Profile
Jim Laker became synonymous with just one match from his career, but what a match it was: in the fourth Test of the 1956 Ashes, he claimed the most memorable match figures in Test cricket history: 19 wickets for just 90 runs. Nobody else has ever come close. However, even if this incredible anomaly is excluded from his stats, his bowling average against the Australians for England would remain a still-healthy 22.56, and he would still be able to point to his other ten-for against the Australians that year (ten for 88 for Surrey) as a sign of his mastery over them. Whatever the Nathan Lyon meme brigade might have you believe, Jim Laker is still the greatest off-spinner in Ashes history by far.
Statistics
ASHES - 277 runs @ 14.57 (best 63) and 79 wickets @ 18.27 (5 5WI, best 10/53) in 15 matches
ALL TESTS - 676 runs @ 14.08 (best 63) and 193 wickets @ 21.24 (9 5WI, best 10/53) in 46 matches
FIRST-CLASS - 7,304 runs @ 16.60 (2 centuries, best 113) and 1,944 wickets @ 18.41 (127 5WI, best 10/53) in 450 matches
Overall Pick #19: Ben Stokes
Profile
Recency bias be damned, Ben Stokes' performance in the last two Tests has shown precisely why he will become an all-time Ashes great. At Lord's, all the headlines were about Jofra Archer going on a mad pace rampage, but it was still Stokes who, on the back of a promotion to number five in the batting order, he turned a precarious position of 64 for three into a potentially match-winning position of strength with a fluent unbeaten 115 that was more free and fluent than any other batsman in the match could manage. Fast forward to Headingley, where Australia had batted themselves to a lead of over 200 with seven wickets left, after England had been bowled out for 67. Stokes took the bowl and put together an unbroken (save for four balls by Archer) spell of 24.2 fast and hostile overs to drag the game back within reach almost in spite of his teammates. He then capped it off with that innings. There is plenty more of the Stokes story still to be written, but he has already proven to be the difference between 3-0 and 1-1 in what may yet become known as Stokes' Ashes.
Statistics
ASHES - 807 runs @ 40.35 (3 centuries, best 135*) and 34 wickets @ 34.00 (2 5WI, best 6/36) in 12 matches
ALL TESTS - 3,479 runs @ 35.86 (8 centuries, best 258) and 135 wickets @ 32.22 (4 5WI, best 6/22) in 55 matches
FIRST-CLASS - 7,269 runs @ 34.77 (16 centuries, best 258) and 304 wickets @ 29.65 (7 5WI, best 7/67) in 130 matches
Aislabie's XI so far: 1.
2.
3.
4. Steve Smith (Pick #8)
5. Steve Waugh (Pick #5)
6. Ben Stokes (Pick #19)
7.
8.
9. Jim Laker (Pick #18)
10.
11.
Adam Gilchrist was the one missing piece of the puzzle that helped transform the Australian Test side of the mid-late 1990s from merely world class into a ruthless outfit that could count itself among the greatest Test sides of all time. With a simple "See ball, hit ball" mantra for batting, he would go on to become arguably the greatest wicket-keeper batsman in the history of the sport and revolutionize the role of a wicket-keeper in a team by making their skills in front of the stumps just as important as behind them, perhaps more so. It may be quite hard to believe for some that such a talent initially had to move states from New South Wales to Western Australia just to get opportunities at Sheffield Shield level. After a disappointing debut season in the Sheffield Shield in 1992/93 where he scored just 43 runs at 8.60 for NSW, he moved to Western Australia replacing their crowd favorite former Test wicket-keeper Tim Zoehrer, attracting a lot of hostility from the WA crowd in the process. But he eventually managed to impress them with his performances behind the stumps claiming the most number of dismissals i.e 55 in the 1994/95 season. He impressed with the bat in patches recording a maiden first-class century with 126 against South Australia, but totalled a rather mediocre 398 runs at 26.53 for the season.
It wasn't until 1995/96 that he truly stamped his authority with both bat and gloves by scoring 835 runs at a very impressive 50.52 along with 58 dismissals behind the wicket as WA reached the Shield final that year, where Gilchrist shot himself into prominence with a brutal innings of 189* off just 187 balls in a losing effort. By 1996/97, there were already calls for him to displace the incumbent record holder Ian Healy in the Australian Test team, but while that would take until 1999/00 to finally come to fruition, he did displace Healy in the Australian ODI team in 1997 with some very impressive performances at the top of the order. Gilchrist finally displaced Healy in the Test side in 1999/00 and scored a swashbuckling 81 off just 88 balls in what was one of the most highly anticipated Test debuts of all time, as Australia crushed Pakistan by 10 wickets. Australia would go on to win the next 15 Test matches in succession with Gilchrist cementing his place with 992 runs at 58.35, until they ran into VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid in Kolkata 2001, where their winning streak since Gilchrist's debut was finally broken - his 15 matches without defeat at the start of his career still remains a record.
All this bode quite well for his maiden Ashes series in England in 2001, and he lived up to his reputation with a sizzling 152 off just 143 balls with 5 sixes in his first innings in the Ashes out of a total of 576 as Australia crushed their arch-rivals by an innings. Australia won the series 4-1 with Gilchrist scoring 340 runs at 68.00 and claiming 26 dismissals from 5 matches. They won by the same margin in the 2002/03 Ashes in Australia where Gilchrist once again starred with 333 runs at 55.50 along with 25 dismissals from 5 matches, earning him the Allan Border Medal for the year. Australia continued their dominance over all opponents in the Test arena and a Test high score of 204* off just 213 balls followed along with another World Cup victory in 2003, and Gilchrist's Test batting average reached a high 60.80 after 42 Tests along with a batting strike rate of 83, making old time swashbucklers like Viv Richards, Graeme Pollock, Ian Botham, Keith Miller and Gilbert Jessop among others look like stick-in-the-muds.
But just when it seemed he could do no wrong, his form dipped quite alarmingly during the next Ashes series in 2005 where he could muster just 181 runs at 22.62 without a single score above 50, making it arguably his worst return in a Test series since his debut as England reclaimed the Ashes by a thrilling 2-1 margin after a period of 19 years. His Test form remained patchy in 2005/06, but he nevertheless kept his place in the team for the return series in 2006/07 in Australia, where the hosts crushed England 5-0 in just the second whitewash in Ashes history, and the first since 1920/21. Gilchrist had one last great performance up his sleeve against the Old Enemy - a brutal 102* off just 59 balls at his adopted home in Perth where he fell just one short of equalling Viv Richards' record for the fastest Test century ever. He retired a year later in early 2008, following yet another World Cup triumph and an unbeaten home season.
Overall, he scored 5570 runs at an average of 47.60 with 17 centuries between 1999 and 2008, but at a then previously unheard of strike rate of 81.95 runs per hundred balls - making him easily the fastest scoring batsman in Tests among those with more than 2000 runs. His 416 dismissals in Test cricket were also a world record at the time of his retirement, but would later be eclipsed by South Africa's Mark Boucher, though it remains the most by an Australian in Tests. But if his batting in Test cricket was merely swashbuckling, his batting in the Ashes was on a completely different level - in 20 Ashes Tests, he scored 1083 runs at an average of 45.12 with 3 centuries, all of them coming at better than a run-a-ball, and at a scarcely believabe strike rate of 92.01 runs per 100 balls - almost 11 quicker than his overall Test record. He also claimed 96 dismissals, the fourth highest behind Ian Healy (135), Rod Marsh (131) and Alan Knott (101) in the series. Needless to say, of all the retirements Australia suffered during the late 2000s, including those of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Damien Martyn and Brett Lee, the hole left behind by Gilchrist was and still is the hardest to fill.
Playing Role
What's worse than Keith Miller coming in at No 6? It's Gilchrist coming in at No 7 to completely and utterly destroy your far-fetched hopes of victory. With an Ashes average of 45.12 and strike rate of 92.01, brace yourselves for some serious carnage..
JUSTIN LANGER
had a brilliant record against England, averaging 50. He made an unbeaten 179 at Adelaide in 1998-99, 102 not out at The Oval in 2001 and a superb 250 at Sydney in 2002-03. Like his opening partner, Matthew Hayden, his century at The Oval in 2005 proved to be in vain, but his 82 and 100 not out at Brisbane in 2006-07 put England on the back foot from the opening Test.
1. Arthur Morris
2. Justin Langer
3. Ken Barrington
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Shane Warne
10.
11.
Len Hutton is my pick. His most famous innings is when he scored 364 against Australia at The Oval in 1938, just one year after his debut.He averaged over 70 in his first two tours of Australia, and in his last, as captain and with declining health, he retained the Ashes, with some good contributions with the bat, before retiring shortly after.
Overall, he has 2428 Ashes runs in 27 matches, at an average of 56.
1. Len Hutton
2.
3. Don Bradman
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Dennis Lillee
10.
11. Glenn McGrath
Hedley Verity... on the grounds I’m too busy to research properly but he got Bradman out more times than anyone else, and is my hero.
Apologies I know I owe the Hammond write up and this is beyond cursory, but snowed under workwise and not helped by my computer failing and the replacement I was given at the Microsoft store also being duff
Profile
This might seem like a wild pick, but statistically Haddin and Gilchrist are the two best Ashes keeper-batsmen of all time and it isn't even close. Haddin verged on an Ashes specialist, who found a new level in his batting, wicket-keeping and his shit-talking whenever England and Australia faced off with each other. Only Adam Gilchrist has a better batting record in Ashes cricket as a wicket-keeper, and his keeping statistics also stand up extremely well to scrutiny. However, where Gilchrist's batting exploits came as part of arguably the greatest Test team of any era, Haddin's were outstanding amongst his peers in a far more normal Australian team. Do I personally like Brad Haddin? Most definitely not, and I doubt you'd find many casual observers who do. He was nobody's hero, but in Ashes cricket that was the role he chose for himself and he played it to perfection.
Statistics
ASHES - 1,366 runs @ 41.39 (3 centuries, best 136) and 80 dismissals (79 caught, 1 stumped) in 20 matches
ALL TESTS - 3,266 runs @ 32.98 (4 centuries, best 169) and 270 dismissals (262 caught, 8 stumped) in 66 matches
FIRST-CLASS - 9,932 runs @ 38.05 (17 centuries, best 169) and 648 dismissals (608 caught, 40 stumped) in 184 matches
Aislabie's XI so far: 1.
2.
3.
4. Steve Smith (Pick #8)
5. Steve Waugh (Pick #5)
6. Ben Stokes (Pick #19)
7. Brad Haddin (Pick #25)
8.
9. Jim Laker (Pick #18)
10.
11.
Profile
This might seem like a wild pick, but statistically Haddin and Gilchrist are the two best Ashes keeper-batsmen of all time and it isn't even close. Haddin verged on an Ashes specialist, who found a new level in his batting, wicket-keeping and his shit-talking whenever England and Australia faced off with each other. Only Adam Gilchrist has a better batting record in Ashes cricket as a wicket-keeper, and his keeping statistics also stand up extremely well to scrutiny. However, where Gilchrist's batting exploits came as part of arguably the greatest Test team of any era, Haddin's were outstanding amongst his peers in a far more normal Australian team. Do I personally like Brad Haddin? Most definitely not, and I doubt you'd find many casual observers who do. He was nobody's hero, but in Ashes cricket that was the role he chose for himself and he played it to perfection.
Statistics
ASHES - 1,366 runs @ 41.39 (3 centuries, best 136) and 80 dismissals (79 caught, 1 stumped) in 20 matches
ALL TESTS - 3,266 runs @ 32.98 (4 centuries, best 169) and 270 dismissals (262 caught, 8 stumped) in 66 matches
FIRST-CLASS - 9,932 runs @ 38.05 (17 centuries, best 169) and 648 dismissals (608 caught, 40 stumped) in 184 matches
Aislabie's XI so far: 1.
2.
3.
4. Steve Smith (Pick #8)
5. Steve Waugh (Pick #5)
6. Ben Stokes (Pick #19)
7. Brad Haddin (Pick #25)
8.
9. Jim Laker (Pick #18)
10.
11.
Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it. Usually I go into these drafts with some sort of a plan, but on this occasion I'm just going in blind and picking whomever I feel like whenever it's my turn
Mark Waugh is my pick. Even if he was, as always, overshadowed by his brother Steve, he made over 2200 runs at an average of 50 in Ashes Tests, his 138 on debut considered by many to be his best innings.
He was an elegant and gifted strokemaker, and a freakishly brilliant fielder.
CerealKiller's XI
1. Len Hutton
2.
3. Don Bradman
4. Mark Waugh
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Dennis Lillee
10.
11. Glenn McGrath
His Ashes record was a bit mixed, but his exploits in 2005 was amazing, and his last-day 158 at the oval to secure the ashes still gives me spine tingles.
Sorry for the delay and cursory posting - I'm in a very crucial phase workwise... (perils of a startup founder.)
"One of the guys you love to have around the team because he will do anything for you. A team man and a classy middle-order player. When games were on the line, Michael Hussey generally stood up"
My picks are Bill O'Reilly and Ray Lindwall. Will do Lindwall's writeup later, but for now here's the Tiger..
The records might have him listed as a "Right-arm legbreak" bowler, but Bill O'Reilly or "Tiger" as he was often called was essentially a pace bowler in all but name. Standing at 6ft 2 inches and balding from a young age, he delivered the ball at a pace bordering on medium or medium-fast, and possessed the ablity to bowl leg breaks, googlies and top spinners with no discernible change in bowling action. His whirly bowling action and low point of delivery made him particularly difficult to read; this coupled with his unrelenting accuracy with the ball, the stamina to bowl all day and a generally hostile attitude towards batsmen made him an extremely difficult bowler to face overall, and one who was almost never dominated by any batsman. Even in the match during the 1938 Ashes where Len Hutton scored a record-breaking 364 and England an even bigger 903/7, O'Reilly returned respectable figures of 3 for 178 off 85 overs going at a little above 2 an over. Don Bradman of all people considered him to be the greatest bowler he had ever faced or watched in all his years of association with the game.
A talented sportsman from a young age, O'Reilly excelled at several sports apart from cricket, including tennis, rugby and athletics - he held the state record for the triple jump and one time came second behind 1924 Olympic Gold medalist Nick Winter in a competition. In fact, he may have been lost to cricket altogether but for a chance selection in a Sydney club match whilst he was training to be a schoolmaster during the mid-1920s. It was around this time that he first came to encounter a 17-year old Don Bradman in a local match where the latter smashed an unbeaten 234 with several boundaries off his bowling, although Bradman was also given several reprieves by lethargic fielders, one of whom was busy lighting a pipe whilst a catch came his way off O'Reilly's bowling - nevertheless, he managed to dismiss him first ball the very next day. He had done enough at this point to merit a first-class debut for New South Wales in the 1927/28 season of the Sheffield Shield, taking 7 wickets from 3 matches. He was by now a qualified teacher and his profession came in the way of his budding first-class career, as he was forced to miss the 1928/29 season and didn't play againt until 1931/32. In a period of great change in Australian cricket including retirements of several prominent players of the 1920s such as Arthur Mailey, then arguably Australia's leading legspinner, this potentially cost him an early Test debut during either the 1928/29 or 1930 Ashes series.
He finally made his Test debut in the 1931/32 series against South Africa claiming 7 wickets at 24.85 from 2 Tests, and would go on to lead the wicket-taking charts for Australia in the 1932/33 Ashes series with 27 wickets at an average of 26.81, which was second only to Harold Larwood's 33 wickets at 19.51 in the series - including a match haul of 10/129 in what was Australia's only victory of a series which England won by a 4-1 margin. However, his performances with the ball were largely overshadowed by the controversial 'Bodyline' tactics employed by Douglas Jardine to successfully curb the Australians by neutralizing the threat posed by Bradman with the bat, causing public outrage within the country. Australia and O'Reilly gained redemption in the next Ashes series in 1934 which was won by a 2-1 margin, where he claimed 28 wickets at 24.92 bowling in tandem with Clarrie Grimmett (25 wickets at 26.72), with whom he formed arguably the greatest leg spin bowling partnership in the history of Test cricket. His best performances included a Test best innings haul of 7 for 54 in a 238-run victory at Trent Bridge, followed by a valiant 7 for 189 in a lone effort as England piled on a total of 627/9 in a drawn match at Old Trafford - his overall tally of 109 wickets at 17.04 saw him lead the season averages and was enough to earn him a spot as one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year in 1935 alongside fellow team-mates Bill Ponsford and Stan McCabe.
He announced a rather shocking retirement from cricket in 1935/36 when arguably at the peak of his cricketing career, citing family reasons and his own professional teaching career, but an arrangement with his employers at the Sydney Grammar School allowed him to pursue his passion. He played in two more Ashes series in 1936/37 where he claimed 25 wickets at 22.20, and in 1938 claiming 22 wickets at 27.72, which Australia won 3-2 and drew 1-1 respectively to keep their hold on the Ashes urn intact during the 1930s apart from the abberration that was the 1932/33 'Bodyline' series. It was in these final two Ashes series of his career that he truly established himself as an all-time great, for he had the unenviable task of carrying the entire Australian bowling attack on his shoulders during this period with his famed bowling partner Clarrie Grimmett dropped from the Test team under inexplicable circumstances in early 1936. Grimmett, though aged 44 at the time had yet to announce his retirement and was still claiming more wickets than anyone else, including a stunning haul of 33 wickets at 11.24 with 3 match 10-fers from what turned out to be the last 3 Tests of his career. His replacements Chuck Fleetwood-Smith (36 wickets at 35.86) and Frank Ward (11 wickets at 52.18) came nowhere close to matching those figures, forcing O'Reilly to assume the role of the sole leading bowler in the lineup, which he did with 61 wickets at 22.55 during this period.
The 1938 Ashes were the last Tests Australia played until 1945/46, with the advent of the Second World War in 1939. O'Reilly would play three more seasons of domestic cricket in the Sheffield Shield for New South Wales, claiming 55 wickets at 15.12 from 7 matches in 1939/40, 55 again in 1940/41 but at a superior average of 12.43 from 8 matches, and a match haul of 9/124 in what was the only match of the 1941/42 season before first-class cricket was suspended in Australia. He quite reluctantly made one final Test appearance after the War against New Zealand in 1945/46, claiming 5 for 14 and 3 for 19 in an innings victory, and then promptly thew his boots outside the dressing room window instead of hanging them up.
Overall, he claimed 144 wickets at an average of 22.59 from 27 Tests between 1932 and 1946, including 102 wickets at 25.36 in the Ashes with 3 match 10-fers to his name, whilst maintaining a career economy rate of just 1.94 (1.97 in the Ashes) throughout his career. A feat all the more impressive considering he played in an era where scores in excess of 500 and batting averages in the mid to high 50s were often the norm. His success against Wally Hammond, second only to Bradman during this period being case in point - in 19 matches he claimed Hammond's wicket 10 times with the batsman averaging a mere 28.70 against a career average of 58.45 when facing him; he also dismissed Maurice Leyland (avg 56.83 against Australia) 9 times and Herbert Sutcliffe (avg 66.85 against Australia) 6 times respectively. He was third behind Clarrie Grimmett (169 wickets at 21.95) and Hedley Verity (144 wickets at 24.37) amongst wicket-takers in the 1930s with 136 wickets at 23.68, but comfortably ahead of both in the Ashes where Grimmett claimed 106 wickets at 32.44 and Verity 59 at 28.06 to O'Reilly's 102 at 25.36 from 19 matches. In all first-class cricket, he claimed a total of 774 wickets at 16.60 with 63 five-fers and 17 ten-fers between 1927/28 and 1945/46.
Although he had no pretensions of being a proper batsman with just 1 fifty throughout his first-class career (that too in a Test match!) and a batting average of 13.13, he could be occasionally relied upon, such as when he scored an unbeaten 30 in the 1934 Ashes to help Australia avoid the follow-on in response to England's 627/9 in a high-scoring draw. He was nevertheless a hitter of sorts, with around 17% of his Test runs coming in the form of sixes.
Playing Role
O'Reilly will take on the mantle of the lead spinner (though Sydney Barnes might disagree) in my lineup, complemented by the pace of Lindwall and Miller - one of the great fast bowling pairs of all time, and with the cunning of Barnes, I have to say this makes for a very formidable bowling attack that is capable of destroying the best of batting lineups. And you know what's even scarier? I still have another spot lying empty for either another fast bowler or a spinner. O'Reilly may even open the bowling in helpful conditions, a role he would often perform for the Australian teams captained by Bill Woodfull and Don Bradman. Now, all I need is a few decent batsmen..
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277 runs @ 14.57 (best 63) and 
