PERTH, May 23: Australian wicket-keeper/batsman Adam Gilchrist is among only four players in the history of the game who would qualify as automatic selections in the best Test team of all time, former Australian captain Kim Hughes said here Thursday.

Gilchrist, 30, who rose to the top of the world batting rankings earlier this month, would join Don Bradman and Denis Lillee (both Australia), and the West Indies’ Garfield Sobers, as certainties in the best-ever line-up, Hughes said.

“I consider these are the only four who would qualify automatically for a best Test eleven of all time,” Hughes told The West Australian newspaper.

Bradman, who averaged fractionally short of 100 runs an innings during his 52-Test career, is almost universally regarded as the game’s best batsman in the 125 years of Tests.

Lillee, who played with Hughes in the Australian sides of the 1970s and 1980s, is viewed by many as the star paceman of all time.

Sobers — star batsman, pace and spin bowler, as well as a great fieldsman — is seen as the finest all-rounder to play the game.

Hughes claimed that Gilchrist was already on a par with that trio, even though he has played only 31 Tests.

Gilchrist has set extraordinarily high standards as wicket-keeper and batsman.

He completed his first 100 dismissals in Test ranks faster than any other gloveman.

At the batting crease, he scored 340 runs at an average of 68 during last year’s Ashes tour in England, as well as completing 27 dismissals; collected 353 runs at an average of 50 and secured 17 dismissals in the recent Australian home season against New Zealand and South Africa; and followed up in South Africa earlier this year with 473 runs (average 157) and gathered another 14 victims behind the stumps.

He now has 2160 runs at an average of just 60 — second only to Bradman and Englishman Herbert Sutcliffe among players with as many Tests — with six centuries, as well as 132 dismissals.

Hughes’ assessment places Gilchrist ahead of a number of star wicket-keeping contenders for a place in the ultimate eleven.

They include Australian pair Rodney Marsh and Ian Healy, Englishmen Alan Knott and Godfrey Evans and Jeff Dujon, of the West Indies.

Latest Test ratings:

Top 10 batsmen

Points Average

A.C. Gilchrist 881 60.00

S.R. Tendulkar 852 57.58

Inzamam-ul-Haq 852 49.40

M. Jayawardene 843 50.42

B.C. Lara 838 49.48

M.L. Hayden 836 49.06

K. Sangakkara 813 51.76

J.H. Kallis 783 47.27

A. Flower 776 52.30

H.H. Gibbs 764 40.49

Top 10 bowlers

Points Average

M. Muralitharan 909 23.38

G.D. McGrath 908 21.91

S.M. Pollock 874 20.72

S.K. Warne 764 26.52

Saqlain Mushtaq 710 28.52

D. Gough 695 27.57

Waqar Younis 695 22.98

C.L. Cairns 680 28.80

A.R. Kumble 680 27.84

Harbhajan Singh 672 27.95

—AFP/Reuters