[Cricket] Your All Time Test Cricket XI

[Leekbrookgull]

It's old school, but having seen both Ricky/P and Shaun/P at Derbyshire playing for the opposition everything they did as in kit appearance was suited and booted nothing left to chance.

 

[Dave the OAP]

Barry Richards
Bill Lawrie
Viv Richards
Bradman
F Engineer WK
Botham
Mushie
Warnie
Wes Hall
Charlie Griffiths
Holding

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Gavasker
Gooch
Richards
Lara
Tendulkar
Botham
Proctor
Knott
Warne
Marshall
Holding

Or possibly a completely different team......

 

[simmo]

Hayden
Tendulkar
Ponting
Lara
Richards V
Kallis
Gilchrist (wk)
Akram
Warne
Marshall
McGrath

 

[Eeyore]

I'm quite surprised that Sachin appears as an opener in some of these. That was never his position.

 

[Eeyore]

Barry Richards
Bill Lawrie
Viv Richards
Bradman
F Engineer WK
Botham
Mushie
Warnie
Wes Hall
Charlie Griffiths
Holding

Bradman ? How old ARE you ? You'd have to be 76 even if you'd been born at the Oval in 1948. And you'd have to have needed a sharp baby eye for that as he got a duck.

 

[Dave the OAP]

Bradman ? How old ARE you ? You'd have to be 76 even if you'd been born at the Oval in 1948. And you'd have to have needed a sharp baby eye for that as he got a duck.

What are you talking about? The header said best world x1. That is my best world x1

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

What are you talking about? The header said best world x1. That is my best world x1

First paragraph in the OP:

I've spent some time putting thought to it. The criteria being that it has to be players you have seen play.

 

[kojak]

1 Amiss
2 Boycott
3 Richards V.
4 Border
5 Gower
6 Lloyd C.
7 Knott
8 Botham
9 Lillee
10 Marshall
11 Warne

 

[Dave the OAP]

1 Amiss
2 Boycott
3 Richards V.
4 Border
5 Gower
6 Lloyd C.
7 Knott
8 Botham
9 Lillee
10 Marshall
11 Warne

I would put Gordon Greenidge , Desmond Haynes and Chris gale ahead of amiss.

ofcourse, Hutton, Hobbs etc are of a different age in that they didn’t carry the modern railway sleepers out to bat, and Compton was said the to be the most talented stroke player of his generation. Of course Graham Pollock, who I saw play against the Aussies in SA in the late 60’s and his brother Peter Pollock were a great miss to international cricket and excellent players.

wk is a subjective one too. Farouk engineer or Adam ghilchr are both worthy of the best IMHO.

 

[The Mole]

Amazed anyone who saw Boycott play would include him!

almost an impossible ask but here goes
Greenidge (that’s Gordon not Geoff)
B Richards
IVA Richards
Tendulkar
D Randall
IT Botham
APE Knott
SK Warne
Marshall
Hadlee
McGrath

OK Randall probably shouldn’t be there but he is my favourite cricketer of all time

 

[Dave the OAP]

Amazed anyone who saw Boycott play would include him!

almost an impossible ask but here goes
Greenidge (that’s Gordon not Geoff)
B Richards
IVA Richards
Tendulkar
D Randall
IT Botham
APE Knott
SK Warne
Marshall
Hadlee
McGrath

OK Randall probably shouldn’t be there but he is my favourite cricketer of all time

Again as most of us ( apart from my late father who was a professional in the central Yorkshire league) never saw griffiths and hall. He said they were the quickest and scariest pair he ever played against when they played Lancashire league cricket And representative matches that he played. That is why it is so difficult to judge players as nowadays people think Wood and Archer are the quickest of all time because we have speed guns……imagine how quick these guys were in the 50’s and 60’s

I played cricket against victor walcott the nephew of Sir Clyde in the East Sussex league league and he was the quickest bowler I ever faced.

 

[Moshe Gariani]

1. Barry Richards
2. Gordon Greenidge
3. Don Bradman
4. Viv Richards
5. Clive Lloyd (*)
6. Garry Sobers
7. Alan Knott (+)
8. Malcolm Marshall
9. Dennis Lillee
10. Jeff Thomson
11. Bishan Bedi

 

[The Mole]

Amazed anyone who saw Boycott play would include him!

almost an impossible ask but here goes
Greenidge (that’s Gordon not Geoff)
B Richards
IVA Richards
Tendulkar
D Randall
IT Botham
APE Knott
SK Warne
Marshall
Hadlee
McGrath

OK Randall probably shouldn’t be there but he is my favourite cricketer of all time

Oops just realised I missed Sobers out… maybe Derek will have to be twelfth man

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

Again as most of us ( apart from my late father who was a professional in the central Yorkshire league) never saw griffiths and hall. He said they were the quickest and scariest pair he ever played against when they played Lancashire league cricket And representative matches that he played. That is why it is so difficult to judge players as nowadays people think Wood and Archer are the quickest of all time because we have speed guns……imagine how quick these guys were in the 50’s and 60’s

I played cricket against victor walcott the nephew of Sir Clyde in the East Sussex league league and he was the quickest bowler I ever faced.

The top speeds of the fastest bowlers won't have changed hugely - they're limited by ligaments and basically there's not much anybody can do training wise to change that upper limit.

I've also never heard anybody who's had a long career at the top level (think Boycott, Gooch, Border or whoever) claim that the fastest bowlers they faced at the start or end of their career were much different.

I have read an article about Thomson bowling in a club cricket match, which happened to feature somebody on the other side who'd faced Tyson about earlier and thought they were about the same speed (other than Thomson being able to maintain it for longer).

 

[Eeyore]

The top speeds of the fastest bowlers won't have changed hugely - they're limited by ligaments and basically there's not much anybody can do training wise to change that upper limit.

I've also never heard anybody who's had a long career at the top level (think Boycott, Gooch, Border or whoever) claim that the fastest bowlers they faced at the start or end of their career were much different.

I have read an article about Thomson bowling in a club cricket match, which happened to feature somebody on the other side who'd faced Tyson about 20 years later and thought they were about the same speed (other than Thomson being able to maintain it for longer).

Jim Parkes (RIP) once told us about the first time the Sussex boys came up against Tyson at Northampton. I seem to remember him talking about the fear as they saw the keeper standing so far back. Bradman said he was the fastest he had ever seen. He was also aided by the back foot no ball rule. Terrifying.

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

Jim Parkes (RIP) once told us about the first time the Sussex boys came up against Tyson at Northampton. I seem to remember him talking about the fear as they saw the keeper standing so far back. Bradman said he was the fastest he had ever seen. He was also aided by the back foot no ball rule. Terrifying.

Genuinely terrifying.

Apparently, while a lovely man, in later life a single drink would be enough to have him running around the back garden bowling a ball as fast as he could into the bushes.

I found the article I mentioned about Thomson (this is the bit about Tyson):

"On a drab day in Peterborough, 1956, a teenaged Knight passed Essex team-mate Geoff Smith on his way to the wicket. Smith was whimpering, on a stretcher. The ball had struck him under his pad's knee-roll, the jolt shifting the knee out of alignment: Smith lbw b Tyson 0. Knight faced five Tyson balls, none straight. Two bumpers, a beamer, one pitched up outside off, another pitched up and scudding leg side - Knight knows this because he turned and looked, afterwards. When the five balls were flying at him he could make out only the faintest shadow, or no shadow. Exact same thing facing Thomson."

Jeff Thomson is annoyed

On the last day of 1973 he bowled faster probably than anyone in the universe ever has, and faster, perhaps, than the universe wanted him to bowl

www.espncricinfo.com

 

[Eeyore]

Genuinely terrifying.

Apparently, while a lovely man, in later life a single drink would be enough to have him running around the back garden bowling a ball as fast as he could into the bushes.

I found the article I mentioned about Thomson (this is the bit about Tyson):

"On a drab day in Peterborough, 1956, a teenaged Knight passed Essex team-mate Geoff Smith on his way to the wicket. Smith was whimpering, on a stretcher. The ball had struck him under his pad's knee-roll, the jolt shifting the knee out of alignment: Smith lbw b Tyson 0. Knight faced five Tyson balls, none straight. Two bumpers, a beamer, one pitched up outside off, another pitched up and scudding leg side - Knight knows this because he turned and looked, afterwards. When the five balls were flying at him he could make out only the faintest shadow, or no shadow. Exact same thing facing Thomson."

Jeff Thomson is annoyed

On the last day of 1973 he bowled faster probably than anyone in the universe ever has, and faster, perhaps, than the universe wanted him to bowl

www.espncricinfo.com

I read that Tyson was quite erratic and his action doesn't really ooze control. But a beamer ?

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

I read that Tyson was quite erratic and his action doesn't really ooze control. But a beamer ?

Wouldn't have been a no ball in those days. I don't imagine it's the case in that story, but they did used to bowl them deliberately occasionally in the 50s.

 

[Eeyore]

Wouldn't have been a no ball in those days. I don't imagine it's the case in that story, but they did used to bowl them deliberately occasionally in the 50s.

Being a know it all, I'm most affronted not to have been aware of that. I wonder when it was outlawed.