2000 Tests - My All-time Test Team

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....!

When Australia hit Essex for 721 in a day

These days, rapid scoring is part and parcel of cricket. The expansion of limited-over competitions, culminating in the Twenty20 slogfests has not only elevated strike rates above averages in the statistical pecking order but has also led to quicker accumulation of runs in first-class cricket, too. Friendlier wickets and balls have helped, but batsmen are less circumspect and more adventurous as a matter of course. Virender Sehwag is an obvious example.

However, the record number of first-class runs scored in a single day was achieved not in the last ten years, nor in the last twenty. In fact it predates one-dayers by a country mile. In fact, it was achieved 63 years ago this week at Southchurch. In those days, touring national sides often played more than thirty matches, against counties, universities and Test teams. Very different from today, of course. Back in 1948, Don Bradman brought his Australian side to England and into the record books. It was to be the Don's final series but he and his squad went down in history as the only team to go through an entire tour unbeaten and become known as The Invincibles.

Early in that tour, on 15th May, Australia won the toss and went out to bat against Essex having already thumped four teams by an innings. I don't know what inspired them to go ballistic that day but no fewer than four players, Bill Brown, Bradman himself, Sam Loxton and wicketkeeper Ron Saggers reached three figures as the team compiled no fewer than 721 runs. Remarkably, they were also bowled out on that same day, in 129 overs. Four bowlers each delivered more than 20 overs, a workload that would send half of today's seamers into retirement - or hospital! It could have been worse for the hosts had Keith Miller not deliberately allowed himself to be bowled for 0, allegedly in protest at his captain not letting him goto the races. He never did get to see the gee-gees that weekend but after the Sunday break, Miller, Toshack, Johnston et al raced through the Essex line-up twice in a day, thus ending an amazing match down by the seaside. 30,000 spectators witnessed it, which is also barely credible. I know the ground well, and 3,000 would have trouble fitting around the boundary these days, but maybe it was more than just a park pitch back in 1948!

Poor Essex! It was bad enough to be clumped for 700+ on a single day and losing by an innings and 451, but it was achieved by what was essentially the second string Aussie batting line-up. They were treated - if that's the right word - to a masterclass by Bradman, but there were no Harvey, Hassett, Morris nor Barnes, and Ray Lindwall was also rested. While we have indeed seen more than 721 scored in a single day's play in 50-over matches, it will certainly never be beaten in first-class cricket. For a start, teams are incapable of delivering sufficient overs, but 63 years ago, for Bradman's Invincibles it was just another victory on a gruelling tour.