Ok, so you've been plonked last in the draft of the 19th century players, all the guys you've heard of are gone, all that's rest is about 15 outrageously mustachioed men more noted for their achievements in the coal mining industry than they are for cricket. You're screwed, hannibal is at the gates, the engines are failing, you are 5 down and paul collingwood is waddling out to the crease, he's forgot his bat. This is not going to end well. So you're thinking it's over, your team is going to be fundamentally flawed, you look up and you set about the rather pointless task of seeing who your next pick will be anyway. you stop. You stop because that means you get to pick first in 1951-1970 and somebody very, very special was plying his trade then. someone who could compensate just about any lump of lard in a line up. batsman or bowler. Of course, it is the original 2 for 1 deal,
Garry Sobers.
everyone knows who he is so I won't bore you with all the details. you know he hit 6 sixes off a single over, you know his 365* stood for decades, you know he opened the bowling, he bowled spin, he defined left hand class. So lets just point out that when Wisden decided to name it's 5 cricketers of the century there was some grumbling to be made about the voting process, which was that 2 of the 5 votes were wasted voting for sobers and bradman, this was because sobers was of such outstanding quality that his place in the pantheon of greatness was so unquestionable it was actually boring to even consider. This is like asking someone, what's the hottest thing in the solar system. We know it's the sun. one of the finest batsmen ever, a brilliantly skilled and versatile bowler and an excellent fielder. liked a tipple too apparently, class bloke. also saves you doing any research because it's so obvious.
right, on to this 19th century character then. I know this is not strictly the correct order but I'd already picked sobers in my head so he was sort of the first one. I had two essential requirements for my 19th century pick. One, that he was actually rated in wisden or articles or something, I didn't want to just pick the best numbers, and the second was that he had to have a big ol' moustache. The second criteria appeared to rule out absolutely no one. from the looks of things it seems reasonable to postulate that moustaches were either mandatory to taking the field or they were thought to convey the wearers with an advantage in the 19th century.
So, like I said, all the 19th century players I knew had gone. I thought I'd just pick a wicketkeeper, because who really cares. really? really. but I see War already thought of that. Unfortunately for the period it seemed england had a succession of patchy, inconsistent wicketkeepers. how times have changed... so that left me to click randomly around the annals of wikipedia hoping that something, someone, would present themselves to me. And that is how I came to learn of
Tom Richardson.
Tom's obit speaks of a man that was, perhaps not the greatest bowler of his day, but someone who was certainly not out of place in the company of greats. I found an article from the 40s and it was not larwood, not lohman, not barnes that was lamented as a lost pinnacle when speaking of the decline of english fast-bowling. it was richardson. his finest performance came in a losing cause. back against the wall, australia were chasing 125 to win. richardson made them wait 3 hours to get it, and bowled almost solidly through the innings, according to eye witnesses not sending down a bad ball. but that makes him sound like some tragic clown. he wasn't. 1000 wickets over 4 county seasons, replacing lohman at surrey, 2000 county wickets over all (and somewhere in there in 1894 is taking nearly 200 wickets for 10.32, an unequalled figure)
HOWEVER, all that said, what made me go with him was a quote from a wisden article by neville cardus, who in '63 picked him as one of the 6 giants of the game of the last 100 years.
"I choose Richardson as one of my Six, not on the supposition that he was the greatest fast bowler of the century, though certainly he was in the running.
I take him as the fully realised personification of the fast bowler as every schoolboy dreams and hopes he might one day be himself. Richardson was, in his heyday, a handsome, swarthy giant, lithe, muscular, broad of shoulder, and of apparently inexhaustible energy."
this wasn't a mcgrath, this was an akram. a sehwag not a kallis. this was someone you didn't try and appreciate, this was someone that made you want to watch.
My next pick wasn't as awful, the 70s and 80s had legions of greats, and they couldn't be exhausted in a single round, but the obvious stars are gone, Richards for example. I've decided to plump for a fast bowler though and there's really only one choice in that regard, the whispering death,
Michael Holding.
Holding in my honest opinion, not because it's convenient, is the best of the great west indies fast bowlers. Outrageously quick, brutal and beautiful. The stats say marshall but marshall and garner but they lacked the beauty of holding's bowling. The long loping run up, the whisper, and the ferocious release, the death. The over he bowled to boycott is one that lives in the memory of cricket, a sport in which hundreds and hundreds of balls are bowled, thousands of runs are accumulated but most fans agree for those 6 balls fast bowling got about as good as it was going to get. There is his professionalism too, he lay between the transformation of the windies being a supremely talented side and their eventual rise as an unbeatable one. Those types of players are rare enough, but for a fast bowler, I can think of of no better selection than one whos career epitaph can be simply summed up as "no one bowled faster."
My last pick, and this has taken a while so I'm also going to be incredibly lazy and plump for the obvious. GH Hardy, the eminent mathematician was dedicated cricket fan, and in his day he had a way of describing a mathematical proof that was both beautiful, correct and economical, the best sort of proof. He would declare it "Hobbs class" after arguable the greatest opener ever:
Jack Hobbs.
Jack Hobbs ate records for breakfast, he still has more FC centuries than anyone that ever played and more runs. longevity? you got it. He was only the second cricketer after bradman to earn a knighthood, he was someone that took the sport beyond the boundary lines. The original owner of the title "master" sorry this is a bit short this one, it's taken a while. but it's bloody jack hobbs. get out from under your rock.
1. Hobbs
2.
3.
4. Sobers
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. Holding
11. Richardson
Hopefully not the guys I'm targeting though...
