Draft: The Worst of Test Cricket / Poll Up / Tournament Done

[Willoughby63]

I would like to express my apologies to both Chris Harris and Denesh Ramdin, who are certainly not in the 88 worst ever test cricketers.

 

[VC the slogger]

Now that @Bevab has made his pick, it is actually @VC the slogger who is up next.

If he chooses to pick Abdur Razzak himself, then your pick will become invalid and you will have to make a change. If he doesn't, we continue to @blockerdave after that.

He can keep Razzak. I do rate him as a bowler, therefore not going near him with a barge pole in this draft where my primary aim is to select players I absolutely loathe, the next one of whom shall be..

​

I would have liked to have Rubel Hossain in my XI, but since he's already picked I'll just go for the man who was arguably his predecessor in terms of awfulness in the Bangladesh team. Shahadat Hossain, a right-arm medium-fast bowler standing at 6'4" initially burst onto the scene during the 2004 U-19 World Cup where he was described as the fastest bowler and one of the most promising players of the competition. Dav Whatmore, the then Bangladesh coach also hailed him as the fastest he had seen in the country. A Test debut followed against England at Lord's in 2005, and if they didn't realize then what a poor bowler he would turn out to be, they ought to have done so after he conceded 0 for 101 off just 12 overs at an economy rate of 8.41 in what was easily one of the worst Test debuts in history. He did manage to redeem himself somewhat in 2005/06 with a sequence of 4 for 83 and 5 for 86 in a Test series against Sri Lanka, and two years later an outstanding 6 for 27 against a South African lineup containing Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers among others to nearly bowl his team to an upset victory only for their batsmen to throw it away in their usual manner.

But these, along with an impressive homecoming at the venue of his horror debut in 2010 where he claimed 5 for 98 against England to become the first Bangladeshi bowler to enter the famed Lord's honours board, proved to be false dawns as his tendency to bowl erratic lines and deliver frequent boundary balls never deserted him. He picked just 5 wickets from 9 Tests at a horrible average of 147.80 during what one can only hope for Bangladesh's sake to be the last five years of his Test career between 2011 and 2015, although aged 33 and still playing domestically there is always a chance of him earning yet another dreaded comeback given their thin pace bowling reserves. In his last Test match till date against Pakistan in 2015, he lasted just 2 deliveries before being ruled out of the match after falling over and injuring his knee during his delivery stride, and went to jail later that year for assaulting a housemaid. Overall, he claimed 72 wickets at an average of 51.81 with 4 five-fers from 38 Tests between 2005 and 2015, and a marginally better 47 wickets at 45.59 in ODIs - where he became the first Bangladeshi bowler to claim a hat-trick. In all first-class cricket, he claimed 253 wickets at 36.71 from 109 matches between 2004 and 2018, although he remains active in domestic cricket as of 2019.

VC's XI

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. Maharajah of Vizianagram
8. CS Nayudu
9.
10. Shahadat Hossain
11.

@blockerdave​

 

[Bevab]

@VC the slogger no not Shahadat! Was confused between picking him and Sami, but Sami’s horrific numbers in a much better side just edged it in his favour. Was wishing he would have been left alone for me to select later on even if it was unlikely. Awful choice indeed!

 

[blockerdave]

My next pick is EVERTON MATAMBANADZO - his greatest contribution to cricket was the cadence in which Aggers said his name on the commentary to Brian Lara cricket.

He played 3 test matches for Zimbabwe in 1996, when they were not all that bad, and took just 4 wickets at an average of 62.5 and with an economy rate of 3.9 and a "strike" rate of 96. A true number 11, he also scored just 17 runs at an average of 4.25.

He'll bat number 11 and take the new ball.

1. -
2. -
3. -
4. -
5. -
6. -
7. Louis Stricker (SA) 12 Caps
8. Ian Salisbury (Eng) 15 Caps
9. -
10. -
11. Everton Matambanadzo (Zim) 3 Caps

30 Caps used.

@CerealKiller you're up next

 

[Bigby Wolf]

He can keep Razzak. I do rate him as a bowler, therefore not going near him with a barge pole in this draft where my primary aim is to select players I absolutely loathe, the next one of whom shall be..

​

I would have liked to have Rubel Hossain in my XI, but since he's already picked I'll just go for the man who was arguably his predecessor in terms of awfulness in the Bangladesh team. Shahadat Hossain, a right-arm medium-fast bowler standing at 6'4" initially burst onto the scene during the 2004 U-19 World Cup where he was described as the fastest bowler and one of the most promising players of the competition. Dav Whatmore, the then Bangladesh coach also hailed him as the fastest he had seen in the country. A Test debut followed against England at Lord's in 2005, and if they didn't realize then what a poor bowler he would turn out to be, they ought to have done so after he conceded 0 for 101 off just 12 overs at an economy rate of 8.41 in what was easily one of the worst Test debuts in history. He did manage to redeem himself somewhat in 2005/06 with a sequence of 4 for 83 and 5 for 86 in a Test series against Sri Lanka, and two years later an outstanding 6 for 27 against a South African lineup containing Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers among others to nearly bowl his team to an upset victory only for their batsmen to throw it away in their usual manner.

But these, along with an impressive homecoming at the venue of his horror debut in 2010 where he claimed 5 for 98 against England to become the first Bangladeshi bowler to enter the famed Lord's honours board, proved to be false dawns as his tendency to bowl erratic lines and deliver frequent boundary balls never deserted him. He picked just 5 wickets from 9 Tests at a horrible average of 147.80 during what one can only hope for Bangladesh's sake to be the last five years of his Test career between 2011 and 2015, although aged 33 and still playing domestically there is always a chance of him earning yet another dreaded comeback given their thin pace bowling reserves. In his last Test match till date against Pakistan in 2015, he lasted just 2 deliveries before being ruled out of the match after falling over and injuring his knee during his delivery stride, and went to jail later that year for assaulting a housemaid. Overall, he claimed 72 wickets at an average of 51.81 with 4 five-fers from 38 Tests between 2005 and 2015, and a marginally better 47 wickets at 45.59 in ODIs - where he became the first Bangladeshi bowler to claim a hat-trick. In all first-class cricket, he claimed 253 wickets at 36.71 from 109 matches between 2004 and 2018, although he remains active in domestic cricket as of 2019.

VC's XI

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. Maharajah of Vizianagram
8. CS Nayudu
9.
10. Shahadat Hossain
11.

@blockerdave​

Thanks man.

 

[Willoughby63]

As it is over 24h since the last pick
@Sinister One can pick

 

[Master Bates]

David O' Sullivan

@CerealKiller @Aislabie

 

[Willoughby63]

@VC the slogger

 

[Aislabie]

Overall Pick #24: Walter Giffen

Profile
Test cricket teams weren't always the well-oiled machines they were today. In fact, there existed a time deep in Ashes past when teams would make really bad selections.

Of course, specialist batsmen like Jason Roy, David Warner and Marcus Harris have shown vestiges of this noble spirit by averaging single-figures across a Test series, but none of them has quite mastered the art of being really dreadful at Test cricket but still getting selected quite as well as Walter Giffen managed to do in managing to be selected for no fewer than three Test matches, the last two of which came with five years' more evidence of his mediocrity than the first. Giffen's innings were remarkable: 2, 0, 1, 3, 3, 2. Even his Wisden obituary began with the line "One of the least successful Test batsmen of all time..."

Giffen owed his selection entirely to the tantrums of his influential elder brother George. Perhaps even more bizarre was that Walter's Test debut came only months after he lost the ends of two fingers, at a time when he would still have been re-learning how to hold the bat. The role he was selected for? Opening batsman. That experiment lasted precisely one innings, and by the time he was recalled in 1892 he had taken on a new role: that of specialist tail-ender.

Statistics
TESTS - 11 runs @ 1.83 (best 3) in 3 matches
FIRST CLASS - 1,179 runs @ 15.93 (best 89) in 47 matches

Role in the Team
Three of his six Test innings came at number nine and one more at number eight, and this is the area of the batting order that he will slot into. This might leave our team horribly unbalanced and lacking bowlers, which will make it all the weaker.

Overall Pick #25: Khaled Mashud
​

Profile
It pains me to select Khaled Mashud here, because I don't think he's the worst Test keeper-batsman of all time at all. He was, however, very very bad. Maybe not Stuart Poynter bad, but pretty bloody awful all the same and eats up a nice chunk of my team's 100 caps.

Across Mashud's 44-Test career Bangladesh won only one match, and their hard-handed wicket-keeper was a huge part of that success. Although his wicket-keeping cannot fairly be judged by the number of dismissals he did (or didn't) claim behind the stumps - for that to happen, first the bowlers must create chances for him to take, the number of byes he let through might be a decent barometer. In Bangladesh's first Test innings in the field, he leaked 13 of them, and barely an innings would go bye (ha, a pun, please like me) without an opposition team gaining some runs quite literally at the hands of the 'Deshi gloveman. Although annoyingly, Statsguru doesn't have the facility for me to analyse that side of his game.

What it does allow me to analyse is his batting, which was statistically the worst of any top-seven batsman in the history of the game to be given a similar number of opportunities and by quite a long way. In 63 attempts in those positions, he averaged just 15.52 runs per innings, boosted to 17.46 by not-outs. He also recorded only two half-centuries, mustering a best of just 51. He did manage a Test century, batting at number eight on a turning pitch at Gros Islet. That match is notable for the fact that Mohammad Rafique also managed a century, in no small part due to the West Indies not selecting any spinners in their team leaving Ramnaresh Sarwan and Chris Gayle as the entire spin attack. Even Shiv Chanderpaul bowled some overs at him.

Statistics
TESTS - 1,409 runs @ 19.04 (1 century, best 103*) and 87 dismissals (78 ct, 9 st) in 44 matches
FIRST CLASS - 4,374 runs @ 24.99 (3 centuries, best 201*) and 204 dismissals (180 ct, 24 st) in 114 matches

Role in the Team
I really wanted to pick Mashud as a specialist batsman, but that would fly directly in the face of one of the rules of the draft as it is a rule he never fulfilled even once in his Test career. Therefore, he slots in as a 'keeper and number seven batsman, a role in which he averaged a whopping 18.34, which might yet make him the best player in my team.

Aislabie's XI so far:
1.
2.
3. Matt Poore (Pick #1, 14 caps)
4. Floyd Reifer (Pick #16, 6 caps)
5.
6.
7. Khaled Mashud (Pick #25, 44 caps)
8.
9. Walter Giffen (Pick #24, 3 caps)
10.
11.

(67/100 caps so far)

Next pick:
@Sinister One (and @CerealKiller still needs to pick)

 

[CerealKiller]

Sorry for being late, but i didn't get any alert from @blockerdave 's tag yesterday.
I will go for another WI opener in Rajendra Chandrika. Devon Smith's selection was at least a bit understandable, as he kept making some runs in domestic. But this bloke? 60 FC matches for an average of 25, which is shambolic even for the standards of WI domestic cricket in this era. He got 5 Tests against Australia and India between 2015 and 2016, didn't pass 37, and his selection has never been close to understandable.

CerealKiller's XI
1. Devon Smith (38 caps)
2. Rajendra Chandrika (5 caps)
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. Rubel Hussain (26 caps)
11.
(69/100 caps)
@Sinister One

 

[Aislabie]

​

Rajendra Chandrika

Devastating; I had him high on my list but was hoping he'd slip through the cracks somehow while I picked Mashud to get my cap count up

 

[Master Bates]

Darren Powell

@CerealKiller

 

[Bevab]

Darren Powell

@CerealKiller

Very bad selection, would have been my next pick without any doubt. I do think you ought to provide some basic info about your picks though.

 

[Master Bates]

Very bad selection

I am kinda confused! Because there is irony in this sentence.

 

[Bevab]

I am kinda confused! Because there is irony in this sentence.

In the context of this draft, a very bad selection should be quite good for your team.