All-Time Test XIs

[Acko88]

Hi guys,

I've come up with a world xi with a twist. I'd be interested to see sides that you come up with. It must feature a player from every test playing nation. I've also made it a modern era side, since Sri Lanka entered test cricket in 1982. This will get a bit of difference in the sides, as everyone will pick Sobers and Bradman. Anyway, here is the side.

1. Tamim Iqbal(Bangladesh)
2. Virender Sehwag(India)
3. Hashim Amla(SA)
4. Viv Richards(WI)
5. Kumar Sangakarra(Sri Lanka)
6. Andy Flower+(Zimbabwe)
7. Ian Botham(England)
8. Imran Khan(Pakistan)
9. Richard Hadlee(NZ)
10. Malcolm Marshall(WI)
11. Shane Warne(Australia)

When I pick these sides I like to assume you could actually play a game with them. Gone for as many guys who can turn a match in their sides favour through sheer will. And guys who carried their sides fortunes on their shoulders like Hadlee, Khan, and Beefy, you know they would just eat pressure.

I'm expecting to cop some crap for not picking Kallis, obviously his record is fantastic, but I think for too much of his career, he failed to impose himself on contests for his team. SA were punching bags for Australia for most of his prime.

Anyway, I'd be keen to see your sides.

 

[cricket_icon]

here is my final XI:

Sir Jack Hobbs
Herbert Sutcliffe
Sir Donald Bradman
Sir Vivian Richards
Graeme Pollock
Sir Garfield Sobers
Adam Gilchrist
Shane Warne
Wasim Akram
Sydney Barnes
Malcolm Marshall


Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed my article.

Good stuff mate, interesting reading why you selected the players you did.

I myself would have a slightly different XI, Hobbs probably stays as opener but I might move Bradman up as opener, giving the 3rd spot to Ponting, 4th to Tendulkar and 5th to Sobers for there should be another allrounder in this team, one of the greatest pace bowlers of all time who also happened to average 50 in his last decade as a batsman, the inimitable Imran Khan. Then I'd bring in Lilllee for Barnes and McGrath for Marshall.

Boom, you have an unbeatable team right there!

 

[used2bcool]

@ Acko, cool idea. Sticking with your criteria, here's what I have:

1 Tamim Iqbal (BAN) -- the only other eligible player I can think of is Shakib, but this team is loaded with all-rounders, so I picked the Bangladeshi pure batter who I think can have the greatest impact.
2 Graham Gooch (ENG) -- The other candidate would be Botham, but again, the team is loaded with swing bowlers and all-rounders, so went with the best pure batsman from England in the given time period.
3 Brian Lara (WI) -- Like you, I wanted to pick two West Indians, but then I realized that I needed a left armer and there's really only one choice there. This spot could've gone to Ponting, too, but Lara is a personal preference over both Ponting and Viv Richards, though I'm sure you could make an argument for either.
4 Sachin Tendulkar (IND) -- Kapil Dev, probably India's most complete cricketer, doesn't make it because there are too many all-rounders to start with. Dravid doesn't make it because his ideal batting position is already taken. Tendulkar's record speaks for itself.
5 Jacques Kallis (RSA) -- I know he's out of position, but there's no ignoring the man.
6 Andy Flower (ZIM - k) -- There is no one else. Flower isn't out of place among the great names mentioned here.
7 Imran Khan (PAK - c) -- Best of the great allrounder quartet.
8 Richard Hadlee (NZ) -- Probably New Zealand's best cricketer ever, and the best bowler out of the allrounder quartet of the 80s.
9 Wasim Akram (PAK) -- I picked two Pakistanis for the sake of balance. I have too many right arm quicks, and you can't go wrong picking arguably the greatest left-arm paceman of all time.
10 Glenn McGrath (AUS) -- It came down to McGrath or Warne for Australia, and I picked McGrath. I tried to accommodate Marshall or Ambrose from WI, but I couldn't do that without picking other players I wanted.
11 M Muralitharan (SL) -- For me, it's Murali over Warne (again, purely personal choice, we've been all over the numbers here). He and McGrath can compete about who bats 10th and 11th.

 

[Acko88]

@ Acko, cool idea. Sticking with your criteria, here's what I have:

1 Tamim Iqbal (BAN) -- the only other eligible player I can think of is Shakib, but this team is loaded with all-rounders, so I picked the Bangladeshi pure batter who I think can have the greatest impact.
2 Graham Gooch (ENG) -- The other candidate would be Botham, but again, the team is loaded with swing bowlers and all-rounders, so went with the best pure batsman from England in the given time period.
3 Brian Lara (WI) -- Like you, I wanted to pick two West Indians, but then I realized that I needed a left armer and there's really only one choice there. This spot could've gone to Ponting, too, but Lara is a personal preference over both Ponting and Viv Richards, though I'm sure you could make an argument for either.
4 Sachin Tendulkar (IND) -- Kapil Dev, probably India's most complete cricketer, doesn't make it because there are too many all-rounders to start with. Dravid doesn't make it because his ideal batting position is already taken. Tendulkar's record speaks for itself.
5 Jacques Kallis (RSA) -- I know he's out of position, but there's no ignoring the man.
6 Andy Flower (ZIM - k) -- There is no one else. Flower isn't out of place among the great names mentioned here.
7 Imran Khan (PAK - c) -- Best of the great allrounder quartet.
8 Richard Hadlee (NZ) -- Probably New Zealand's best cricketer ever, and the best bowler out of the allrounder quartet of the 80s.
9 Wasim Akram (PAK) -- I picked two Pakistanis for the sake of balance. I have too many right arm quicks, and you can't go wrong picking arguably the greatest left-arm paceman of all time.
10 Glenn McGrath (AUS) -- It came down to McGrath or Warne for Australia, and I picked McGrath. I tried to accommodate Marshall or Ambrose from WI, but I couldn't do that without picking other players I wanted.
11 M Muralitharan (SL) -- For me, it's Murali over Warne (again, purely personal choice, we've been all over the numbers here). He and McGrath can compete about who bats 10th and 11th.

Cheers for joining in.

Murali I can't cop as being in the same class as Warne. He feasted on Bangaldesh and Zimbabwe for 176 wickets.

I'd have loved to put Akram in, and I think the need for a left armer has become a bit of a fad. The windies did OK all those years without one.

Tendulkar is one I was disappointed not to be able to include. He's the best batsman I've ever seen, but need India to supply an opener.

 

[agar12]

pretty good team. I would have lara ahead of pollock. Pollock misses out unfortunately because he did not play enough tests and lara ended up winning a number of tests for a weak west indian side.

The other change I would have is Lillee ahead of Barnes. Barnes, whilehe has a tremendous record, had the advantage of bowling in the era of uncovered pitches.

Sir Jack Hobbs
Herbert Sutcliffe
Sir Donald Bradman
Sir Vivian Richards
Brian Lara
Sir Garfield Sobers
Adam Gilchrist
Shane Warne
Wasim Akram
Dennis Lillee
Malcolm Marshall

 

[Cricketman]

Cool Idea. Added twist, I'm only going to include players I've seen live.

Alastair Cook (ENG)
Tamim Iqbal (BAN)
Ricky Ponting (AUS)
Sachin Tendulkar (IND)
Brian Lara (WI)
Jacques Kallis (SA)
Andy Flower + (ZIM)
Shane Warne (AUS 2)
Wasim Akram (PAK)
Muttiah Muralitharan (ZIM)
Shane Bond (NZ)

Not overly happy with it but it'll do I think. I don't think you can beat that middle order, it includes the top 4 batsman from this generation. Biggest weakness is probably Bond breaking down as I only have 2 specialist seamers.

Toughest decision for me was picking two Australians. I wanted the Warne-Murali combo and wanted Ponting at 3 (probably will be my captain too). I think outside of the subcontinent I will drop Warne and include McGrath and have a 3 seamer attack

 

[Acko88]

Been doing a bit of thinking and re-done mine.

1. Iqbal(BAN)
2. G Smith(SA)
3. V Richards(WI)
4. Tendulkar(IND)
5. Sangakarra(SL)
6. I Botham(ENG)
7. A Flower+(ZIM)
8. I Khan(C)(PAK)
9. R Hadlee(NZ)
10. M Marshall(WI)
11. Warne(AUS)

Had to bring Tnedulkar in, wanted to make my 3,4, and 5 the best possible players I could pick.

I've moved Botham up to the top 6. A bit of deeper digging on his stats, reveals that if you take out matches when he was captain, and matches after his last test century(his last 4 years he was a seriously fading force) he averages 40.16 with bat and 26.45 with ball. All his centuries, and 26 of his 27, 5 wicket hauls occured in this stretch of 74 tests.

A good average for a top order batsman in this era was about 44. So 40 puts him on the verge of being a genuine top 6 batsman.

I've also decided to pick a captain. Some of these guys, for all their individual brilliance, were failed captains.

I've made Imran Khan my captain as he is the only one whose individual form got better as captain.

 

[bigred]

I've only been watching cricket since the summer of 2000, so here is my side of players that have played since then.

1. Graeme Smith*
2. Alastair Cook
3. Rahul Dravid
4. Jaques Kallis
5. Steve Waugh
6. Michael Clarke
7. A B de Villiers+
8. Shane Warne
9. Curtly Ambrose
10. Dale Steyn
11. Glenn McGrath

 

[War]

My idea of each teams All-time XI fluctuates every year. So this is my start of 2014 versions for each.

AUSTRALIA: Simpson, Hayden, Bradman (c), Ponting, G Chappell, Border, Gilchrist, Lindwall, Warne, Lillee, McGrath. 12th man: Miller

ENGLAND: Hobbs, Hutton (c), Dexter, Hammond, Compton, Pietersen, Botham, Knott, Larwood, Trueman, Snow. 12th man: J Wardle

WEST INDIES: Hunte, Greenidge, Richards, Headley, Lara, Sobers (c), Dujon, Marshall, Holding, Garner, Ambrose. 12th man: Gibbs

SOUTH AFRICA: Smith (c), B Richards, Amla, G Pollock, Kallis, De Villiers, Procter, S Pollock, Tayfield, Steyn, Donald. 12th man: A Faulkner

PAKISTAN: Anwar, H Mohammad, Miandad, Inzamam, Abbas, M Mohammad, Imran Khan (c), R Latif, W Akram, A Qadir, W Younis. 12th man: A Iqbal

INDIA: Gavaskar, Mankad, Dravid (c), Tendulkar, Hazare, Viswanath, Dhoni, Kapil Dev, Z Khan, Prasanna, Gupte. 12h man: Srinath/Vengsarkar/Kumble

NEW ZEALAND: Wright, Turner, Sutcliffe, Donnelly, Crowe (c), JR Reid, Cairns, Parore, Hadlee, Taylor, Bond. 12th man: Vettori

SRI LANKA: Atapattu, Jayasuriya, M Jayawardene (c), A De Silva, Sangakkara, Samaraweera, Mathews, Vaas, Malinga, Herath, Muralitharan: 12th man: R Ratnayake

ZIMBABWE: Campbell, G Flower, Goodwin, B Davison, D Houghton (c), A Flower, N Johnson, D Fletcher, K Curran, H Streak, P Strang. 12th man: A Pycroft/J Traicos.

 

[sifter132]

Hi guys,

I've come up with a world xi with a twist. I'd be interested to see sides that you come up with. It must feature a player from every test playing nation. I've also made it a modern era side, since Sri Lanka entered test cricket in 1982. This will get a bit of difference in the sides, as everyone will pick Sobers and Bradman. Anyway, here is the side.

1. Tamim Iqbal(Bangladesh)
2. Virender Sehwag(India)
3. Hashim Amla(SA)
4. Viv Richards(WI)
5. Kumar Sangakarra(Sri Lanka)
6. Andy Flower+(Zimbabwe)
7. Ian Botham(England)
8. Imran Khan(Pakistan)
9. Richard Hadlee(NZ)
10. Malcolm Marshall(WI)
11. Shane Warne(Australia)

When I pick these sides I like to assume you could actually play a game with them. Gone for as many guys who can turn a match in their sides favour through sheer will. And guys who carried their sides fortunes on their shoulders like Hadlee, Khan, and Beefy, you know they would just eat pressure.

I'm expecting to cop some crap for not picking Kallis, obviously his record is fantastic, but I think for too much of his career, he failed to impose himself on contests for his team. SA were punching bags for Australia for most of his prime.

Anyway, I'd be keen to see your sides.

Good idea! I started out with an absolutely all-time one, which kicks arse I must say , even if I did put 2 Englishmen in there...

1 ENG - Jack Hobbs-----------------IND - Sunil Gavaskar
2 SA - Barry Richards
3 AUS - Don Bradman---------------WI - Brian Lara
4 IND - Sachin Tendulkar
5 WI - Garfield Sobers---------------ENG - Ian Botham
6 ZIM - Andy Flower
7 PAK - Imran Khan
8 BAN - Shakib Al Hasan
9 NZ - Richard Hadlee
10 ENG - SF Barnes-----------------AUS - Glenn McGrath/Dennis Lillee
11 SL - Muttiah Muralitharan

Replacing the 4 oldest guys to make it more modern...have two Indians in there now.

 

[Owzat]

It's just hard to know how good the knowledge of the former players is. Jeff Thomson for example, I swear he'd pick an alltime XI of Bradman plus 10 guys from the 70s in it. And the number of former players sprouting rubbish in the commentary box these days doesn't help the argument either.

So you'd want to be careful who you pick as a jury and even then it's only 12 guys - should we be crowning it the best XI ever based on 12 opinions when there are thousands of former players?

There will always be bias, and of course those who trot out the line about how watching the game makes experts more than stats ignore that factor and indeed the game is about stats which is what makes it special.

The main difficulty with picking an all-time XI, be it overall or by country is there are just way too many top players over the decades - bar maybe Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and to an extent Sri Lanka who've only played Tests in the last one, two and three decades respectively.

And most people, whether ignoring stats or not, and I bet most who preach that bulls*** include players they never watched play since you can't claim a side is the "all time" best if you can only include those in your own lifetime.

There is also what I'm going to call the renown factor, that is people including players out of the group including Imran Khan, Ian Botham, Richard Hadlee, Shane Warne, Gary Sobers, Malcolm Marshall, Dennis Lillee and Donald Bradman, based on reputation and/or stats.

I'd guess there could be 100-200 genuine contenders to make an all-time XI, possibly more, possibly less.

 

[sifter132]

It's almost an impossible task to pick the perfect, most deserving all-time XI based on the most appropriate factors etc. There will ALWAYS be some bias, however small. eg. some former players don't watch a lot of cricket, some watch too much cricket and can't remember what it was like 50 years ago.

I always advocate reading some old books to get some perspective ie. who did cricket writers think were the best players of all-time in 1960? Or 1980? Of course those writers were biased too, lack of media coverage meant you generally only saw players from your own country and opposition players ONLY on the tours of your country. But it adds an extra layer to the discussion, and elevates guys like WG Grace right up there, as the first class game was so much more important in the reckoning 50 years ago.

I guess this is why the discussions get so interesting, everyone has their own ideas on an All-time XI.