All Time XIs – India

Today in my all-time XIs series I look at a test playing line up and put myself in the firing line for 1.3 billion of the game’s most avid fans – yes it’s India in the spotlight.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the latest of my variations on an ‘All Time XIs‘ theme. Today for only the second time since starting this series I am doing a test XI, and I my choice puts me in the firing line of 1.3 billion avid cricket fans – yes it is India in the spotlight today. I am going to begin from players whp featured in the time that I have been following the game, and will then move to on the all-time element of the selection.

INDIA FROM MY CRICKET LIFETIME

For this element of the post I have set my cut off point at that 1990 series in England – I caught snatches of the 1986 series, but the 1990 one is the earliest involving India of which I can claim genuine recollection (England should have visited India in 1988-9 but that tour was cancelled for political reasons).

Mayank Agarwal – 11 test matches, 17 innings, 974 runs at 57.29, no not outs to boost the average. He has made a sensational start at the highest level, and is also part of a tremendously successful opening partnership with…
Rohit Sharma – 2,164 runs at 46.54 in test cricket sounds good but a little short of true greatness. However, Sharma was initially played at test level as a middle order batter, and his results since being promoted to the top of the order have been utterly outstanding.
Rahul Dravid – 13,288 test runs at 52.31 for ‘the wall’. In the 2002 series, he and Michael Vaughan of England took it in turns to produce huge scores. Dravid assisted in one of test cricket’s greatest turnarounds in 2001, when India were made to follow on and emerged victorious by 171 runs, and I shall have more to say about this match in due time.
Sachin Tendulkar – more runs and more hundreds (precisely 100 of them) in international cricket than anyone else in the game’s history. He was one of the few batters of his era who could genuinely claim to have had the whip hand on Shane Warne. I first saw him in that 1990 series when he was 17 years of age, and his personal highlights included a maiden test century and an astonishing running catch (he covered at least 30 metres to get to the ball).
*Virat Kohli – one of the top few batters in the world today (the Aussies Smith and Labuschagne both have higher test averages, and Kiwi skipper Kane Williamson bears comparison, and heterodox as I am about such matters I would also when it comes to long form batting throw Ellyse Perry into the mix), and has certainly already achieved enough to be counted among the greats.
+Mahendra Singh Dhoni – wicket keeper and dashing middle order batter. Of the contenders for the gloves he alone has a batting record the enables me to select five front line bowlers.
Ravindra Jadeja – left arm orthodox spinner, lower middle order batter and superb fielder. His averages are the correct way round (35 with the bat and 24 with the ball).
Kapil Dev – right arm medium fast, attacking lower middle order batter. He spent much of his career with no pace support whatsoever, having to attempt to be the spearhead of an attack that was often moderate. At Lord’s in that 1990 series he played an innings that should have saved his side from defeat, though it did not. Facing 653-4 declared (Gooch 333) India were 430-9, with Narendra Hirwani, a fine leg spinner who had captured 16 West Indian wickets on test debut but a genuine no11 bat at the other end, when Kapil faced off spinner Eddie Hemmings. There were four balls left in the over, and Kapil’s task was to score 24 to avert the follow-on. He proceeded to hit each of those last four balls for six to accomplish the task. Hirwani, as predicted, did not last long, and England had a lead of 199. Gooch crashed a rapid 123 in that second England innings (a record 456 runs in a test match, the triple century/ century double was subsequently emulated by Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara), and India collapsed in the fourth innings of the match, giving England what turned out to be the only victory of the series.
Anil Kumble – leg spinner, lower order batter. One of only two bowlers, the other being Jim Laker, to have taken all 10 wickets in a test innings, and the third leading test wicket taker of all time.
Mohammed Shami – right arm fast bowler. India has not generally been known for producing out and out quick bowlers, but Shami’s 180 wickets at 27.49 are a testament to his effectiveness.
Jasprit Bumrah – right arm fast bowler, 14 test matches, 68 wickets at 20.33. Save for when the West Indies were in their pomp visiting fast bowlers have rarely been able to claim to have blitzed the Aussies in their own backyard. Bumrah, who virtually settled the destiny of the Melbourne test of 2018, and with it the Border-Gavaskar trophy, with a devastating spell in the Australian first innings is one of the exceptions.

This combination boasts a stellar top five, a wicket keeping all rounder at six, and five varied and talented bowlers, the first three of whom can all contribute with the bat as well. I believe that Kapil Dev as third seamer in a top quality attack rather than spearhead in a moderate one, which was too often the role he had to play, would be even finer than he was in real life. Now we look at the…

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

This section begins with an explanation (nb not an excuse, there being in my opinion nothing to excuse) of one of my choices:

JADEJA V ASHWIN

The choice for the second spinner role was really between these two, and there will be many wondering at the absence of Mr Ashwin. Here then is the explanation:

Jadeja – 1,869 test runs at 35.24, 213 test wickets at 24.62.
Ashwin – 2,389 test runs at 28.10, 365 wickets at 25.43

Jadeja outdoes Ashwin both with bat and ball, which is why he gets the nod from me.

Now we on to the other honourable mention to get his own subsection…

THE VERY VERY SPECIAL INNINGS

Against the mighty Aussies in 2001 Vangipurappu Venkata Sai Laxman came in in the second innings with India having followed on and already four down and still some way behind. He proceeded to score 281, at the time the highest individual test score ever made by an Indian, India reached 657-7 declared (Dravid 180 as well), and with 383 to defend rolled Australia for 212 to win by 171 runs. India took the next match and with it the series as well – Laxman in one brilliant, brutal innings had upended the entire series. Laxman finished his career with 8,781 test runs at 45.24, a very respectable record, but not quite on a par with the middle order batters I actually selected – India has always been hugely strong in this department.

OTHER HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Two other opening batters besides my chosen pair featured in my thoughts – Virender Sehwag, scorer of two test triple hundreds, and a shoo-in for Agarwal’s partner had I decided not go with the known effective partnership, and Navjot Singh Sidhu, an attack minded opener in the 1990s, who had a fine test record, but not quite fine enough to make the cut. For much of my time as a cricket follower India have struggled to find openers, often selecting makeweights to see of the new ball before the folks in the middle order take control (Deep Dasgupta, Shiv Sunder Das, Manoj Prabhakar and Sanjay Bangar, the last two of whom also served as opening bowlers are four examples that I can remember). In the middle of the order Mohammed Azharruddin, Sourav Ganguly and Vinod Kambli were three of the highest quality performers to have missed out, although the first named is of course tainted by his association with match fixing. Cheteshwar Pujara was a candidate for the no 3 slot I awarded to Dravid, but for me ‘the wall’ just shades it. Kiran More, Nayan Mongia, Rishabh Pant and current incumbent Wriddhiman Saha are a fine foursome of glove men all of whom would have their advocates. Among the spinners I passed over were Chauhan and Raju in the 1990s, Harbhajan Singh in the early 2000s and Narendra Hirwani the leg spinner who took 16 on debut but did little else in his career. Also, while mentioning Indian spinners who I have been privileged to have witnessed in action I cannot fail to mention Poonam Yadav, who nearly bowled her country to this years T20 world cup. The seam bowling department offered fewer alternatives, but Javagal Srinath, the first Indian bowler of genuine pace who I ever saw, left arm fast medium Zaheer Khan and dependable fast medium Bhuvneshwar Kumar would all have their advocates, but I had already inked Kapil in the for role of third seamer and wanted the two out and out quick bowlers of the current era as my shock bowlers.

INDIA ALL TIME

I will only mention the players I have not already covered, before listing the batting order in full and moving on to the honourable mentions.

Sunil Gavaskar has a test record that absolutely demands inclusion – he was the first to 10,000 test runs and made a good portion of those runs against the West Indies when they were stacked with fast bowlers. I could not include him in the team from my time as a cricket follower, because he was finishing his great career just as my interest in cricket began to develop. I saw one reminder of his past glories, when he batted for The Rest of The World v the MCC in the MCC Bicentenary match and made a chanceless century, never giving the bowlers a sniff.
Cottari K Nayudu was an off spinning all rounder and India’s first ever test captain. His seven test matches left him with a modest looking record at that level, but his first class record, built up over a span of 46 years looks very impressive indeed.
Syed Kirmani is generally considered to be have been India’s greatest wicket keeper.
Amar Singh was a shooting star across the cricketing sky, India’s first great fast bowler, and for many years the only one of international repute that his country produced. His seven test appearances produced 28 wickets at 30.69, but it is record in 92 first class appearances, 506 wickets at 18.35 that gets him the nod from me, especially given what cricket in India was like in that period.
Palwankar Baloo was a left arm spinner who played his cricket before India was a test playing nation, and had to contend with huge prejudice as a member of a low caste. Unlike the various Jam Sahebs, Maharajas and Nawabs who were able to strut their stuff in English county cricket he had to settle for those games people would pick him for in India. The 33 games he played at first class level yielded him 179 wickets at 15.31 each. Although I am open to correction on this I believe he is also the only first class cricketer to share a name with a character from the Jungle Book (Baloo is the big brown bear who teaches Mowgli the law of the jungle in Rudyard Kipling’s magnum opus).

Thus my all-time Indian team in batting order is: 1)Sunil Gavaskar 2)Mayant Agarwal who in spite of his short career to date holds his position 3)Rahul Dravid 4)Sachin Tendulkar 5)*Virat Kohli 6)Cottari K Nayudu 7)Kapil Dev 8)+Syed Kirmani 9)Amar Singh 10)Palwankar Baloo 11)Jasprit Bumrah

This combination features a stellar top five, 6,7 and 8 all capable of useful runs, and three superb specialist bowlers. The wicket keeper is top drawer. The bowling attack features two genuinely fast bowlers, Kapil Dev as third seamer and two contrasting spinners in Baloo (left arm orthodox) and Nayudu (off spin).

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Other than those mentioned earlier the only other opener I considered was Vijay Merchant, who had the second highest first class average of anyone at 71.22. His test average was a mere 47 however, a massive decline on his first class output for reasons I shall go into later, and for this reason I reluctantly ruled him out. In the middle order Vijay Hazare, Pahlan Umrigar and Gundappa Viswanath would all have their advocates, will I also had to ignore the possessor of the 4th highest first class score in history, Bhausaheb Nimbalkar. Among all rounders the biggest miss was Mulvantrai Himmatlal ‘Vinoo’ Mankad, who completed the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in test cricket in his 23rd match (only Botham has required fewer), but I was determined to select Baloo, which meant that there would be less scope for Mankad’s left arm spin, so in the interests of balance I left him out. My view on the mode of dismissal named after him is that it is the batter who is trying to gain an unfair advantage by leaving the ground earlier, and if the bowler spots and runs them out well done to them, although delaying before going into delivery stride in the hope of catching a batter napping is taking things a little too far. Dattu Phadkar, a middle order batter who was often used as an opening bowler was another who could have been considered. With all due respect to Messrs Bedi, Prasanna and Venkataraghavan who each had more than respectable records the only one of the great 1970s spinners I really regretted not being able to find a place for was Bhagwath Chandrasekhar the leg spinner who was a genuine original. His right arm was withered by polio, and that was the arm he bowled with. Among specialist pace bowlers there are, as I have previously indicated, few contenders, but Chetan Sharma had has moments in the 1980s. It is now time for…

A CODA ON THE DOMINANCE OF THE BAT IN INDIAN CRICKET

For a long time first class matches in India were timeless, which is to say they were played out until a definite result was reached. Some of the scores were astronomical, with the only two first class matches to have had aggregates of over 2,000 runs both played in India. I will use one match as a case study:

BOMBAY V MAHARASHTRA 1948

This match featured in Patrick Murphy’s “Fifty Incredible Cricket Matches”, and he used a phrase about matches such as this one that I just love “a meaningless fiesta for Frindalls” (William Howard Frindall, aka ‘Bearders’, was the second chronologically of two legendary statisticians to have initials WHF, the other being William Henry Ferguson). Bombay scored 651-9 declared in their first innings, Maharashtra made 407 in response, and Bombay declined to enforce the follow-on, racking up 714-8 declared at the second time of asking to set Maharashtra 959 to win. Maharashtra managed 604 of these, losing by 354 runs in a match that saw 2,376 runs and 37 wickets, the highest aggregate for any first class match ever. Three batters notched up twin centuries, Uday Merchant (nb Uday, not the famous Vijay) and Dattu Phadkar for Bombay, and Madhusudan Rege for Maharashtra. Phadkar was a test regular, Rege played one test match in which he aggregated 15, and even in first class cricket averaged only 37 in all, while Merchant had a first class average of 55.78 but was never picked for a test match, and there were three other individual centuries. What this kind of thing meant was that Indian bowlers tended to operate under a collective inferiority complex, while the batters would flounder any time they faced other than a shirt front. Fred Trueman, who bowled against Pahlan Umrigar in the 1952 test series (at his retirement Umrigar held a fistful of Indian test records), and claimed that there were times when he was bowling and the square leg umpire was nearer the stumps than Umrigar, the batter, and while this story may have grown in the telling, it would have been an exaggeration rather than a complete invention. This is why I would need a lot of convincing of the actual merits of some of those who had fine looking batting records in those years, while any bowler with a good looking record is likely to get huge credit, and it is one reason why I make no apology for my choices of Amar Singh and Palwankar Baloo in my All Time Indian XI.

LINKS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

We have reached the end of our journey through Indian cricket, and it only remains to put in a couple of links before applying my usual sign off. First, finishing with the cricket I draw your attention to the pinchhitter’s latest offering, which will certainly repay a read. Finally, a splendid piece on whyevolutionistrue in defence of governor Andrew Cuomo who has been pilloried by religious zealots for daring to not give god full credit for such success as has been had in the fight against Covid-19. And now, in my own distinctive way it is time to call ‘Time’:

P1320001 (2) — A splendid orb web brought to my attention by the angle of the sun in my garden this morning (five pictures)

All Time XIs – Record Setters XI

My latest variation on the all-time XI theme, a USian thread about protecting one’s family, introducing my father’s blog and the inevitable photographs.

INTRODUCTION

It is time for another variation on the ‘All Time XI‘ theme. Today I introduce you to a squad of record setters. While most of them had extraordinary careers, the records I have chosen to highlight were usually established over a few matches or a season, with one and a bit exceptions. As usual with one of my XIs I have been selecting it as a team as well as a collection of individuals, so it encapsulates a broad range of talents.

THE RECORD SETTERS XI

*WG Grace – I have selected him for two extraordinary purple patches, not his overall career record, although that too is extraordinary. In his last 11 matches of the 1874 season, at the start of which no one had ever achieved the season double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in first class matches, he achieved that double. These 11 matches, capping an already fine season, included a spectacular burst of six games in which he scored a century and took 10 or more wickets five times, managing a 10 wicket haul in the other game but only one run. Before this the dual feat had been accomplished only seven times, four of them by WG himself. In August 1876 he scored 839 runs in three successive first class knocks – 344 for MCC v Kent, 177 for Gloucestershire v Nottinghamshire and 318 not out for Gloucestershire v Yorkshire.
Tom Hayward – the Cambridgeshire born Surrey opener achieved a feat the to this day remains his alone – he scored twin centuries in each of two successive first class games, all four centuries being scored in the space of a week.
Frank Woolley – the Kent left handed all rounder is the only one who is selected for a record achieved over the duration of a career – he alone achieved the career ‘treble’ of 10,000 runs, 1,000 wickets and 1,000 catches in first class cricket. He is joint record holder (with his captain in this XI, WG Grace) of the record number of 1,000 run seasons, 28. He achieved the ‘batting all rounders double of 2,000 runs and 100 wickets in a first class season on four occasions, which is also a record.
Denis Compton – the Middlesex ace holds the record aggregate for first class runs in a seaon and first class centuries in a season, 3,816 and 18 respectively, both set in 1947. He also scored the fastest ever first class triple century, 181 minutes in Benoni.
James Horace Parks – the Sussex batting all rounder is given his full name because his son, also a James Parks, played for Sussex as a middle order batter and sometimes wicket keeper. In 1937 he achieved a feat that is likely to remain his alone by combing 3,000 runs (3,003) with 100 wickets (101) in the first class season. His grandson Bobby kept wicket for Hampshire in the 1980s, but as yet there has been no sign of a fourth generation of first class cricketing Parkses to draw them level with the Cowdreys.
George Hirst – the Yorkshire all rounder has a unique season double to his credit – in 1906 he scored 2,385 first class runs and captured 208 first class wickets, the only 2,000 run, 200 wicket double ever achieved in a first class season. Against Somerset at Bath that season he had a match that was a microcosm of his season – centuries in both of this sides innings and five-fors in both of the opposition teams innings, a unique match ‘quadruple’.
+Leslie Ames – the ‘wicket keeper’s double’ of 1,000 runs and 100 dismissals in first class matches for the season has been achieved four times in first class history, and the first three occasions were all by the Kent man, including in 1929 a record season haul for a keeper of 128 dismissals (79 caught, 49 stumped).
Richard Hadlee – in 1969 the English first class season was drastically reduced to make room for the John Player League, a 40 overs per side competition (part of the definition of a first class game is that must run to at least three days, which is why Alastair Cook’s 2005 double century against the Aussies does not feature in his first class record – that was a two day game), and further changes since then have continued to reduce the number of first class fixtures played. The first of only two players to achieve the 1,000 runs, 100 wickets double for a season post 1969 was the Kiwi right arm fast bowler and left handed attacking batter, an overseas stalwart for Nottinghamshire over many years, in 1984. He planned his campaign that year with a thoroughness that would have left most generals blushing, assessing exactly what he reckoned he needed to do and which opponents he could do it against, and it worked out more or less according to his script. He wrote a book, “At The Double”, which came out in 1985 and detailed his extraordinary assault on the history books. Hadlee also has the best test innings figures ever recorded by a fast bowler, 9-52 against Australia, in the first test series that New Zealand ever won against their trans-Tasman rivals (the eighth Aussie dissmissed in that innings, Geoff ‘Henry’ Lawson, attempted to attack spinner Vaughan Brown and succeeded only in offering a dolly catch, which Hadlee, a possible all ten not withstanding, coolly accepted).
Charles ‘The Terror’ Turner – the Aussie took 283 first class wickets on the 1884 tour of England, a record for any tourist anywhere, and in 1887-8 became the first and only bowler to take 100 first class wickets in an Australian season.
Tich Freeman – the 5’2″ Kent leg spinner took 304 first class wickets in the 1928 season, the all time record (he also has numbers 2,3 and 5 on the list, and six of the 13 occasions on which a bowler has taken 250 first class wickets in a season were his. Freeman also stands alone in achieving three first class ‘all tens’.
Tom Richardson – the Surrey fast bowler, who took more wickets in a season than any other of his pace – 290 in 1894 was his best haul.

This is a beautifully balanced XI, with depth in batting (even Turner and Freeman had records that included test fifties), a bowling attack that is rich in both numbers and variety, with speedsters Richardson and Hadlee being backed an off spin/ cut bowler in Turner, a leggie in Freeman, a left arm orthodox spinner (Woolley), a left arm unorthodox spinner (Compton) plus Hirst’s left arm pace and swing and the far from negligible bowling offerings of Grace and Parks, and Hayward’s medium pace sometimes had its moments – only Ames would definitely not get a turn at the bowling crease (though even that could be arranged – WG deputized as keeper in test matches on occasions, once enabling the official glove man, the Hon Alffred Lyttelton to collect 4-19 bowling lobs!).

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Within my brief (record setting, but over a few matches or a season, rather than a career, with an exception made for Woolley), the most obvious miss was Jim Laker, the Surrey off spinner who holds the record for most wickets in a first class game (19-90 v Australia at Old Trafford in 1956), while, as mentioned by Woolley in “King of Games”, had things gone a bit differently when Kent played Northamptonshire in 1907 Blythe would have had an unassailable case for inclusion with the only ‘all twenty’ in first class history to his credit. Maurice Tate and Albert Trott each had seasons in which they scored 1,000 first class runs and took 200 first class wickets. Don Bradman holds the record average for an English first class season, 115.66 in 1938. Geoffrey Boycott twice averaged over 100 for a full English season, but in both cases his side fell down the table (nine whole places to a then historic low of 13th in 1971), while Hirst’s annus mirabilis saw Yorkshire finish second to Kent, the single run by which they lost to Gloucestershire being the biggest small margin in cricket’s history until the final of the 2019 Men’s World Cup. Brian Lara holds the world record individual scores in both test and first class cricket, but both of those scores, and his earlier 375 v England in 1994 came in drawn games which never really looked like being anything else. Syd Barnes’ 49 wickets in the series against South Africa in 1913-4, missing the last game after a dispute over terms and conditions, was an extraordinary feat. George Giffen’s match for South Australia v Victoria in which he scored 271 not out, and then took 7-70 amd 9-96 nearly earned him a place.

I end this section by reminding folks that I am selecting XIs, not full squads or even tour parties, and that I endeavour to ensure that each side has a good balance to it, both of which need to be borne in mind when suggesting changes.

LINKS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

Another XI has trodden the aspi.blog boards, but before signing off in my usual fashion I have a couple of other things to do. First, Gabrielle Blair has posted a wonderful twitter thread on the theme of “protecting one’s family”, taking aim at the obsession some of compatriots have with guns, which she then turned into a blog post on her site, designmom. I urge to read it.

Second, in a couple of my recent posts I have drawn attention to my mother’s new blog (see here and here), well now it is my father’s turn. He has set up a blog called morethanalittlefoxed, in which he writes about books. He has begun an A-Z series, and as a starter I offer you his D entry, “D is for Frances Isabella Duberly” (he has reached the letter E, but shrewd wordpressers will realize that by picking out the D I have given visitors three posts that are no more than two clicks away – ‘previous post’ and ‘next post’ being available when they exist.

Finally it is time for the usual sign off…

P1310952 (2) — I was delighted to see this bird through my window this morning – my photographic opportunities are limited to what I see through my front window and what I can get while out in the back garden when weather permits.

P1310961 (2) — A large and surprisingly co-operative fly

P1310968 (2) — Even with a telescopic zoom lens capturing a goldfinch when looking upwards, with the sun in a less than ideal position and over a distance of approximately 50 metres is not the most straightforward of tasks.

P1310971 (2) — I spotted this stone while walking laps of my garden.

P1310974 (2) — An insect crawls on my book..

P1310977 (2) — …and here it is on the forefinger of my left hand.

Record Setters XI — The XI in tabulated form with abridged comments.

All Time XIs – Blockers vs Hitters

Another variation on the ‘all time XIs’ theme, this time pitting blockers against hitters.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to another variation on the ‘All Time XIs‘ theme. Today I present two XIs, one made of players noted for blocking with both bat and ball, and to take them on a much more explosive combination. We start with…

THE BLOCKERS XI

Gary Kirsten – left handed opening batter. He once scored 275 in 14 hours at the crease v England. After a distinguished career for South Africa he became a coach, in which role he has also enjoyed considerable success.
Hanif Mohammad – right handed opening bat, holder of the record for the longest test innings ever played, a 970 minute marathon in which he accrued 337, at the time of its compilation the third highest ever test score behind Sobers and Hutton.
Rahul Dravid – right handed bat. He was referred to as ‘The Wall’ in his playing days, a moniker that explains his inclusion.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul – left handed bat, occasional leg spinner. Holder of various records for longest periods of time between dismissals – four times in his test career he went more than 1,000 minutes between dismissals. He is also, with due respect to Graeme Smith of South Africa, exhibit A in the case against the proposition that left handed batters are naturally more elegant than their right handed counterparts.
Jimmy Adams – left handed bat, occasional slow left arm orthodox, occasional wicket keeper. His approach to batting got him dubbed ‘Jimmy Padams’.
Trevor Bailey – right handed bat, right arm fast medium. Famous for saving the Lord’s test match of 1953 in company with Willie Watson, his 71 in four hours on that occasion was comparatively sprightly next to his effort in the second innings at The Gabba in 1958. He took 357 minutes to reach the slowest fifty in the history of first class cricket, ultimately scoring 68 in 458 minutes at the crease. Jack Fingleton in his book about that Ashes tour, “Four Chukkas to Australia”, notes that of the 428 deliveries Bailey faced in this blockathon no fewer than 388 were dots. Bailey’s innings was cast into even grimmer light by the performance of Aussie debutant Norman O’Neill who in the final innings of that match scored 71 not out in under two and a half hours to carry his team to victory. Jimmy Burke in that Aussie chase was unbeaten on 28 from 252 minutes at the crease, but as again noted by Fingleton, he was playing for his partners, giving them the strike whenever possible, whereas Bailey hogged the bowling, reducing his team mates, who numbered Graveney and Cowdrey among others to the same level of strokeless impotence as himself.
+Jack Russell – wicket keeper, left handed bat. He played second fiddle to Mike Atherton in a famous escape act at Johannesburg, being 29 not out after over four hours at the end of it. He performed other notable acts of batting defiance, including a determined century against Australia at Old Trafford which dragged England back from 59-6 and a gallant effort to save a match in the Caribbean, in which he batted most of the final day for 55
Bapu Nadkarni – slow left arm orthodox bowler, left hand bat. He conceded just 1.67 runs per over through his career, and against Pakistan once had 0-23 from 32 overs. His greatest blocking spell came against England when he had figures of 0-5 from 32 overs!
Joel Garner – right arm fast bowler, right handed bat. A notoriously parsimonious bowler, though in fairness he did take over 250 wickets in his 59 test matches as well.
*Alfred Shaw – right arm medium pace, right hand bat. The man who bowled more overs (albeit four ball overs in his day) than he conceded runs in his first class career. He once took 7-7 in 41 overs.
Hugh Tayfield – off spinner, right hand bat, once bowled 137 successive dot balls, including 16 successive eight-ball maidens. He was also South Africa’s leading test wicket taker from their first period as a test nation.

The Blockers XI is a well balanced side, with Garner, Shaw and Bailey to bowl seam, contrasting spin options in Tayfield and Nadkarni, good batting depth and even a respectable mix of left and right handers. It is now time to meet…

THE HITTERS XI

Sanath Jayasuriya – left handed opening bat, slow left arm orthodox bowler. A scorer of a test match triple century among other fine innings at that level, he was also the star of the 1996 World Cup, which his country, Sri Lanka, won. In the quarter final of that tournament, against an England side who had only made it that far because they had two non test-playing countries in their group he made an insufficient total of 235-7 look positively puny by slamming 82 off 44 balls.
Victor Trumper – right handed opening bat. The first ever to score 100 before lunch on the opening day of a test match (at Old Trafford in 1902, facing an England side who had set themselves to “keep Victor quiet before lunch”, reckoning that once the run up area dried sufficiently for him to use that Bill Lockwood would be deadly). He averaged over 40 runs per hour through his career, and in the course of that 1902 tour he amassed 11 centuries in all. Ashley Mallett, the former test match off spinner, is the author of a biography of him, and account of the 1902 tour titled “Victor Trumper and the 1902 Australians” by Lionel H Brown is also well worth a read.
*Donald Bradman – right handed batter. The finest batter the world had ever seen. At Leeds in 1930 he had 100 on the board by lunch, 220 by tea and then slowed down a little in the final session to end the day 309 not out, going on to 334 on the second morning. His 452 not out for NSW vs Queensland, at the time the highest score in first class history and still the highest ever made in a team’s second innings, came in just 415 minutes. His record score for his second state, South Australia, 369 against Tasmania, came in just four and half hours.
Graeme Pollock – left handed bat noted for extremely fast scoring.
Viv Richards – right handed bat, occasional off spinner. The ‘Master Blaster’ scored what was then the fastest ever test century in terms of balls received, 56, and remains no 2 on that list at his home ground at St Johns, Antigua in 1986. England were the victims, as they had been of his 138 in the 1979 world cup final, his two double centuries in the 1976 test series and his then ODI record score of 189 not out in 1984. His highest first class score, a then Somerset record 322, came in less than a full day’s play against Warwickshire (RH Moore for Hampshire, Eddie Paynter for Lancashire and ‘Duleep’ for Sussex are others to have managed this in a County Championship match.
+Adam Gilchrist – wicket keeper and left handed bat. The fastest Ashes century ever in terms of balls received, 57, at the WACA in 2006. Among his many other blistering efforts was a 149 in a World Cup Final innings reduced by the weather to 38 overs.
Gilbert Jessop – right handed bat, right arm fast bowler. The fastest scorer in the history of the game, with no fewer than 11 of his 53 first class centuries taking less than an hour to complete. He holds joint second and fourth place in the list of fastest first class double hundreds, 120 and 130 minutes respectively, and his 191 in 90 minutes at Hastings would have been at least 213 under post 1910 rules (for most of his career a ball had to go out of the ground to count six, not just to clear the ropes before bouncing as now). His 40 minute century against Yorkshire remains the second quickest ever in first class cricket in non-contrived circumstances (efforts when the bowling side are deliberately giving away runs to set up a declaration are nowadays quite rightly reduced to footnotes). I recommend “The Croucher”, a biography of him by Gerald Brodribb.
Wasim Akram – left arm fast bowler, left handed batter. His highest test score, and the highest ever by a number eight, 257, included 11 sixes, and that was not out of keeping with his approach to batting. His left arm pace bowling netted 414 test wickets at 23.62.
Shane Warne – leg spinner, right hand bat. More test runs than any other non-centurion, with 3,154 of them, and his inclination was very much to attack, as it was with his bowling, and of course it is his708 test wickets at 25.41 that get him into this team.
Michael Holding – right arm fast bowler, right handed batter. He once played an innings of 59 against England that included five maximums, but it is of course as ‘Whispering Death’, taker of 249 test wickets at 23.68 in his 60 test matches that he is included.
Muttiah Muralitharan – off spinner and right handed batter. He scored his test runs at 72 per hundred balls, and 174 of his 1,261 test career runs came in sixes, but it is of course his 800 test wickets at 22.72 in 133 appearances that earn him his place.

This team boasts a magnificent top five, the greatest keeper/batter the game has ever seen, the ideal number 7 in Jessop and four guys selected primarily as bowlers who are as varied as they are formidable. Wasim Akram and Michael Holding look every inch a deadly new ball pair, with Jessop a more than handy third pace option, while an aggregate of 1,508 wickets from 278 matches suggests that my selected spin twins can do the job. Additionally, with Wasim bowling left arm and Holding right arm the pace attack has an extra level of variation. Finally, Jayasuriya’s left arm spin is not an entirely negligible quantity.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE CONTEST AND HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Obviously the matches would have to be timeless to prevent the blockers from being able to settle for a draw. For my on field umpires I choose Ray Julian to restrict the output of Jimmy ‘Padams’ and Kumar Dharmasena with his two World Cup finals worth of experience. The TV Replay umpire can be Aleem Dar. The hitters will probably have to bowl a lot of overs, but they have the wherewithal to do so, and they are not going to be short of runs. In a five match series, with all games to be played out I would expect the hitters to emerge comfortable winners, estimated margin 4-1.

For the hitters, among the many contenders to miss out were:

Left handed openers: Saeed Anwar – not quite the equal of Jayasuriya as a fast scorer, and also Jayasuriya gives me an extra bowling option. Chris Gayle, two test triple centuries, more T20 centuries than anyone else (22 of them), but his off spin is not as useful as Jayasuriya’s slow left arm to this team.

Right handed openers: Virender Sehwag – to be able to score 300 in a day in test cricket is remarkable, but I could not drop Trumper even for Sehwag, though this was a very close call. Rohit Sharma, with a 264 in an ODI to his credit and a good start as a test match opener was also in with a shout.

In the middle order: Charlie Macartney, another member of the ‘hundred before lunch on day 1 of a test match’ club and a left arm spinner was close, while the biggest miss by far was Sir Garry Sobers, who I was close to giving Graeme Pollock’s no four slot. Kevin Pietersen would also have his advocates, but would they really drop the ‘master blaster’ to make way for him?

Among the all rounders: Stokes may command a place if he continues on his current trajectory, Botham was an alternative to Jessop for the no 7 slot, but I felt that leaving ‘the croucher’ out of a ‘hitters XI’ to not be an option. Flintoff of course was also a huge hitter, but not a serious rival to Jessop or Botham. Arthur Wellard, the Somerset fast medium bowler who clubbed over 500 maximums in his first class career was another who I regretted not being able to find a place for. There are many others who will have their advocates. Another intriguing possibility, could I have countenanced dropping Jessop would have been to give the no7 slot to the most complete all round cricketer among current top level players: Ellyse Perry. If I could imagine a team called the ‘Hitters XI’ without Jessop I think that giving Perry his no 7 slot would be my choice.

I wanted an awesome foursome of bowlers who all approached their batting as aggressively as they did their bowling, and although I am open to suggestions I do not think that element of the team could be improved upon.

The blockers had some big misses as well. I could only select two openers of course, which meant no place for such masters of the blockers art as Alastair Cook, Geoffrey Boycott, Dick Barlow (the Barlow of ‘my Hornby and my Barlow long ago”) and Alick Bannerman. ‘The Wall’ had an inalienable claim to the no 3 slot, which meant no place for William Scotton or Chris Tavare. Bailey kept out his fellow Essex all-rounder Johnny Douglas (“Johnny Won’t Hit Today, from his initials JWHT) and the first of the great Aussie gum chewers, Ken ‘slasher’ Mackay. In the wicket keeper’s slot I might have had Brendon Kuruppu, scorer of one of the most drab and featureless double hundreds ever compiled. Jason Gillespie’s monumental effort in what turned out to be his final test knock was close to earning him a place among the bowlers. Alfred Shaw’s Aussie counterpart Harry Boyle might also have had a bowling slot.

PHOTOGRAPHS

The stage has been set for the clash between the blockers and the hitters, which of course, especially with me doing the selecting, the hitter are bound to emerge victorious from, and all that remains is my usual sign off…

P1310948 (2) — A cat on the prowl outside my front window.

Blockers v Hitters — The teams in tabulated form with abridged comments.

All Time XIs – Eccentrics

My latest variation on the ‘all time XI’ theme, this time producing an Eccentric XI – and using one of them as a jumping off point for a law change suggestion. Challenge for you: is the XI or its creator more eccentric?

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to another variation on the ‘All Time XI‘ theme. In the spotlight today are cricketing eccentrics. All of the players named have notable achievements to their credit, and my follow-up feature to presenting the XI will refer to one of these in particular.

THE ALL TIME ECCENTRICS XI

George Gunn – right handed opening bat, 35,208 first class runs at 35.96. I wrote about him in my Nottinghamshire piece (all my county XIs can be accessed from this page), and I am now going to concentrate on his eccentricities. On one occasion, when facing Gubby Allen of Middlesex at the start of an innings Gunn took the unusual approach when facing a quick bowler of commencing to walk down the pitch as Allen began his run up! This extraordinary little innings lasted five balls before Allen managed to clean bowl Gunn, and the score at that point was 18-1! On another occasion Gunn was batting on a beautiful sunny day and was looking in fine form when he suddenly popped up a simple chance. Asked what had happened he laconically replied “too hot.” Once Gunn was unbeaten when the lunch interval (as he thought) arrived, and he started to head for the pavilion, only to be told that the playing hours had been revised, and lunch was not until 2:00. Gunn allowed the next delivery to bowl him and walked off saying “I always take my lunch at 1:30”. There was a game against Yorkshire, when after those worthies had posted a big total Gunn ground out a century in over six hours, copping all manner of stick from the fielders along the way. Notts failed to avoid the follow on, and with less than two hours left in the game they went in again. This time, Gunn was 109 not out, with none of the other three players to bat in the Notts second innings even in double figures. Gunn said about this second innings display “I thought I’d play swashbuckle to show them”. My final story concerns a letter Gunn was given at the back end of the 1920 season, which he pocketed and promptly forgot about. Rediscovering it the following spring he opened it and found that it had contained an invitation to go on the 1920-1 Ashes Tour!.
George Brown – right handed batter, right arm fast bowler, occasional wicket keeper. 25,649 runs at 26.49, 626 wickets at 29.31, 568 catches and 78 stumpings in first class cricket. I described his response to a barrage from Larwood in my Hampshire post. Another example of distinctive behaviour is the story of how he came to Hampshire in the first place – it is said that he walked the 60 miles from his native village of Cowley, Oxfordshire to Southampton with his cricket bag over his shoulder.
Sydney Rippon – right handed bat, 3,823 first class runs at 21.53. One half of a pair of identical twins (Dudley was the other) who played for Somerset. They looked so similar that scorers often had a hard time working out which of them to credit runs to (both were front line batters). Sydney gains his place in this XI for a highly unusual achievement – batting for the same county team in the same season under two different names! He was an amateur who worked as a civil servant, and once while he was off work sick Somerset had dire need of his services with the bat. Not wishing either to let his county down or get in trouble with his employers he appeared in the match in question as ‘S Trimnell’! He had a reasonable game under his assumed name, and did manage to avoid trouble with his employers.
Bill Alley – left handed bat, right arm medium-fast, 19,621 first class runs at 31.88 and 768 wickets at 22.68. Another Somerset legend. He joined the county when closer to 40 than 30 years of age and played for them for over a decade. He did many thing sin his eventful life. When his playing days were done he became an umpire. There are two versions of a story about his early umpiring days which are both entertaining: both versions involve a young bowler attempting to illicitly alter the condition of the ball in his favour – in one Umpire Alley spots what is going and intervenes telling the youngster in the twang of his native Oz “mate, this is how you do it”, and gives him the benefit of his experience; while in the other Alley sees the ball at the end of an over and says to the youngster “you’ve done a good job on this – if you don’t get seven wickets with it I’m reporting you.” There is also a claim made that would definitely if true put Alley in a club of one – that a certain FS Trueman terminated a friendly visit to the Somerset dressing room because Alley’s lurid language was too much for him!
Derek Randall – right handed batter, brilliant fielder, 28,456 first class runs at 38.14. Rated by many who saw him as possibly the fidgetiest cricketer in history. He got a raw deal from the England selectors, who often used him up near the top of the order when he was better suited to batting in the middle, but he still managed some outstanding performances at that level, notably his 174 in the Centenary Test in 1977 when England made a gallant effort to chase a target of 463, losing by 45 runs, coincidentally the identical margin by which they lost the inaugural test match in 1877. In the fourth test of the 1978-9 Ashes at Sydney it was Randall who stopped England from losing their grip on that series. England had won the first two games, but had then been beaten in Melbourne, and had batted atrociously in the first innings at Sydney. After some stern words from skipper Brearley the team had rallied in the field to restrict their first innings deficit to 142, but they still needed something special to get out of the hole they were in. After the early loss of an out of sorts Boycott, Randall came in, and supported first by Brearley, then by Gooch and then by a few others lower down Randall batted for nine and a half hours in searing heat to reach 150. That meant that England had 204 to defend, and on a pitch that was starting to misbehave Yallop’s inexperienced Aussie side crashed to 111 all out putting England 3-1 up, with two matches to go in the six match series, meaning that The Ashes, regained by Brearley in 1977 were safely retained. As it happened England won both remaining matches and the series finished 5-1, an almost complete reversal of Aussie skipper Yallop’s preliminary 6-0 to Australia boast. Derek Randall wrote an autobiography, “The Sun Has Got It’s Hat On”, which I recommend.
Billy Midwinter – right handed batter, right arm medium, 4,534 first class runs at 19.13, 419 wickets at 17.41.His chief eccentricity lay in his career pattern – Australia v England at the dawn of test cricket in 1877, England v Australia in 1881-2 and then back to Australia v England (others have played for both countries, but none for both A v E and E v A). His birthplace, for those who set store by such details (see my previous post in this series) was English – St Briavels in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire.
+Alan Knott – wicket keeper and right handed bat, 18,105 runs at 29.63, 1,211 catches and 133 stumpings in first class cricket. The difficulty with finding a wicket keeper for a side of this nature is that so very many of the breed are so clearly eligible that it is hard to pick one. Accounts of his antics suggest that Alan Knott very successfully inhabited the border zone between outright genius (exemplified by his glovework) and downright bonkers.
*Aubrey Smith – right arm fast bowler, right handed bat, 346 first class wickets at 22.34, 2,986 runs at 13.63. ‘Round the Corner’ Smith as he was dubbed for his run up (apparently it was actually more a logarithmic curve than a round-the-corner run) captained England in his only test match appearance (win record 100%, 7 wickets at 8.71 each in the match), before handing the reins to Monty Bowden, who at the age of 23 remains the youngest person to have captained the England men in a test match. After his playing days were done he trod the boards, ultimately going to Hollywood (at their instance, not his), where he established Hollywood Cricket Club, of which, having done the job for England, he was the inaugural captain. There is a story of Smith in his old age fielding at slip, dropping a catch, calling for his glasses, then dropping another sitter and saying “dashed fool brought my reading glasses”.
George Simpson-Hayward – right arm bowler of under arm off spin, right handed bat, 503 first class wickets at 21.39, 5,556 runs at 18.58. The ‘last of the lobsters’ (his style of under arm bowling was also known as ‘lobs’), he won a test series for England against South Africa (23 wickets at 18.26 in the five matches) with his bowling, the last to make a mark with that style of bowling at the very highest level (although Mike Brearley did on occasion try under arm bowling for Middlesex many years later).
Cecil Parkin – right arm bowler of all sorts, right hand bat, 1,048 wickets at 17.58, 2,425 runs at 11.77. In so far as he had such a thing his stock delivery was the off break, but he is known to have augmented it with a leg break, a top spinner, a yorker and probably many other types of delivery as well. The Durham born Lancashire ace is one of the three subjects of David Foot’s literary triptych “Cricket’s Unholy Trinity” (the others are Charlie Parker of Gloucestershire and Jack MacBryan of Somerset).
Phil Tufnell – left arm orthodox spinner, right handed bat, 1,057 wickets at 29.35, 2,066 runs at 9.69. Eccentricity is nearly as prevalent a trait among left arm spinners as it is among wicket keepers. Unusually for an English cricketer of his generation he actually did win something in Australia, albeit in the jungle rather than on the pitch. He has contributed some light hearted efforts to the literature of the game and is a popular expert summariser on the radio. He is also one half of ‘Tuffers and Vaughan‘ which is regularly broadcast on radio 5 live. He has been a long serving captain on the TV show “A Question of Sport”. He was unequivocally the match winner for England on three occasions, against the West Indies at The Oval in 1991, against Australia at The Oval in 1997, and against New Zealand in Christchurch in 1992, when Martin Crowe holed out going for the boundary that would have brought New Zealand level, ensuring a draw as there would have been insufficient time left in the game for the England second innings to commence, to complete an innings haul of 7-47 for Tufnell. His eccentricities caused him to be mistrusted in certain circles – he never appeared for England when Alec Stewart was captain, and when Raymond Illingworth was in overall charge (a job he did abysmally) Tufnell was rarely considered – when Illingworth wanted a slow left arm option he usually went for his Worcestershire namesake Richard who never turned the ball, but would keep things tight even if he never looked like taking wickets.

This team has a decent top five, an all-rounder, a keeper who can bat and four very widely bowlers. There is no leg spinner, but I think we can cope with that. Any of George Brown, Bill Alley or Billy Midwinter could share the new ball with Smith before the spinners are unleashed.

ON SIMPSON-HAYWARD AND A SUGGESTED LAW CHANGE

There are those will consider the suggestion I am about to make to be heretical, crazy or both. As an atheist I am hardly going to be bothered by accusations of heresy, while I make no secret of my history of mental health issues, and an accusation of craziness does not even merit a raised eyebrow as far as I am concerned. Under arm bowling was outlawed in the early 1980s in a ham-fisted move provoked by a disgraceful act by two of the Chappell brothers (the senior brother Ian was on commentary and was unimpressed). New Zealand needed six to tie a match off the final ball, with no11 Brian McKechnie, a former all-black rugby player, on strike. Aussie skipper Greg Chappell instructed the bowler, his younger brother Trevor, to roll the ball along the ground, which was then legal. McKechnie, baulked of the opportunity to go for glory, blocked the ball and then made his own feelings plain by throwing his bat in protest at the tactic. The point here was that with the ball rolling along the floor skill was taken out of the equation, the hitting of a six being rendered impossible. I believe that the outlawing of all under arm bowling was unnecessary then, and is more unnecessary now, because these days if a ball bounces more than once it is called ‘no ball’ and must be bowled again, with the batting side awarded two runs as well. All that is necessary is to make it clear that in the eyes of the law a ball rolling along the ground is considered to have bounced an infinite number of times and is therefore a no-ball. If someone is prepared to ride out the storm of mockery such an attempt would initially be greeted with and revive under arm, either lobs such as Simpson-Hayward bowled or the more vigorous version practiced by David Harris and immortalized by John Nyren in “The Cricketers of My Time” then good luck to them say I. So let us legalize under arm bowling once more, while guarding ourselves against a repeat of that final ball by Trevor Chappell – variety after all is supposed to be the spice of life. On this theme I would also recommend to readers attention that splendid short story “Spedegue’s Dropper” by Arthur Conan-Doyle, which can be found in various cricket anthologies.

LINK AND PHOTOGRAPHS

My latest ‘All Time XI’ have taken their bows, and I have made a suggestion for a law change that depending on your take can be considered bold, crazy or a multitude of other adjectives. Before I bring down the curtain on this post, I draw your attention to my mother’s latest effort on her new blog, titled “Follies and Fountains” – please do visit. And now it is time for my signing of flourish…

P1310907 (2)

P1310909 (2) — Another find while doing laps of my garden – an interesting snail shell.

P1310910 (2) P1310911 (2) P1310913 (2) P1310914 (2) P1310915 (2) P1310918 (2) P1310919 (2) P1310920 (2) P1310921 (2) P1310922 (2) P1310924 (2)

P1310926 (2) — two pics of this bird – from tail pattern and small size I think it is a dunnock.

P1310927 (2) P1310928 (2)

All Time XIs – Non-Cricketing Birthplaces

My latest variation on the ‘All Time XI’ theme – an XI of cricketers with non cricketing birthplaces, which I then use for a little look at birthplace in cricket, mentioning a couple of current interesting cases.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to my latest variation on the ‘All Time XI‘ theme. Today our XI are linked by born in ‘non-cricketing’ countries – which is to say countries not generally associated with the game, since the ICC, the sport’s global governing body has over 100 members and affiliates. After introducing the XI I will share some of my own thoughts on the relevance or otherwise of birthplaces. I will look at a couple of current cases in detail. Before moving in to the main body of this post I would like to thank the pinchhitter (latest post here), who you can also visit on twitter @LePinchHitter for including links to a number of my recent posts in their own efforts.

THE NON-CRICKETING BIRTHPLACE XI

Paul Terry – right handed opening bat, born Osnabruck, Germany, 16,427 first class runs at 36.66. He played for Hampshire and briefly England. Even by 1980s standards his treatment by the England selectors was utterly disgraceful – he was pitched in at the deep end against the 1984 West Indies who were en route to a ‘blackwash’ of their hapless hosts (whether the 1980 or 1984 fast foursome was the more awesome combo is discussion topic for another post – in terms of pitching a debutant in against them it is a bit like asking whether a punch from Muhammad Ali or Jack Dempsey would do more damage), got horrifically injured and was callously cast aside, never to be heard from again at international level.
Archie Jackson – right handed opening bat, born Rutherglen, Scotland, 4,383 first class runs at 45.65. I covered this man in the ‘what might have been XI‘. Although it has been the birthplace of some talented cricketers down the years, Scotland is not widely thought of as a cricket hot spot.
Ted Dexter – right handed bat, right arm fast medium bowler, born Milan, Italy, 21,150 first class runs at 40.75, 419 first class wickets at 29.92. A swashbuckling no 3, a fine fielder and his bowling is by no means negligible. You can find out more about him in my Sussex post.
George Headley – right handed bat, born Colon, Panama, 9,921 first class runs at 69.86 (he averaged 60.83 in test cricket, with 15 fifty plus scores, of which he converted ten into centuries, a conversion rate ahead of everyone other than Bradman. Also the progenitor of a cricketing dynasty that at the time of writing spans three generations (son Ron and grandson Dean) and two test teams (the West Indies and England), and may yet go to on to join the Cowdreys (all five players shown are of the same family) in producing a fourth successive generation of first class cricketers.
Mike Denness – right hand bat, born Ayr, Scotland, 25,886 first class runs at 33.48. A fine batter for Kent and later Essex, his test average was actually six runs per innings higher than his first class, in spite of a horror run in the 1974-5 Ashes which induced him to drop himself as captain.
Natalie Sciver – right hand bat, right arm medium, born Tokyo, Japan, 3,538 international runs at 31.87 and 104 international wickets at 23.23. A genuine all-rounder, her wickets tally looks low because of her internationals have been limited over and T20s. She is also an outstanding fielder. She also has a shot anmed after, the ‘Natmeg’ where the ball is played under the batter’s leg (descriptions of the ‘draw’, a shot favoured by some 19th century batters suggest she may not have been quite such a pioneer as this suggests, but there is no doubting the stroke’s value).
*Freddie Brown – right hand bat, leg spin and occasional right arm medium, born Lima, Peru, 13,325 first class runs at 27.36, 1,221 first c;ass wickets at 26.21. He played county cricket for Surrey and Northamptonshire. After being part of the 1932-3 Ashes winning party but not playing a test match on tour, he next went on tour when he captained the 1950-1 Ashes tour party (the tour is sympathetically chronicled by Bill O’Reilly in “Cricket Taskforce” and Jack Fingleton in “Brown and Company”, two excellent reads both penned by Aussies). Brown’s team went down 4-1, dogged by injuries and ill luck, but his efforts as captain (third choice – George Mann and Norman Yardley were both offered the job but already had commitments they could not renege on) were universally appreciated. It was on that tour that with an already ill equipped bowling unit hit by injuries he turned to medium pace in an attempt to plug a gaping hole and did not fare badly. I reckon that with the combination I am giving him he would be both a good and a winning captain.
+Geraint Jones – Wicket keeper and right hand bat, born in Papua New Guinea, 9,037 first class runs at 32.45, 599 first class catches and 36 first class stumpings. I mentioned him briefly in my Kent post, and also gave him a place in my ‘Tried and Untrusted‘ XI.
John Barton ‘Bart’ King – right arm fast bowler and right hand bat, born Philadelphia, USA, 415 first class wickets (in 65 appearances at that level) at 15.66, 2,134 first class runs at 21.34. The original ‘King of swing’ – the first bowler to deliberately use swing as a weapon. Various first class counties tried to persuade him to settle there and play for them, including one county who tried an ‘out of the box’ approach – they offered to set him up with a wealthy widow who was a fan of the club if he would come and play for them. The very first international game of cricket was between the USA and Canada in 1844, while the first documented tour to leave English shores in 1859 was also to North America, and the first of WG Grace’s three overseas trips (in 1872-3) was to Canada and the USA. At one time the possibility was entertained of the USA joining England, Australia and South Africa as a test playing nation. Philadelphia was the strongest cricketing outpost in those parts, with the Newhall family also boasting impressive records. It would seem likely that King developed the technique of swinging the ball from baseball (as the slightly later Australian Frank Laver did, with remarkable effects in the test arena). The game of course did not build on these promising beginnings in that part of the world, although maybe with Liam Plunkett heading that way it will experience a rebirth there.
Ole Mortensen, right arm fast medium bowler, right hand batter, born Vejle, Jutland, 434 first class wickets at 23.88, 709 runs at 8.97. Part of a Derbyshire bowling unit of considerable effectiveness, but one that was also decried by nativists (yes, USians, we have them too, although not usually in high office) because as well as him it featured Devon Malcolm, born in Jamaica, and Alan Warner who was actually born in this country but who was often assumed by those who judge on physical appearance not to have been.
Ian Peebles – leg spinner, right hand bat, born in Aberdeen, Scotland, 923 first class wickets at 21.38, 2,213 first class runs at 9.13. Peebles did play a few games for England, and numbered Bradman among his test victims, but was largely victim of endemic English mistrust of wrist spinners. He had a distinguished county career with Middlesex. After his playing days were done he turned to writing and achieved arguably even greater success there, with “Woolley: Pride of Kent”, “Batter’s Castle”, “Spinner’s Yarn”, “The Fight For The Ashes 1958-9” and “Batters Castle” among his considerable and very readable output, which also includes a chapter on Pelham Warner in “Cricket: The Great Captains”. I would expect him to turn out a splendid chronicle of this team’s endeavours!

My team features a strong top five, two genuine all rounders, a keeper who can bat and three superb specialist bowlers. The bowling has five front liners plus Dexter, with spin options in Peebles and Brown, so that won’t let it down. The keeping, with Jones having the gloves is not of the very highest standards, and someone would have to make it clear to Jones that he is expected to stand up not just for the spinners but also for Sciver (some of whose wickets have come by means of stumpings) and possibly even Dexter.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE (IR)RELEVANCE OF BIRTHPLACE

I am far more concerned about the quality of a cricketer than where they are born. If you can hire a top player do so regardless of their origins. What I object to is the use of second string foreign born players who qualify as ‘English’ on a technicality while having neither the intention nor the skill to play for England. Apart from anything else it has a record of proven failure – Leicestershire, one of the most notorious followers of this policy have been stone last five times in the last ten seasons. If somebody is good enough they might hail from a lunar colony (read Andy Weir’s “Artemis” for one version of how such a thing might work – come to think of it I could imagine Jazz Bashara faring pretty well as a crafty spinner!) for all that it matters. That said, there are a couple of current cases I am going to touch on…

SIMON HARMER

After playing five tests for his native South Africa with some success, Harmer, not thinking he was getting picked regularly enough decamped for this country, and a contract with Essex. He has been wonderful for Essex, a fact that I have acknowledged by naming him in my ‘All Time Essex’ XI, and that this year’s Wisden has acknowledged by naming him as one of the ‘five cricketers of the year’. He has now been based in this country for long enough to qualify by residence, and of course that means that thoughts are turning in some circles to whether to pick him for England. My answer is in the negative, not from lack of respect for Mr Harmer, nor from any worry over someone representing two countries – has happened before and probably will again, but because with Bess looking established in the off spinner’s spot for England and young Virdi doing brilliantly at Surrey I believe it would be a retrograde step and a slap in the face for the two players I have just named to select Harmer at this juncture. I will finish this subsection by re-emphasising that this is not anti Harmer in any way – both his play and his on-field conduct have been impreccable, it is about the best interests of England looking forward, which I consider to lie in developing and encouraging the young spinning talent that we have. That leads on to…

DUANNE OLIVIER

This young quick bowler made waves in his native South Africa, and like Harmer has actually played for them at international level, but he has now decided to make a life and a career for himself in England, and good luck to him. In a few years from now he will qualify for England, and the question will be whether to pick him or not. My answer will depend on the situation regarding English fast bowling at that time – if picking him means blocking the career development of a home grown talent then the answer should be “no”, but if the fast bowling situation is less rosy then there would be a serious case for picking him.

OVERSEAS AND ‘KOLPAK’ TYPE PLAYERS

On overseas players my feeling is straightforward: if you can get one of genuinely top class standard go for it, but don’t sign any old overseas player just for the sake of having one. With the ‘Kolpak’ types I would ask myself two questions: first, are they of top class or possessing the obvious potential to become top class?, second, am I sure that they offering me something that the players I already have cannot provide? If the answer to either of the foregoing is a no, then don;t do it, and if the answer to the first of the two questions is only a ‘maybe’ I would be strongly disinclined to proceed.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Our look at cricketers with non-cricketing birth places is done, and it now remains only for me to provide my usual sign off…

P1310882 (2) — The only flower that is fully out on my fuchsia – but there are a couple of other buds clearly visible.

P1310884 (2) — In among the gravel borders of my garden, a small sea shell.

P1310902 (2) — A collared dove among the greenery (only the giant pigeons of which there are far too many count as ‘aves non grata’)

Non-cricketing birthplaces — The team in tabulated form.

All Time XIs – Staffordshire Born (Plus Bonus Feature)

Another variation on the ‘All Time XI’ theme, featuring an XI of Staffordshire born players from which I lead into some suggestions for reforming the County Championship.

INTRODUCTION

Pandemic continues to stop play, and in an attempt to help fill the gap I continue to come up with variations on my ‘All Time XIs‘ theme. Today we have a two part post. The first part of the post presents an XI made up entirely of players born in Staffordshire (who have never enjoyed first class status). The second part of the post makes some suggestions for reform of the County Championship which will doubtless engender reactions ranging all the way from endorsement to people reaching for pins and waxen images.

BORN IN STAFFORDSHIRE XI

John Steele – we met this right handed opener and occasional purveyor of left arm spin when I did my post about Leicestershire.
*Danielle Wyatt – current star of the England Women’s team, an attack minded opener who also bowls off spin. She has centuries in both T20Is and ODIs to her credit,though she has yet to be given her chance in a test match (the women play far too few of these contests). I have taken a punt by naming her as captain of this XI, but it is my belief that she would do the job well – and I would bet money that a game with her as captain would be worth watching.
David Steele – brother of John, and like him and adhesive right handed batter and an occasional bowler of left arm spin. We met him in my Northamptonshire post, and also in my ‘Underappreciated Ashes‘ post.
Kim Barnett – attack minded batter and occasional leg spinner, who enjoyed a distinguished career with Derbyshire before moving to Gloucestershire. I would hope that some flexibility would be shown of the batting positions of him and David Steele – in general of Wyatt was out first I would want him in next, while if John Steele fell first I would send brother David in to replace him at the crease, the plan being where circumstances permit to avoid having both blockers or both hitters together.
Frank Sugg – a right handed bat who played first for Derbyshire, and then having discovered that he had been born in Smethwick (Cricinfo lists him as born in Ilkeston and lists him as having also played for Lancashire, but the Derbyshire chapter in the book “County Champions” says otherwise, and I go with them).
Brian Crump – an all rounder who played for Northants, batting right handed and bowling right arm medium pace and off spin.His 221 first class matches yielded 8,789 runs and 914 wickets.
+Bob Taylor – a wicket keeper and right handed bat, with more first class dismissals to his credit than any other.
Dominic Cork – a right arm medium fast bowler and aggressive lowe order bat. He took 7-43 in the second innings of his England debut at Lord’s in 1995, and the highlights of his somewhat chequered international career also include a hat trick. He also suffered from the desperation of people involved with English cricket at the time to find all rounders – his undoubted skill with the ball and his moments as a lower order batter were blown out of all proportion (the then 20 year old me was guilty of allowing the wish to be the father of the thought in this case – mea culpa). He played for Derbyshire, Lancashire and Hampshire in county cricket.
Sydney Barnes – yes , the one and only SF Barnes (see my Lancashire post, and the ‘Underappreciate Ashes’), probably the greatest bowler the game ever saw. He played a few games for Warwickshire in 1894-5 and a couple of full seasons at Lancashire in the early 1900s, but mainly plied his trade in the northern Leagues and for his native Staffordshire. Incidentally, while he did not a lot when he turned our for Warwickshire, they also did have a problem in the 1890s with recognizing talent when they saw it – the Warwickshire yearbook of 1897 contains the memorable phrase “it was not possible to offer a contract to W Rhodes of Huddersfield” – and yes it was the one and only Wilfred they were referring to – a genuine rival to Essex’s failure to respond to Jack Hobbs’ letter to them requesting a trial! Incidentally the then NSW selectors nearly perpetrated a miss to rival even these because some of them were in doubt as to whether it was worth forking out for a return rail fare for the lad so that they could have a closer look at a certain DG Bradman!
Jason Brown – off spinner who took part in an England tour to Sri Lanka in 2001. He did not break into the team on that tour, and subsequently a combination of injuries and the rise of Monty Panesar blocked further chances for international recognition.
Eric Hollies – leg spinner, and the most genuine of genuine number 11s.

This team features a solid front five, an all rounder, a record breaking keeper who tended to score his runs when they were most needed and four varied bowlers, two of whom, Cork and Barnes had the capacity to weigh in with useful runs. It is certainly an impressive collection of talent for what has never been a first class county.

POSSIBLE REFORMS TO THE COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP

I am going to start this section by presenting some suggestions which I will expand on:

To expand on the above points:

1) The bonus point system as it currently stands offers up to five batting points and three bowling points to each team, awarded only during the first 110 overs of each team’s first innings. The batting bonus points are awarded when the score reaches 200, 250, 300, 350, and if it happens inside 110 overs 400, while the bowling points are awarded for taking 3, 6 and 9 wickets, so long as those milestones are reached within the 110 overs. This comes on top of 16 points for a win and 5 points for a draw. The 110 over limit is designed to encourage teams to try to score reasonably quick in their first dig and to bowl for wickets, but the truth is that few teams manage to claim a full haul of batting points, and occasions on which full bowling points are not garnered are fairly rare. It can lead to situations where teams do things that they would not normally even be thinking about (a prime example being the farce involving a prearranged declaration that Middlesex and Yorkshire perpetrated when they knew that an outright win for either of them would give that side the championship at the expense of Somerset, who were top having completed their programme). Yorkshire deliberately bowled badly on that occasion to allow Middlesex to get far enough ahead for the intended declaration. I have no objection (not in the slightest) to genuine declarations, and to batting sides trying to put themselves in position to do so by attacking bowling that it is intended to make life difficult for them, but I despise the notion of deliberately giving the opposition runs to keep a game alive – why were neither of the contending sides prepared to go the aggressive route without relying on co-operation from the other? My 5-1 ratio of points for a win and a draw may be an insufficient margin, but a draw should have some reward attached to it – to anyone telling me that there is no such thing as a good draw, I would a) tell them not to talk nonsense (publishable version) and b) mention a few of the classics such as Old Trafford 2005 and Brisbane 2010.

2) On pitch preparation: whatever the official guidelines say, pitches that offer turn early in the game get viewed more harshly than pitches which assist seamers, which in turn are generally viewed more harshly than shirtfronts. This is in my opinion is wrongheaded – the game is more fun when spinners are involved, so pitches that allow that should be encouraged, while given that conditions in April and September mean that a preponderance of green pitches is always likely at those times, and that there is good chance of seamers getting overcast skies to help them further. Shirtfronts produce games that are utterly uninteresting, boosting the averages of various batters, but not really helping even them – batters who fare well on flat tracks are frequently exposed when the pitch does a bit, because they get away with things on flat tracks which would see them dismissed on livelier surfaces. So, I would almost never punish a team for having a pitch the offered spinners overmuch, would not be harsh on greentops in April and September, but would punish anyone who produced one in mid season, as then it would clearly be deliberate, and I would be down like a ton of bricks on anyone producing a shirtfront.

3)Over rates – this one is a problem that blights test cricket more than county cricket, but I have known some late finishes when listening to commentaries of county games, and I believe that my scheme should be rolled out at that level before then being extended to test level. There might be a few early matches in which extras, swelled by penalty runs, threatened to score at a Bradmanesque rate, but I am pretty sure that it would not take long for the message to sink in.

4)The first part of this post demonstrated just one minor county that has produced serious talent, and they are not alone – Norfolk have provided the Edriches (all six of the English Edriches are members of the same family) and a few others over the years, Berkshire boasts among its products the Bedsers (EA and AV), Peter May, Ken Barrington, Tom Dollery and in the women’s game Claire Taylor the batter (as opposed to Clare Taylor, the Yorkshire medium pacer) and other minor counties have similar stories, and it is my belief that there should be more movement between minor and first class county status – first class counties should have to prove that they merit that status and failure to do so should mean being temporarily supplanted by a minor county. The introduction of promotion and relegation into the county championship was just one of a raft of changes made at that time which had a telling effect on England’s fortunes (remember folks, England were bottom of the test rankings in 1999, and while there have been a few dips in the 21 years since then they have never seriously threatened to occupy that place again). Jack Hobbs who I mentioned earlier, and Tom Hayward, his great Surrey predecessor, and the man who persuaded Surrey to give him a chance (and there were those at the time who did not approve) were both natives of Cambridgeshire.

I would like to see more County Championship action at the height of the season and less at the extreme ends thereof as well.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Well that is today’s exhibit from the Museum of All Time XIs revealed, and it now remains only for me to provide my usual sign off…

P1310861 (2) — Three shots from the garden.

P1310862 (2) — This aeroplane stood out against the otherwise pristine blue sky.

P1310865 (2) — The muntjac again, this time enjoying the afternoon sun.

P1310867 (2) — A shot emphasising how small the muntjac is.

Staffordshire Born — The XI in batting order.

All Time XIs – The Workers XI

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the latest in my series of ‘All Time XIs’ posts. This one is yet another new take on my running theme, and warrants some preliminary explanation.

THE SELECTOR’S BRIEF

Everyone must have a name associated with an occupation of some description, and no occupation may be used more than once in the XI. Finally, the XI must be a reasonably balanced side, capable of giving a decent account of itself anywhere. Having set out the limits I imposed for this exercise it is is now time to introduce you to…

THE WORKERS XI

Vijay Merchant – A right handed Indian opener of the immediate post WWII era, and helped by the batter’s paradises that predominated in his homeland he recorded a first class average of 71.22, second only among those who played 20 or more games to Donald Bradman. He got few test opportunities, playing 10 times at that level and racking up 859 runs in 18 innings for an average of 47.72, some way short of his stellar FC figures but still eminently respectable, especially for someone batting at the sharp end of things. His highest first class score was 359, which came in a run of three innings that yielded 750 for once out, the second most productive such trio in history behind WG Grace’s August 1876 runfest when he scored 344 for MCC v Kent, 177 for Gloucestershire v Nottinghamshire and then 318 not out for Gloucestershire v Yorkshire, 839 runs in three innings.
*Mark Taylor – left handed opening bat for Australia. Poms of my generation and older will never forget him, since he scored 839 runs against the motley crew who turned out for England in the 1989 Ashes, the highest aggregate for a series in England by anyone not named Bradman. He went on to captain his country with great distinction, maintaining the position at the top of the game’s rankings that they had gained under the stewardship of Allan Border. I have named him as captain of this side, rating him only marginally behind Border, level with his successor Steve Waugh and ahead of both Ponting and ‘Sandpaper’ Smith, and his time as captain was not marred by any of the controversies that affected some of the later holders of that office.
Mark Butcher – left handed batter for Surrey and England. The highlight of his England career was a match winning 173 not out at Headingley in 2001. He could also bowl presentable medium pace, and on one occasion helped to win a test match with his bowling, albeit against a Zimbabwe side who should probably not still have been playing test cricket.
Robin Smith – a hard hitting right handed batter (Hampshire and England) who averaged 43 in test cricket and was discarded too soon by the selectors of his day. He probably holds the record for the shortest period of time to elapse between bat making contact with the ball and ball crashing against the boundary fence square on the off side. He shares with Jack Russell the distinction of being an England cricketer whose standing was improved by their performances in the 1989 Ashes (29 Poms took the field against 12 Aussies in the course of that series, and if 29 against 12 sounds like an unfair fight, it was: the 29 never had cat’s chance in hell).
Nari Contractor – an Indian left handed batter who scored twin centuries on first class debut (an achievement he shares with Arthur Morris, NSW and Australia, and Aamer Malik, a Pakistani right hander) and went on to average a respectable 39 in first class cricket and a slightly less impressive 31 in test cricket. He also famously suffered one of the nastiest injuries ever seen on a cricket field, subsequently requiring multiple blood transfusions (although unlike George Summers at Lord’s in 1870 and Philip Hughes at Sydney in 2014 he did live to tell the tale).
Ted Wainwright – Yorkshire all rounder, who batted right handed and bowled right arm off spin. He played during the 1890s and 1900s, and produced plenty of fine performances down the years – 12,533 at 21 and 1871 wickets at 18 in first class cricket. He failed at test level, being part of the ill-fated 1897-8 Ashes tour party, and finding himself unable to turn the ball on Australian pitches. Such bowling as he got in the five tests of that series yielded him a combined 0-77, while his 132 runs at 14.66 were not sufficient for someone who was not contributing with the ball. It is said that when he got back from that tour (a highly readable account of which has been produced by John Lazenby, titled “Test of Time”) he went straight to the nets and started bowling without even taking his coat off, and that when he saw the ball turn on an English surface he wept with relief. He made a famous remark about the great ‘Ranji’, which reflected one view of his batting: “he never played a christian stroke in his life.” As a Yorkshireman, Wainwright would of course have been reared on strict orthodoxy, and would probably not have been impressed at seeing impeccable off breaks glanced to the fine leg boundary as would have happened when he bowled to ‘Ranji’. Some etymology, just in case: a wain is a type of cart, and a wright is someone who makes stuff, hence one of his ancestors must have made carts.
+Farokh Engineer – a wicket keeper who was also a highly effective attacking bat. As well as representing his country with distinction he played county cricket for Lancashire, spent some time as a Lancashire League pro, and ultimately settled in Altrincham, which gave rise to a story that has it place in cricket’s folklore. At one time when there was fighting going on in his native India, Engineer was asked if he would take up arms, and baiting his trap said, “yes if the fighting reaches my village.” The interviewer, blissfully unaware of the truth asked Engineer which was his village, and Engineer closed the trap by saying dead pan “Altrincham”. Engineer took 704 catches and made 129 stumpings in his career. He averaged 31 with the bat in test cricket and 29 in first class cricket.
Ash Gardner – Australian off spinner and right handed bat. She is the only female I have selected. However, she is undoubtedly worth her place – to be an established Aussie international is no mean feat, especially in this era, and Gardner has made herself that at the tender age of 22 For more about my thoughts on women playing alongside men please go to this post, which launched my earlier “100 cricketers” series.
Harold Butler – Notts right arm fast medium bowler, two England appearances, in which he took 12 wickets at less than 18 each.
Charles ‘The Terror’ Turner – Australian right arm medium fast bowler, which description is about as full as is the standard designation right arm fast medium for SF Barnes. Turner played 17 test matches in the 1880s, taking 101 wickets at 16.53 each. He spun the ball fiercely – it is said that he could put an orange between his thumb and forefinger and reduce it to pulp, a trick that would have any watching batter squirming. On the 1884 tour of England he took 283 wickets in first class games, easily a record for anyone on any tour, while in 1887-8 he became the first and only bowler to take 100 first class wickets in an Australian season. He also plays a role in a great ‘Aussie cricket chain’ – Bill ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly was at one time being put under pressure to change his bowling methods, and Turner, then an old man but very definitely still living in the present and in possession of his faculties, strongly advised O’Reilly not to do so, O’Reilly subsequently gave a young man named Richie Benaud some sensible advice, and Benaud in his turn passed on some similar advice to Shane Warne, but there is, as far as I know, no next link in the chain. An etymological note: according to dictionary.com one definition of a turner is: “a person who fashions or shapes objects on a lathe.“
Bert Ironmonger – left arm spinner, clumsy fielder and hopeless batter (no room for that type in more modern times eh, Tuffers?!). He was Australia’s oldest ever debutant at almost 46, in the first match of 1928-9 Ashes (Eng won the series 4-1), and played his last test at 51, second oldest ever participant in a game at that level (Wilfred Rhodes at 52 years, 165 days old was the oldest of all, while the great Indian all rounder of yesteryear, Cottari K Nayudu, made his last first class appearance at the age of 68, 46 years after his debut). His Victorian team mate Don Blackie, an off spinner (and no11 when Victoria piled up 1,107 against NSW) was already past 40 when he made his state debut. Ironmonger is the subject of one of the classic ‘incompetent no11 stories’, which I have already told in my post about Nottinghamshire, in connection with Fred Morley, also the subject of a well known ‘incompetent no11’ story.

So, my Workers XI, consists of a solid top five, a genuine all rounder, a wicket keeper who can bat and four varied bowlers, with Butler and Turner to take the new ball, and Ironmonger, Gardner and Wainwright all capable of big wicket hauls. This side looke to me like a strong one, with sufficient depth in batting, depth and variety in bowling and a fine keeper. Therefore I claim without reservation to have met my brief, and i, while nvite those who think they know better the weigh in with comments. Also, with a Gardner (sic) they should be able to provide some of their own food, while the presence of a Wainwright, an Engineer and a Smith (to attend to the metalwork), plus an Ironmonger to provide the tools and a Turner should any woodworking be required means that there is no excuse for failing to come up with a method of transportation. A Butcher should be able to source meat, while a Taylor (sic) should be able to attend to clothing needs. A Butler, provided he is not involved in the on-field action at the time should be able to handle the drinks trolley, while a Contractor should be able to deal with the small print.

I invite the cricket fans among you to follow my brief laid out before I introduced my XI and create XIs of a similar nature to go up against this one (therefore none of my XI can be reused).

PHOTOGRAPHS

Well, another XI has taken its bow on this blog, and it remains only for me to provide my usual sign off…

P1310846 (2) — My “easter egg”, arranged by my parents and delivered by my nephew – both better and longer lasting than any chcocolate.

P1310847 (2) — The action photograph of female player of the year and one this year’s ‘Five cricketers of the year’, **Ellyse Perry** (both awards thoroughly deserved, though I would, even as a Pom, have preferred her to be given player of the year and **Ben Stokes** male player of the year).

Workers XI — The team in tabulated form with abridged descriptions.

All Time XIs – The ‘What Might Have Been’ XI

Another variation on the ‘all time XIs’ theme as we look at what might have been.

INTRODUCTION

I continue my ‘All Time XIs‘ series in the hope that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety. Today the spotlight is on players who for whatever reason did not get to entirely fulfill their potential. Some of the players in this XI had very good records but may in different circumstances have become all time greats of the game, one, the no11, might be said to be in under slightly false pretences, but as you will discover there can be no arguing about his place in the batting order!

THE WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN XI

Basil D’Oliveira – 44 test matches which yielded 2,484 runs at 40.06, almost 20,000 runs in first class cricket, the bulk of them for Worcestershire, so what is he doing here, especially given that he was not a regular opener? Well due the being born in South Africa and not being white he would not have had a professional cricket career at all but for the intervention of John Arlott, who got him to England, where he started as a league pro, before graduating to first class and then test cricket. He was already past 30 by the time he made his first class debut, and 35 when he broke into the England team in 1966. His test career continued until 1972, and his first class career until 1979. The accounts that survive of his performances in ‘coloured only’ cricket in South Africa and the history of most successful cricket careers suggest that his record would have been hugely better than it actually was had he started playing first class cricket in his teens or early twenties and then progressed to test cricket by his early to mid twenties (there is an excellent book titled “Basil D’Oliveira”, by Peter Oborne, about him). His inclusion is a tribute to the many non-white South Africans from Krom Hendricks in the 1890s onward who were denied the opportunity of establishing careers in their chosen sport, a group who I consider far more deserving of sympathy than the privileged whites who were prevented from playing test cricket by their country’s period of sporting isolation. I fully accept that opening the batting was not his regular role, but a) someone had to go there, and b) I wanted to give him maximum prominence.
Archie Jackson – a contemporary of Sir Donald Bradman, and many observers rated him the finer batter of the two at the time. At the age of 19 he opened the innings against England on test debut and scored 164. Unfortunately he was struck down by tuberculosis, and a mere four years after this golden debut he died. Pelham Warner, in Australia managing the 1932-3 Ashes tour party, spoke at his memorial service. The Scottish born Aussie finished with 474 runs at 47.40 from his eight test matches, and 4,383 first class runs at 45.65, but it could have been so much better had he enjoyed good health. He did not make yesterday’s ‘underappreciated Ashes‘ Aussie XI because if they could have done so the selectors would have picked him for every match, and it would have been unfair in the extreme to have selected him for that XI.
Norman Callaway – one first class match (in late 1914), one innings, 207 runs average 207.00 at that level. He was one of the many killed in the carnage that was World War 1. Had he lived it would seem likely that international honours awaited him but…
David Sales – at the age of 17 he scored 210 not out on first class debut. Unfortunately, this went unnoticed by the England selectors, and so apparently did a subsequent triple century and a 276 not out. England developed a strong and settled middle order just as he was hitting what should have been his cricketing prime, and he never got to play at the highest level. His county record (for Northamptonshire – did I hear someone utter the dread phrase “unfashionable county”?) was 14,140 runs at 39.27 and many who have performed far less well than that have been picked to bat for England. His record makes him a 21st century analogue to Edgar Oldroyd from my ‘County Stalwarts‘ XI of a couple of days ago.
Fred Grace – 6,906 first class runs at 25.02, a record bearing comparison with any of his contemporaries barring his brother WG Grace, 329 wickets at 20.06, a useful record for someone whose primary role was with the willow, and 171 catches (and three stumpings as an emergency keeper along the way). In 1880, he played in the first test match contested on English soil, a game he had played a role in bringing about. The full story can be read in Simon Rae’s magisterial biography of WG Grace. The bare bones are that following a crowd riot on England’s previous visit down under the Aussies were in seriously bad odour with the English powers that be, and the majority of their 1880 programme therefore ended up in consisting of a series of ‘odds matches’ (a 19th century phenomenon in which one side had more players than the other) against low grade opposition spiced with a few good players. One of these hired guns was Fred Grace, and he convinced his brother that the Aussies were worth playing, so Gloucestershire gave them a game (as did Derbyshire, and Yorkshire played them twice), and Grace got to work on various people to arrange for a test match to happen. One of his administrative allies in the cause was Charles Alcock, simultaneously the first ever secretary of the Football Association and secretary of Surrey County Cricket Club. It was with the latter hat on that Alcock concluded that not only should there be a test, it should be at The Oval. Eventually, in early September, the match took place. Fred bagged a pair, and did little with the ball, but had there been a ‘champagne moment’ in 1880 he would have won it for his catch to dismiss the big hitter George Bonnor: the batters were well into their third run by the time he completed the catch, and Fred Gale used a chain to measure the distance from Bonnor’s wicket to where the catch was held, and it came out at 110 yards (just over 100 metres). Less than two weeks later Fred Grace was dead after a chill turned into a lung infection. It is likely that had he lived he would have been a regular England player through the 1880s and possibly beyond (after all WG, the senior by over two years, played his last England game in 1899) – as Graham Gooch can confirm it is quite possible to bounce back from a pair on debut. This is one instance of a ‘one cap wonder’ where the selectors are definitely blameless – you can’t pick someone who has died (although watching and listening to England in the late 1980s and early 1990s one sometimes wondered whether corpses could have done a whole lot worse than some of the players).
Major Booth – Major was his given name, not a rank (in honour of a respected Salvation Army leader), but he did die in battle, on the Somme. Before the outbreak of war he had played 162 first class matches, scoring 4,753 runs at 23.29, with a best of 210 not out, and using his right arm medium fast to take 603 wickets at 19.82. He played twice for England, scoring 46 runs at 23.00 and taking 7 wickets at 18.57 each. Had he survived the war he would surely have been an England regular for at least a decade thereafter.
*Albert Trott – 375 first class matches, 10,696 runs at 19.48 and 1,674 wickets at 21.09. Five test matches yielded 228 runs at 38.00 and 26 wickets at 15.00. Yet these figures tell a bare fraction of the story. In 1894-5 Trott played two games for his native Australia, starting with 110 runs without being dismissed and second innings bowling figures of 8-43. In his second game at Sydney he made 85 but did not get to bowl. When the 1896 tour party to England was announced, with his brother Harry as captain he was not in it, a decision that seems inexcusable. He travelled to England anyway, became a professional (with Middlesex), and initially built up a superb record in his new home country, including twice scoring 1,000 runs and taking 200 wickets in a first class season. Then in 1899, playing against that year’s Aussies (having earlier played in South Africa for his adopted country), he hit a ball from Monty Noble over the Lord’s pavilion (it struck a chimney pot and fell down the back of the building). That blow was actually the start of trouble for Trott – he could not resist attempting to repeat it and his batting declined as he turned into a slogger. His bowling also lost its fizz over the years, although he recaptured it at an ill timed moment in 1907, when he ruined his own benefit match by first taking four wickets in four balls and then moments later performing another hat trick to terminate the Somerset resistance. Thereafter his decline was rapid, and in 1914 he joined the sadly long list of cricket suicides, leaving his meagre possessions (a wardrobe and four £1 notes) to his landlady. Had he been selected for that 1896 tour party he may have established a career as one of test cricket’s greatest ever all rounders, and he not hit his historic blow against Monty Noble in 1899 his batting may have continued to flourish.
Alonzo Drake – a contemporary of Booth, our no 6, he was a left handed middle order bat and a left arm spinner. 157 first class matches yielded 4,816 runs at 21.69 and 480 wickets at 18.03. 85 of those wickets came in his last two months of first class cricket in 1914, including 10-35, the first ‘all ten’ by a Yorkshire bowler, against Somerset. In his case ill health precluded his going off to fight, but that same ill health also ensured that by the time first class cricket resumed in 1919 he was no longer there to participate – he died of heart failure in February 1919. The war surely robbed him of an England career, and had he lived long enough, he would still have been only 36 by the time of the 1920-1 tour of Australia.
Maurice Tremlett – after a first class debut (for Somerset) that a novelist would hardly have dared to script for their hero – eight wickets in the match including a spell of 5-8 in the second innings, and that against the team who would be that season’s County Champions, and a heroic little innings at the death to secure his side a one wicket victory this should have been the rise of a new star in cricket’s firmament. At the end of that season he was taken on a tour of the West Indies, where began efforts to turn him into a genuine quick bowler, rather than the fast medium who could swing the ball that he was. An ill advised addition of four paces to his run up in an effort to generate more momentum, well meaning but ultimately destructive advice about the position of his shoulders, hips and feet all contributed to a loss of rhythm, form, confidence and the ability to swing the ball. Within a few years of that glorious debut he was concentrating on his batting and only being used as an occasional partnership breaker with the ball. One would like to say that lessons have been learned, but Jimmy Anderson (Lancashire and England) was nearly ruined in precisely the same fashion six decades later, though he fortunately was able to revert to his natural method and has ended up as England’s leading test wicket taker. Tremlett finished his career with 389 first class appearances which yielded 16,038 runs at 25.37 and 351 wickets at 30.70, while his three test caps on that West Indies tour yielded 20 runs at 6.66 and 4 wickets at 56.50. Had he been handled properly, and encouraged to make the best of the talents he actually had, instead of falling victim to well meaning attempts to remodel him into the genuine fast bowling article he may well have become a top quality test match performer with the ball, contributing useful runs from the lower order into the bargain. Instead he ended up an average batter who bowled a bit and for a period one of the better county captains.
Bob Appleyard – 200 wickets in his first full season of first class cricket (for Yorkshire) bowling a mixture of medium pace and off spin. Then he was hit by tuberculosis, and took some years to recover, though he did eventually do so unlike Jackson. He ended up playing 152 first class matches, in which he took 708 wickets at 15.48 and scored 776 runs at 8.52, thus avoiding being a member of the ‘more wickets than runs’ club. He played nine times for England, never experiencing defeat at that level, and taking 31 wickets at 17.87 and scoring 51 runs at 17.00. His first class record was remarkable, but just imagine if his health had allowed him to play for twenty years or more (quite feasible for a bowler of his type). There is a short biography of him titled “No Coward Soul” by Stephen Chalke, which I recommend.
+Seymour Clark – an eccentric and whimsical final choice, as befits a wicket keeper (are you reading this Mr Russell?), and anyway after some of the other stories a bit of light relief seems in order. He played five times for Somerset at the start of the 1930s, taking eight catches, going to the crease nine times and amassing…zero runs! He did have a few not outs by the way. Although I freely concede that it is unlikely that his batting would have developed much given more time there have been players who have built reasonable records after shocking starts – Arthur Morton of Derbyshire commenced his first class batting career with four consecutive blobs and ended with over 10,000 first class runs to his credit, while Marvan Atapattu (Sri Lanka) did not exactly hit the ground running in test cricket but ended with an eminently respectable record.

This teams contains a strong looking top five, two of whom could also lend a hand with the ball, three genuine all rounders in Booth, Trott and Drake, a swing bowler in Tremlett and Appleyard’s two methods, plus a keeper. Even in this purely whimsical example of selecting an XI I have produced a well balanced side (although D’Oliveira as opener is an unorthodox choice), and one that I would expect to be able to give a good account of itself. As always, there was an embarrassment of riches to choose from. I will limit the honourable mentions here to two (though you are welcome to weigh in with your own): Arthur Edward Jeune Collins who scored 628 not out, then the highest innings ever recorded in any class of cricket, in a house match at Clifton College and did not go on to make a name for himself and Amar Singh, the first great fast bowler to come out of India, and a worthy spiritual forebear of current ace Jasprit Bumrah, who died young having had few opportunities outside his native land, but not before he had captured 506 wickets at 18.35 in 92 first class games.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Well, that is the ‘what might have been’ XI in all its glory – feel free to post your own suggestions, or if you are really up for a challenge to create your own ‘what might have been XI’, and all that now remains is my usual sign off…

P1310799 (2) — Two very welcome visitors yesterday eveing, this jay (six pics)…

P1310807 (2) — …and this muntjac (14 pictures), whcih put in an appearance during the twilight hours

P1310831 (2) — swooping black headed gulls.

What Might Have Been XI — The XI with abridged comments.

All Time XIs -The Underappreciated Ashes

My latest variation on the ‘all time XIs’ theme – enjoy!

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to another variation on the ‘All Time XIs’ theme. Today I create two teams to do battle for the little urn, but with a twist. The players featured today are players of whom more should have been seen. There is one player of the 22 who did not get to play test cricket, but I believe I can justify his inclusion. At the other end of the scale is a player who eventually played 79 times at the highest level, but who had to wait a long time for the call to come. We start with…

ENGLAND’S UNDERAPPRECIATED XI

Jack Robertson – the stylish Middlesex opener was selected for 11 test matches, all between 1947 and 1952, and he scored 881 runs in those games, at and average of 46.36, with a highest score of 133. He missed the 1950-1 Ashes, when until Reg Simpson scored 156 not out in the final match only Hutton had contributed serious runs from the top of the order.
Cyril Walters – another stylist, the Glamorgan and Worcestershire opener was selected for 11 test matches between 1933 and 1939, in which he scored 784 runs at 52.26, including one century and seven fifties.
David Steele – ‘The Bank Clerk Who Went to War’ – the gritty Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire man played eight tests in 1975 and 1976, against Australia and the West Indies, averaging 42.06 (672 runs in 16 innings, no not outs).
Clive Radley – the Hertford born Middlesex middle order man of the 1970s who like Steele only got to play eight times at the highest level. He scored 481 runs at 48.10 with a highest of 158, and another century versus Pakistan.
Eddie Paynter – the Lancashire left hander’s record reads: 20 test matches, 31 innings, 1,540 runs at 59.23, 591 of them at 84.43 in Ashes matches. Among those who have played 20 or more games for England only Yorkshire’s Herbert Sutcliffe (60.73) has recorded a higher test average.
+Ben Foakes – the Surrey man is the best current English wicket keeper, any doubt about that status being removed by the retirement of the marvellous Sarah Taylor. The measly five test matches he has thus far been given have yielded him 332 runs at 41.50 including a century and also 10 catches and two stumpings. I hope that the selectors will see sense and render him ineligible for selection in future sides of this nature. For the moment, he holds this position as he keeps wicket – summa cum laudae.
Harold Larwood – The Notts express who was the star of the 1932-3 Ashes, and never picked again after that series through a combination of Aussie whinging and appalling behaviour by the English powers that be. Number 7 may look high in the order for him, but he did score 98 in his last test innings and made many useful contributions for Nottinghamshire with the bat.
Frank Tyson – The Northanptonshire super fast man 76 wickets at 18.56 in his 18 test matches. He like Larwood was the hero of an Ashes triumph down under – in 1954-5. Many years after his prime he played in a charity game in which he bowled at Keith Fletcher (Essex), then an England regular, and he produced a delivery that Fletcher reckoned to be the quickest he faced that season.
*Johnny Wardle – 28 test matches, 102 wickets at 20.39 with his left arm spin (he could bowl both orthodox and wrist spin). The Yorkshireman was often passed over in favour of Tony Lock, which rankled in “God’s own county”, especially since Lock’s action in the period in question was rarely as far above suspicion as Caesar’s wife. He fell out with Yorkshire over their appointment of 40 year old amateur Ronnie Burnet as skipper in 1958, and Yorkshire vindictively warned other counties against signing him, which effectively terminated his chances of further international recognition as well. I have done what Yorkshire would not in 1958 and named as captain of this team.
Sydney Barnes – 27 tests, 189 wickets at 16.43, 77 of them in 13 matches down under. He played in under half of the matches contested by England between his first and last appearances, which irrespective of the fact that he was an awkward blighter (if he were to dispute this assessment it would only be as a matter of principle) and chose to play most of his cricket in the leagues rather than in the county championship is simply absurd. Also, there were various times when people considered him a possible post World War 1, including as late as 1930 when some people believed he was the man to take on Bradman who was running riot (2,960 runs at 98,66 for the tour, 974 of them at 139.14 in the test matches). West Indian legend Learie Constantine who faced Barnes for Nelson vs Rawtenstall in the Lancashire League when Barnes was 59 years old said after that match (in which he made 90) “if you wanted to score off Barnes you had to score off good bowling”.
Charles ‘Father’ Marriott – (Lancs and Kent) A ‘one cap wonder’. He was selected in the final match of the 1933 series against the West Indies, took 11-96 in the match and that was his international career. He was known to be a liability except when actually bowling (his 711 first class wickets comfortably beating the 574 runs he scored at that level).

This team has a splendid looking top five, a superb glove man well capable of batting at six, and five excellent and well varied bowlers, all of whom save Marriott are capable of making useful contributions with the bat (Barnes was a regular run scorer in the leagues where he generally plied his trade and played one clearly defined match winning innings in a test match, at Melbourne in 1907 when he came in with 73 needed and two wickets standing and was there on 38 not out when the winning run was scored. Now it is time to look at…

AUSTRALIA UNDERUSED XI

Sidney George Barnes – 13 test matches, in which he averaged 63 with a highest score of 234 (at Sydney in the second match of the 1946-7 Ashes). A combination of World War II (six years of his prime gone), and run-ins with the authorities meant that he played ridiculously little for such a fine batter. I would want ‘Blowers‘ at the mic when Sydney Francis Barnes bowled to Sidney George Barnes – there would surely be some priceless commentary moments!
Chris Rogers – averaged 42.87 in the 25 matches he played, having amassed over 15,000 first class runs before the call came. He hit his peak at just the wrong time, when Australia had a dominant side that they were understandably reluctant to change.
Mike Hussey – what is a man who played 79 tests doing here? He had been playing first class cricket and amassing mountains of runs in that form of the game for over a decade before getting to don the baggy green (‘Mr Cricket’ eschewed the other classic Aussie insignia, the chip on the shoulder). Yes, 79 tests is a fine achievement, as his average in that form of the game, but it could so easily have been 159 test matches, and it is for that reason that I include him.
Martin Love – his peak coincided with Australia’s most dominant period, with the result that his test record amounts to 233 runs at 46.60 with one century. At almost any other time, or in almost any other country he would be an automatic selection for most of his career.
Adam Voges – although the one trough of his brief test career (he was in his mid 30s when it began) coincided with the 2015 Ashes he averaged 61.87 in his 20 matches, an output that cannot be ignored.
*Albert Trott – all rounder and captain (also captain of the ‘what might have been XI’ when I come to present that). His test career was in two parts – for Australia in the 1894-5 Ashes, and then for England against South Africa in 1899. Between them they amounted to five matches in which he scored 228 runs at 38.00 and took 26 wickets at 15.00. It was also in 1899 that he achieved a thus far unrepeated feat – he struck a ball from fellow Aussie Monty Noble that cleared the Lord’s pavilion, hitting a chimney pot and dropping down the back of the building. He was a right arm spin bowler. His test debut in 1895 was remarkable – 38 and 72 not out with the bat and 8-43 in the second England innings.
+Graham Manou – the most skilled glove man in Australia during his career, but Brad Haddin was generally preferred on ground of his belligerent batting. Manou played in only one test match, unusual for an Australian (there are about 70 English members of this club).
Eddie Gilbert – right arm fast bowler and the most controversial of my 22 picks today. He never played test cricket, but in his brief domestic career he sometimes caused carnage, including inflicting on Don Bradman “the luckiest duck of my career”. He might have been selected during the 1932-3 Ashes had Australia adopted a ‘fight fire with fire’ approach. He was an aboriginal, which might explain his scurvy treatment by the Australian cricket powers that be – it would be until Jason Gillespie that a player of proven aboriginal ancestry would don the baggy green.
Laurie Nash – another fast bowler who could have been used as part of the ‘fight fire with fire’ option in 1932-3. He claimed that he could have stopped ‘Bodyline’ in two overs given the chance. His two test caps yielded 10 wickets at 12.60. What might have happened at Australia taken the ‘fight fire with fire’ approach? My reckoning is that there would probably have been one absolute war zone of a test when both teams gave it both barrels, and then the method would have been abandoned, because the English professionals who could not afford to risk their livelihoods would have insisted on it.
Stuart Clark – a tall fast-medium who took 94 wickets at 23.86 in his 24 test matches. Injury problems and a chap by the name of McGrath kept him from featuring more often than he did.
Jack Iverson – mystery spinner (subject of Gideon Haigh’s book “Mystery Spinner”) whose test career amounted to the five matches of the 1950-1 Ashes series, in which he took 21 wickets at 15.23. Many reckoned that he would have been even deadlier in England (although he bowled wrist spin he was effectively a very accurate off spinner) – which creates an interesting counter-historical speculation. Had he gone to England in 1953 Australia may well have retained The Ashes, which would almost certainly have meant that the grumblers who had never liked the notion of a professional captaining England would have got their way and Hutton would have been replaced by an amateur, which would almost certainly have also meant no 1954-5 triumph with ‘Typhoon’ Tyson.

This team has a strong looking top five, a potentially match winning all rounder at six, a magnificent keeper at seven and four top quality bowlers.

THOUGHTS ON HOW THIS ASHES CONTEST MIGHT GO

Barring an emerald coloured pitch and/or heavy cloud cover that you are prepared to bet on remaining in place for long enough to cash in on the toss winner would be heavily advised to bat first and get their runs on the board (trying to score runs against Trott and Iverson in the fourth innings does not look like fun, and this is even more the case vis a vis Wardle, Barnes and Marriott). I reckon that Larwood and Tyson are a quicker pair (thought not by much) than Gilbert and Nash. Where England definitely shade it is that irrespective of conditions Barnes is likely to more dangerous than Clark. I would expect it to be close – in a five match, play to a finish series I would back England to win 3-2, while I would expect England’s margin to look a little more comfortable with draws in the equation because I reckon Steele and Radley could each be counted on for at least one match saving rearguard action, while ‘Mr Cricket’ would probably probably save one game for the Aussies, so factoring in draws I make it 2-0 to England. Glenn McGrath would probably utter his reflex “5-0 to Australia’ line!

Given the characters on show we need some good officials in charge. I am going for Bucknor and Dar as on field umpires, Venkataraghavan as TV Replay umpire and Clive Lloyd as match referee. For commentators I have already indicated that ‘Blowers’ has a role to play, and as his colleagues I choose Jim Maxwell (Australia) and Alison Mitchell (who has a foot in both camps) – sorry ‘Aggers‘, no gig for you this series. For expert summarisers I have no strong preferences other than that Boycott is absolutely banned.

A TWITTER THREAD AND PHOTOS

I have set the stage for my Ashes series between two teams of often overlooked players, but there remains one more thing to do before my usual sign off – I have an important twitter thread about Coronavirus to share with you, from Lainey Doyle, please click on screenshot to view the whole thread:

We end with the usual photographic flourish:

Neglected Ashes — The contending XIs in tabulated form.

P1310771 (2) — Sitting out in my bit of garden is providing plenty of opportunities for camera work (all bar two of the remaining pics in this post were taken while sitting outside, which I was also doing for most of the time spent typing this post).

All Time XIs – County Stalwarts vs Tried & Untrusted

A variation on the All Time XIs theme in which I create a squad of top county players who never got the England call and a squad of guys who got more England calls than their achievements merited.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to a variation on the all-time XIs theme (don’t forget that all 18 of my first class county posts can be viewed from here). In this post I create two XIs, one consisting of successful county players who for various reasons never got the call from the England selectors, and the second made up of people whose records suggest that they played more test cricket than they deserved (and in all cases enough matches to form a definite opinion). I examine the merits of my two combinations and assess the likely outcome of the match. I start with…

THE COUNTY STALWARTS

Alan Jones (Glamorgan) – 36,049 first class runs, 56 centuries and no test caps. He batted left handed and was an occasional off spin bowler.
John Langridge (Sussex) – 34,378 first class runs including 76 centuries. He was also a good enough fielder to pouch 788 catches in his 574 first class appearances.
Edgar Oldroyd (Yorkshire) – 15,925 first class runs including 36 centuries. A consistent and reliable no 3 in one of Yorkshire’s many very strong periods. He may well hold the record for time spent padded up ready to bat since the usual opening pair for Yorkshire in his day, Herbert Sutcliffe and Percy Holmes shared no fewer than 74 century opening stands, 69 of them for the county. His grand-daughter Eleanor is now a well a known commentator and broadcaster. He was a right hand bat and an occasional bowler of right arm medium pace and off spin.
Percy Perrin (Essex) – 29,709 runs in first class cricket, including 66 centuries. An irony of his career is that although he was never picked for England as a player he did become a selector and ultimately chairman of selectors. He was a right hand bat.
Tony Cottey (Glamorgan) – 14,567 first class runs including 35 centuries. The diminutive Cottey (officially 5’4″) also had the knack of scoring his runs when they were most needed. He was a right handed batter who liked to attack (I saw him make a wonderful century at Swansea which was made to look even better by the way Messrs Hayhurst and Bowler scratched around for Somerset the following day – so torturous was the former’s 96 that I was feeling sufficiently uncharitable as to be relieved when he missed out on his century – justice was done, when Robert Croft spun through the Somerset second innings and Glamorgan took a well earned victory). He also occasionally bowled off breaks.
Ernie Robson (Somerset) – 12,620 first class runs, 1147 first class wickets taken with his swing bowling. He was 25 when his first class career began in 1895, and 53 when he finished in 1923. He was still troubling opposition batters to the end, and settled one match in that final season by walloping a maximum in the last possible over. Sir Jack Hobbs rated him one of the most difficult bowlers he faced.
Bill East (Northamptonshire) – 4,012 first class runs and 499 wickets. A right handed middle order batter and medium pace bowler, he was one of the two people chiefly responsible along with George Thompson for his county gaining first class status. He was already 33 years old by the time this happened in 1905, but played on until the outbreak of war in 1914.
Don Shepherd (Glamorgan) – 2218 wickets at 21.32, more than anyone lese who never played test cricket, 5,696 first class runs. He bowled off cutters rather than true spin.
+David Hunter (Yorkshire) – more first class dismissals than any other keeper not to gain international recognition.
Tom Wass (Nottinghamshire) – 1,666 wickets in 312 first class matches at 20.46 each. He could bowl fast medium or leg spin.
*George Dennett (Gloucestershire) – 2,151 wickets at 19.82 each. He was unlucky to be a contemporary of Rhodes and Blythe (Kent), two of the greatest left arm spinners in history. Against Northamptonshire in 1907 he had one of the most astonishing match performances not to be crowned with victory (see also William Mycroft, in my Derbyshire post). After Gloucestershire had struggled to 60 in their first innings (Jessop 22), Northants were dismissed for 12 (Dennett 8-9, Jessop 2-3), Gloucestershire then scored 88 second time around (Jessop 24) and Northamptonshire fared slightly better in their second dig, reaching 40-7 (Dennett 7-12), and the general reckoning is that had there been time for even one more Dennett over the game would have been done, but Northants were saved by rain, and Dennett, with 15-21 in the match, had to settle for a draw. Bizarrely, given the combined Northants effort of 52-17, the only player in the game to bag ’em was Dennett himself.

This team has a very solid top five, two all rounders at six and seven, three specialist bowlers and a superb wicket keeper. Now it is time to move on to…

TRIED AND UNTRUSTED

Keaton Jennings (Durham and Lancashire) – even a fine tour of Sri Lanka, for which many would not have picked him, only boosted his average to 25.19 from 17 test matches. The left hander was named in the tour party for Sri Lanka this year before coronavirus caused that tour to be put on the back burner. Presumably when test cricket resumes England’s top three will be Burns, Sibley and Crawley, so it seems reasonable to presume that he has played his last game as an England opener.
Mark Stoneman (Durham and Surrey) – this may get me excommunicated in the northeast, but while entitled to your own opinions, you do not get to pick your own facts, and the harsh facts here are that having had 11 test matches Stoneman averages 27.68, with a best of 60 (having been given three lives along the way), not the stuff of which test openers are made.
Joe Denly (Kent) – some will see this inclusion as harsh, even draconian, and I freely concede that Denly has done a useful job as a stopgap no 3 in a difficult period. However, once again, you do not get to pick your own facts, and Denly averages precisely 30 from his 14 test match appearances (26 innings), which is not the stuff of which proper test match no 3s are made. The England selectors snookered themselves by failing to prepare for Cook’s retirement, an eventuality which Polyphemus could have seen coming even after Odysseus had finished with him and persisting with Jennings for far too long after he had been exposed as not being of test class, and were also handicapped by a major falling away in Bairstow’s red ball contribution, but with Burns, Sibley and Crawley now established it seems that Denly can safely be regarded as a former test cricketer.
Mark Ramprakash (Middlesex, Surrey) – 52 test match appearances, a measly two centuries and an average of 27.32 constitute a massive underachievement by the last cricketer to reach the career milestone of 100 first class hundreds. Many found the fact of his failure at the highest level hard to accept, and as late as 2009 there were voices calling for his selection when England needed a new batter for the final match of that year’s Ashes series at The Oval. Fortunately, 21st century England selections have in general been more sensible than those of the 1980s and 1990s (not a high bar!) and quite correctly Jonathan Trott as ‘next cab in the rank’ got the nod.
Graham Roope (Surrey) – an average of 30.71 from his 21 tests (compare with fellow 1970s picks Steele – average 42.06 from eight test matches – and Radley – avergae 48.10 from eight test matches – who both played fewer games), highest score 77. On the credit side of the ledger that 77 did come against the Aussies, as England made 538 in their second innings at The Oval in 1975 to save the game.
Geoff Miller (Derbyshire, Essex) – actually one place lower than he often batted for England. 34 test matches yielded him 1,213 runs at 25.80 (HS 98 not out), and 60 wickets at 30.98. The bowling average sounds almost respectable, but there is a strong “anti-mitigating” factor – that wicket taking rate of less than two per match, which simply does not permit him to be regarded as a front line bowler.
David Capel (Northamptonshire) – One of the many who suffered from attempts to fill a Botham shaped hole that was opening in England’s ranks during the second half of the 1980s. 15 test matches brought him 374 runs at 15.58 and 21 wickets at 50.66.
+Geraint Jones (Kent) – yes, he played his part in the 2005 Ashes triumph, but his less than polished wicket keeping was excused on grounds of what he could do with the bat, and average of 23.91 from 34 test matches is nothing special. He has a place in the ‘exotic birthplaces’ squad, having been born in Papua New Guinea.
*Derek Pringle (Essex) – to me, and I suspect many other English cricket followers of my generation, this man is the living embodiment of the antithesis of an all rounder. I was actually surprised to note that his 30 test appearances yielded a batting average of 15.10 and a bowling average of 35.97 – I expected even worse. However, when I first saw him play in 1986 he came in at no 6, and was being touted as an all rounder. His bowling is also subject to the ‘anti-mitigation factor’ that he only took 70 wickets in those 30 test matches – 2.3 per match, approximately half the wicket taking rate required from a front line bowler. Additionally he was not the most mobile of fielders and had a dreadful throw (in fact usually bowling the ball in rather than producing a proper throw). The award of the captaincy to him reflects his status as to me the ultimate in being “tried and not trusted”.
Ian Salisbury (Sussex, Surrey) – leg spinner who bowled at least as many bad ‘uns as he did good ‘uns. His 15 test appearances netted him 20 wickets at 76.95, and at a time when test scoring rates were generally lower than they are now he went at 3.70 an over. I considered the left arm slow bowler (not spinner – if he ever got one to turn I did not see it) Richard Illingworth (Worcestershire), but the latter had the sole merit of accuracy, which means that while not generally penetrative his bowling average remained at least semi-respectable.
Peter Martin (Lancashire) – a classic example of a type of player I saw far too much of in the 1980s and 1990s, the guy who experiences some success bowling a bit quicker than medium for his county but looks innocuous at a higher level. A bowling average of 34.11 from eight test matches may not sound terrible, but the ‘anti-mitigation factor’ comes into play – he only took 17 wickets, just over two per game in those matches. Had he had 34 wickets at 34 I would have said that at least he demonstrated an ability to take wickets, and maybe the average would come down in future, but with 17 in eight matches there was not even that straw to grasp at.

This team has a top five who can confidently be expected not to score heavily enough, three varying types of ‘anti-all rounder’, an unreliable wicket keeper and two specialist bowlers neither of whom are likely to take wickets and one of whom will very probably get smacked around – quite like a late 1980s and 1990s England team in fact! I also reckon that skipper Pringle will make plenty of wrong decisions.

THE VERDICT

Our team of good county players who never got the test nod looks a well balanced combination, with just about every base covered. The ‘tried and untrusted’ team looks a rabble. I would expect the team of non-internationals to win by a huge margin – the ‘contest’ would probably make the 2006-7 Ashes look like a nailbiter!

Remember that this exercise is just a bit of fun, and if disputing some of my picks remember that while you are entitled to your own opinions, you are not entitled to your own facts.

PHOTOGRAPHS

We have completed our journey through the “County Stalwart” and “Tried and Untrusted” XIs, and all that is left for me is to supply my usual sign off (and field the comments when they come)…

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