I noticed with interest the ICC People's Dream XI to commemorate the 2000th Test Match which starts this week. I must say I approve of many of the choices. After all, they are clearly giants of the sport, but all bar the incomparable Sir Don Bradman have been playing within the past thirty years. Hardly surprising since few of us could possibly remember the superstars of the pre-War years. All we can go on are statistics and a few minutes of grainy newsreel or photos of stripy blazers and trousers so starched they could stand at the crease on their own!
Of course I simply have to join in the exercise and was tempted to make my selection based purely on those I have grown up with, so basically players from the past 40-50 years. But that doesn't fit squarely with the occasion, namely the marking of 2000 Tests over a period of 134 years. So how do you compare the past and present? WG Grace vs RT Ponting? Sir Jack Hobbs vs Sir Ian Botham? They lived and played in different eras with different equipment and on very different pitches. WG would not have been seen dead chasing a ball to the boundary and even Virender Sehwag would have struggled to clump to mid-wicket a turning ball from a 'sticky dog' pitch left open to the elements as used to be the case.
And so to my own Dream Team, which clearly has to be drawn from memory as well as the aforementioned facts, figures and monochrome footage on TV. For openers, Jack Hobbs, Sir Len Hutton, Matthew Hayden, Barry Richards and Sunil Gavaskar all come into consideration. If it was for anything other than to celebrate Test history, I'd have gone for Richards but with his international career cruelly cut short by South African politics, I will pick the great Indian star and the England colossus Hutton, who dominated bowlers from the 1930s until the 1950s. What might he have achieved had WW2 not intervened? Both Hutton and Gavaskar held world records for many years and I reckon both would have prospered in each others' eras.
In the middle-order, there are so many more to choose from. Bradman is an automatic choice and so is Sachin Tendulkar. That leaves me with a couple of others. Oh, dear. Steve Waugh, Denis Compton, Graeme Pollock, Sir Garry Sobers, Ricky Ponting, Brian Lara and Viv Richards are all in the running. My heart says Viv, but I fear he is in too distinguished a company when it comes to Test cricket. Pollock's Test career, like that of fellow South African Richards, is perhaps too short, although if he had maintained his average 0f 60+ for another ten years, he would be a shoo-in. Compton was a legend and remarkable personality and just about edges out Lara, but the West Indies will be represented by Sobers, whose record Test innings of 365 beat Hutton's and lasted until Lara. Sir Garry averaged about 57 with the bat but also took more than 200 Test wickets. Always useful to have a left-hander, too.
Sobers is one brilliant all-rounder and would bat at six, which leaves room for another all-rounder at least. Botham? No. But Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and Wasim Akram all have genuine claims, as does Wilf Rhodes, who was born in the same year as Test cricket. However, I'll pick the Australian Keith Miller who was a brilliant fast bowler as well as elegant batsman spanning a Test career of ten years.
Wicket-keeper? Well, with batting so important as well as skills wearing the big gloves, Adam Gilchrist gets my vote. A shrewd reader of the game and nice guy, too. Nobody else comes close.
Lots of spin options, but for sheer volume of wickets at the top level, it comes down to the old contest between friendly rivals Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan. The Sri Lankan has the most wickets, the most unreadable deliveries, the smallest average and the biggest smile but the Aussie leg-spinner makes my team. If a spinner's wicket he'd be joined by Murali but a traditional 4 seamers + 1 spinner track leaves space for just two more fast men. Lindwall, McGrath, Donald, Ambrose, Lillee, Walsh, Waqar Younis, Marshall, Holding..... My mind is exploding just thinking how to take two from this shortlist. Glenn McGrath's superb accuracy and longevity wins him a place (at number eleven!) and for pace, guile and a wicked bouncer, Malcolm Marshall just about nudges Denis Lillee out of the team.
So my own Dream XI reads: Hutton, Gavaskar, Bradman (*), Compton, Tendulkar, Sobers, Miller, Gilchrist (+), Marshall, Warne, McGrath.
Here's to the next 2000 Tests....!
