The Hundred: 20 to 11

20: Shane Warne

Let’s face it. Shane Warne would have made this list just for That Ball to Mike Gatting in 1993. Add in his almost single-handed revival of the leg-spinner’s art, his memorable battle with Muralitharan to set new Test wicket records, his astute captaincy for Hampshire and astonishing bowling for Australia in the 2005 Ashes series, and he was a top 10 shoo-in. However his mid-career boorishness and his shiny-toothed, poker-playing late-career IPL persona let home down a tad but I still wouldn’t argue with any claim that SK Warne is one of the greatest bowlers ever. 

19: James Taylor

This corker of a batsman drew my attention in the late Noughties when his teenage batting accomplishments for Leicestershire leapt out of the scorecards and Fantasy Cricket webpages. Cricinfo told me he was only 5 feet 4 (although he has apparently grown two inches since then!) which served to – er – heighten his appeal. Switching to Notts got him noticed by England and he was already an ODI regular when in April 2016 he was diagnosed with an incurable heart condition, prompting immediate retirement at just 26. A huge loss as a player but he’s now a respected selector. 

18: Chaminda Vaas

Sri Lanka’s golden era in the late 1990s and Noughties is often characterised by the feats of Murali, Jayasuriya, Dilshan, Jayawardene and Sangakkara but for me, the left-arm pace bowler Chaminda Vaas was just as important. As well as claiming 355 Test victims, he remains one of the most successful ODI wicket-takers in history, and nobody else has ever taken eight in a single innings. A true class act. I also love the fact that his initials (WPUJC) are longer than his family name! 

17: Keith Boyce

Perhaps his greatest moment came for the West Indies with the ball in the 1973 Oval Test when his lovely languid action and deceptive pace captured 11 England wickets. However, my primary personal memory of KD Boyce hails from his long spell with Essex. It wasn’t so much his bowling or his explosive late-order hitting but his extraordinarily fast and athletic throwing from the boundary. In the first match I ever attended I tried to capture him in action but it was all a blur. Sadly a chronic knee injury forced an early retirement and he succumbed to alcoholism aged just 53. 

16: Kumar Sangakkara

Many top cricketers see their form tail off towards the end of their careers but Kumar Sangakkara seemed to improve with age. Even more elegant than his long-time colleague in the Sri Lanka engine room, Mahela Jayawardene, he not only spent many hours at the crease but huge chunks behind the stumps as ‘keeper but his most successful year in Tests came in 2014 aged 37 and he retired with an extraordinary batting average of 57. A tidy scorer in ODIs and a fine IPL captain, I also recall Sanga’s glorious run of centuries for Surrey in his final seasons. Whether in World Cup Finals or a dull day in Derby, he was always a credit to the game. 

15: David Gower

If Sangakkara epitomises the classical left-hander of the twenty-first century, then his 1980s equivalent would have to be David Gower. His air of effortless superiority as a commentator was matched by his batting for Leicestershire and England. His cover drive was a thing of extraordinary beauty but opposition slips would usually lick their lips in anticipation of an edge! He may have seemed over-nonchalant but that was his style. As captain he won the 1985 Ashes but was unfortunate to lead poor sides to 5-0 defeats against the Windies. He also played on his aristocratic air with laid-back humour on the comedy quiz They Think It’s All Over.

 14: Asif Iqbal

As a boy I loved watching Asif Iqbal play, but with hindsight he’s not an obvious choice. He wasn’t the most exciting member of Pakistan’s excellent side of the Seventies but he always seemed such a slim, trim, tidy batsman with a dashing blade and an effective medium-pace bowling action. When he wasn’t on the TV captaining his country in World Cups, Asif was a crucial all-round cog of Kent’s successful machine, winning plenty of trophies in the early part of that decade.  A player I aspired to imitate – an ambition doomed to fail miserably….. 

13: Michael Holding

What boy wouldn’t want to copy Michael Holding’s bowling action? But it’s one thing to run rhythmically with both hands sitting easy at the waist, and another to deliver explosive 90mph bouncers or yorkers. He really was poetry in motion, although that probably wasn’t the phrase used by his victims. ‘Whispering Death’, indeed. His 14-149 for the West Indies at The Oval in ’76 set the standard for a career punctuated by injuries and he remained a highly effective paceman well in to the Eighties. 

12: Kane Williamson

A 20 year-old Williamson first drew my attention on BBC West’s regional news programme. He spoke intelligently about developing local talent in Bristol and I have subsequently followed his rapid rise from Gloucestershire novice to New Zealand skipper with great interest. He’s one of the favoured few contemporary cricketers who make batting look so easy, and it doesn’t matter whether he’s striking a red or white ball. His Test average tops 50 but it’s Kane the citizen I also admire.

11: James Hildreth

Somerset have developed a load of brilliant batsmen over the decades, from Botham to Banton but surely none have been better, without gaining full international honours, than James Hildreth. He’s been mediocre so far this summer but for ages he’s been one of the county’s most consistent and prolific batsmen. I can’t believe it’s eleven years since his eye-opening triple century and fifteen since he scored the winning runs (off Jimmy Anderson!) to win the Twenty20 Cup. However, it was only last May when I witnessed Hildy steering Somerset to 50-over glory with 69 not out.

Steve Smith mixes it with Bradman but Viv and Sunil reign supreme!

As any cricket fan, Sir Don Bradman was the greatest batsman of all time. Full stop. Of course, players have accumulated far superior run totals given the huge increase in international cricket played these days. After all, in the time it took the Australian squad to sail (yes, sail) to England, modern day India and Sri Lanka would probably have squeezed in two three-Test series, seven ODIs and five T20s.

It was therefore interesting to see Steve Smith's aggregate of 769 in the recent series at home to India celebrated as beating the Don's previous record for a rubber against the Indians - and even that was over five matches (but only six innings) back in his twilight years following the Second World War. Bradman's overall series aggregate record of 974 in seven innings (in England in 1930) will take a lot of beating, with five-Test series a rarity these days. Nevertheless, Smith's total was the third highest for four-Test series in cricket's long and illustrious history. He struck four hundreds (all in the first innings) and two fifties, but what about the players above him?

Well, Smith was just five run adrift of Sunil Gavaskar, after whom half the current India-Australia trophy is named, who accumulated 774 in early 1971. The superb opener's feat was notable particularly because it came in the West Indies and also marked his international debut! The Windies had yet to develop their classic fast bowler battery, although Gavaskar would later prove one of the best players of pace and bounce since Bradman himself. Nevertheless, his debut featured two knocks of 60+ and two weeks later came the first century and a resilient 67 not out. He made an uncharacteristic failure in the first innings at Bridgetown but delivered another match-saving performance (117) a few days afterwards. Trinidad then witnessed Gavaskar at his best.

With India needing just a draw to secure the series, the decider as scheduled for six days. Gavaskar started with 124 but the Sobers-led opposition put together a strong first innings lead. He proceeded to grind out a memorable double-century spread over three days which not only saved the match but also set up what was nearly a shock victory.

However, even the great Sunil Gavaskar was overshadowed by one West Indian, King Viv himself five years in the long hot English summer of 1976. In the series which cemented Viv Richards as my favourite sportsman of all time, he batted only seven times yet topped and tailed the series with double-hundreds of power and strength not witnessed for decades.

At Trent Bridge he struck 31 fours and four sixes in 232 off the likes of John Snow, Derek Underwood and Mike Hendrick before top-scoring in a swift declaration-setting second innings. He missed the Lord's Test but on the second day at Old Trafford (rain almost wiped out day 1) nineteen wickets fell, including Viv's for 4. Gordon Greenidge's 134 was sensational in this context. Viv and Greenidge (again) reached three figures next time out, leaving Roberts, Holding and Daniel to destroy Tony Greig's supposedly stubborn veterans and take the game. At Headingley, Viv produced scores of 'only' 66 and 38 in another triumph but it was the Oval climax which raised this series to the heights of one of the most devastating England defeats of modern times.

I recall paying tennis as a 15 year-old in the summer holidays while spectators and families had radios tuned to Test Match Special while England were put to the sword on a pitch browned by weeks of relentless sun and negligible rainfall. Bob Willis had Greenidge LBW early on for a duck but in came Richards to plunder a fabulous 291. We all thought the Sobers record of 365 was absolutely there for the taking. Tony Greig was probably the only man there celebrating when he bowled the great man. Indeed, the crowd was full of can-tapping Caribbean fans anyway. To his credit Dennis Amiss responded with a double of his own but England were still dismissed 250-odd short. Instead of enforcing the follow-on, Clive Lloyd sent in Fredericks and Greenidge to smash 182 in 32 overs before on the final day Michael Holding was unplayable and the series was theirs. Everybody remembers Holding breaking wickets and English hearts that day but it was Viv's 291 and series aggregate of 829 which provided the anchor - nay the shield and sword - for that success. It was Greig who grovelled and the Windies never looked back.

Steve Smith produced a wonderful sequence of scores in the past few weeks but for excitement he has a long way to go to beat those performances of Gavaskar and Richards.

Heatwave Hysteria

Outside London and the Home Counties we go berserk whenever the thermometer creeps close to 25 degrees. Imagine the feeling now after a fortnight of such temperatures! At least the cricketers are getting onto the pitch and fans are confident of buying discounted advance T20 tickets safe in the knowledge the game won't be rained off, unlike last year's miserable summer.

For anybody aged at least 50 or so, the word heatwave conjures up memories of 1976. Weeks of unending sunshine, no wind, the school sponsored walk being curtailed for fear of mass hopitalisation, while the UK economy went down the toilet. Then, as now,it was foreigners getting the blame. In 2013, it's European migrant workers. 37 years ago, it was the Caribbean population in the cities. The white English backlash acquired a voice in the neo-Nazi National Front while these days it's the rise of UKIP and the English Defence League.

Living in Essex black faces were extemely rare but what I shared with the West Indians living in London, Birmingham, Bristol and elsewhere was enjoyment of Caribbean cricket and watching Clive Lloyd's new team bewitch and bewilder England, and not just in terms of cricket. The cacophany of rhythmic beer can percussion, especially at The Oval, still rings in my ears now - and I experienced it only via BBC TV. The vast brown desert of The Oval's outfield traversed by Michael Holding's mesmerising run-up also remains fixed in the brain.

The book and film 'Grovel!' brilliantly evoke the atmosphere of the cricketing summer, and reminded me, sitting in the uncomfortable heat, of the selection measures resorted to by England to counter the threat posed by the four-man pace attack. The notion of a barrage of dangerous bouncers seems alien in these times of batting-friendly rules. Then, while umpires could intervene to stop 'intimidatory' bowling, there was no limit to the number of short-pitched deliveries. And Lloyd's attack took full advantage. Trouble is, the ludicrously long run-ups employed by Andy Roberts, Wayne Daniel, Holding and co made for a dreary spectacle. Twelve overs an hour became the norm, later prompting minimum over rules in Test cricket. The strokeplay of Lloyd, Roy Fredericks and the relatively youthful Gordon Greenidge and Viv Richards was anything but boring. Quite the reverse, and Viv became my all-time favourite sportsman on the back of his scintillating drives hooks and pulls that long hot summer.

But I digress. 1976 was also the summer of recalls for batsmen considered well past their prime, or those whose prime had previously gone completely unnoticed by the short-sighted selectors in their ivory tower at Lord's. In 1975, the grey-haired, bespectacled figure of David Steele had been summoned to replicate his form for Northants, particularly against fast bowling, against Lillee and Thomson. He had scored no centuries but had avoided calamity to the extent that his efforts (rather than achievements) earned him the unlikely accolade of BBC Sports Personality of the Year! A year later, he was an automatic choice, at 33, for the West Indies series. But who to join him?

The answer was probably the oldest English Test side of all time. Geoff Boycott was missing through bloody-mindedness then injury, Dennis Amiss because of fear of fast bowling after being hurt a few times, and so the 39 year-old John Edrich was crucial to open the innings. 34 year-old John Snow remained England's best fast bowler, despite being increasingly injury-prone. However, some of the young county batsmen were not considered ready to throw into the firing line. Enter Brian Close. At 45, the former England captain and professional Yorkshireman (see also Boycott) had moved to lead a young Somerset side but his fearless persona and willingness to take the bruises rather than risk reckless hooks to the short stuff catapulted him into the England team. He performed well enough to keep his place but the West Indies were simply too good. Skipper Tony Greig was given a torrid time after his 'grovel' comments and another late 30-something in good nick for his county, Chris Balderstone, was given a couple of Test caps.

His first innings at Headingley brought 35 runs in 3 1/2 hours before being caught behind off Roberts. Second time of asking, he was out in similar fashion for just 4. At The Oval, he bagged a pair, as Holding ran rampant. By the time England introduced people like Peter Willey, Mike Selvey, Geoff Miller and Frank Hayes, the series was already lost. Willey and Miller continued their international careers but the following years saw wholesale changes promoted by the departure to the 'Packer Circus'.

Nevertheless, I'm just happy to soak up all this sunshine and recall the glorious summer of '76. Get me another Cornetto!