Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Dream Cricket Team - Best XI

One of my passions has always been cricket. I was a decent enough player at school, good enough to play a couple of matches and as with many of my other passions, lost interest for a brief while at college before picking up the threads a few years later. Cricinfo remains one of my favorite sites for cricket news and while I assiduously devour the articles, what I really love is the access it provides to databases, information and now over the past 18 months their selection of best cricketers of all times to play for their respective countries.

I have followed the country selection with interest and overall, I thought it was a fabulous selection, such selections are always fraught with tension and debate but rarely have any choices been very surprising - a few selections could perhaps be debated (like Kumble preferred over Chandra or Warne over Grimmet) but these have been rare and far between.

So I thought let me relook at the 88 players selected by the august selection team and let me try and put together a team which would be in effect the finest cricket team assembled on any field. To start with, I thought the team needs to be balanced so I look at two quality openers - openers who have ONLY opened or have opened for most of their batting life. Then I look at 3 middle order batsmen, ideally I would like to have one left hander but not at the cost of leaving out a better batsman for the sake of variety. The one all rounder followed by four bowlers - one right arm quick, one left arm quick, one leg spinner and one off spinner - ensuring the team is ready for any battle it faces.

Openers - I have never seen Jack Hobbs bat but the original little master cannot be left out - arguably the finest opening bat of all times and he needs to make it for the sheer number of runs he scored and his collection of first class centuries (197) remains unsurpassed, eight decades after he hung up his cricketing shoes. His partner would be the diminutive Indian little master - Sunil Gavaskar, the man who taught Indian cricket to take pride in itself. For people who have been born and bred on Sehwag and wonder about classical openers who gave the first hour to the bowlers and then defended a little less to make runs, I just request them to watch a rerun of Gavaskar's 100 against Holding and Marshall in Delhi in 1983-84. Sheer counterattacking class.

The middle order - Don picks himself, the easiest selection on this list. His class and ability is followed by the purity and technique of Sachin Tendulkar and the cavalier and panache of Viv Richards. The middle order definitely packs a punch! For the left handed variety, I did consider Lara but Sachin & Viv possessed tighter techniques than the Trinidadian master and if there was a spot for a fourth man in the middle order, the choice would definitely been between Lara and Hammond.

All rounder - The all rounder slot goes to Sobers, perhaps the easiest choice for me after the Don. Besides his great batting, he would be a potential opening bowler and coming back with the older ball to bowl a selection of Chinamen and and sharp cutters. Awesome talent. Kallis may be a statistical match for Sobers but he is yet to have the presence Sobers had, Imran, Kapil, Botham and Hadlee all fall short of the Sobers mark and while Miller was the darling of a generation of Aussies, he loses out to the impact and consistency of Sobers.

Wicket keeper - This was another difficult choice, the debate was not just on the person but more on the KIND of person one needs for a team teeming with class. Does one need to be a good wicketkeeper AND a good batsman? Would the wicket keeper really be required to bat? After all, how often do you think bowlers would be able to get past Hobbs, Gavaskar, Don, Sachin & Viv? In the end, I thought I should chose a wicketkeeper who rarely dropped a catch, kept to the spin of Warne, the bounce of McGrath and the pace of Lee effectively & revolutionized the concept of a wicketkeeper-batsman - Adam Gilchrist. He may not perhaps be as good a wicketkeeper as Tallon whom the Don reckoned to be the best or a Knott who remains my favorite keeper (keeping to Underwood on a difficult wicket would probably qualify for the most difficult job in cricket) but he was effective and imagine a counterattacking innings from Viv and Adam together - a sight for the Gods.

Fast bowlers - The left arm seamer picks himself - Wasim Akram is quite simply the finest bowler I have had the privilege to watch - in real life or on TV. The graceful, short run to the wicket and the astonishing swift arm action packed everything one could ask for - away swing, in swing, in dipper, cutter, a brutal bouncer, toe crushing yorker & all delivered with barely a noticeable change in action. The right arm fast bowler was a very difficult choice indeed and I had a whole galaxy of greats whom I had watched to chose from - the West Indian greats Holding and Marshall, Aussies Lillie and McGrath, it was indeed a very difficult choice. In the end however, I have gone with someone whom I never watched - he plied his trade a century before I was born - Sydney Barnes. Well, I could not argue with 189 wickets in 27 tests at 16.43 - he is almost the Bradman of bowlers.

Spinners - for a balanced team, I considered selecting two very different spinners - one essentially a leg break, fastish spinner and another a off break, loopy one. Bill O Reilly makes the cut as the leg spinner of choice - well Shane Warne comes close but I could not argue with the Don, who reckoned Bill - Tiger to most - to be the finest spinner he has seen or played against. For the offspinner, I chose Prasanna, more of a chess player than a cricketer, a man with a great action, temperament and talent. Almost all the great players who played him at his peak in the late sixties reckoned he was the finest spinner they had faced and I don't intend to commence arguing with Sobers, Tony Greig and Ian Chappell.

Now thats my dream team & one of the little points which comes to my mind as I peruse this list is the quality of catching and fielding - imagine a slip consisting of Gavaskar at first, Sobers at second, the Don at third, Hobbs at fourth and Viv at gully - I am sure one ball will not pass through those hands!

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