between Lindwall and Donald)
Bowlers ( Spinners):
#1 . Muttiah Muralitharan OB - Sri Lanka
#2 . Shane Warne LB - Australia
#3 . Bhagwat Chandrasekhar LB - India
#4 . Bishen Bedi SLA - India
#5 . Lance Gibbs OB - West Indies
#6 . Subhash Gupte LB - India
#7 . Jim Laker OB - England
#8 . Anil Kumble LB - India
#9 . Sonny Ramadhin OB - West Indies
#10. Ritchie Benaud LB - Australia
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By the latter argument, it is really a wide open field, with batsmen such as K.S. Ranjitsinhji, V. Trumper, W.Hammond, G.Headley, J.Hobbs, F.S. Jackson, H.Sutcliffe vying for some of the spots in the top 10 for batsmen(though i really dont know how they would fit in in any sort of ordering)
For pace bowlers, Bill Voce, Harold Larwood, Mohammed Nissar, Sid Barnes, Spofforth etc. are in contention and C.Grimmett, Bill O'Reiley, Hugh Tayfield and Headley Verity are in contention for spinners.
Again, i dont know how to place them in midst of the modern players.
Some other names you might wanna look up ( and form your own opinion) are Javed Miandad, Geoff Boycott, Alan Davidson, Keith Miller, Vijay Hazare, Doug Walters, Bobby Simpson, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Waqar Younis, Courtney Walsh, Andy Roberts, Shaun Pollock, Wes Hall, Ricky Ponting,Everton Weekes,Ricky Ponting, Inzamam Ul Haq, Adam Gillchrist, Andy Flower, Jason Gillespie,Ian Bishop, Clyde Walcott, Dennis Compton,George Headley, Desmond Haynes, Gordon Greenidge, Rohan Kanhai, Clive Lloyd, Ken Barrington and many others before you can form your opinion or any sort of heirarchy.
A good knowledge of cricket and its history is important to form an educated opinion and i personally prefer a statistical analysis ( it cuts out a lotta hype, aura, legend,etc. BS) but inorder to conduct such an analysis in a coherent way, one has to know which teams were dominant during which periods of time, how the pitches usually played at a given venue or in a particular decade, what were the match play situation, etc etc.
Ofcourse, some people tend to go by their perceptions of some player's reputation and their 'legend' and tend to rate them higher than statistical interpretations.
I recommend surfing the amazon.com for cricketing books and various websites for cricketing tapes/DvDs, since you will find them hard to come by in Italy.
Cheers!
PS: Legend : RHB- Right handed batsman, LHB- left handed batsman, RF- Right Arm fast, LF- Left Arm fast, RFM- Right Arm fast medium, OB- Off Break, LB- Leg Break, SLA- Slow Left Arm Orthodox.