This post concludes our cricketing journey through the alphabet, a couple of centuries of history and every inhabited continent, with a listing of each XI in reverse ranking order from 26th up to first. I have appended extra comments along the way where my thinking may have changed, or where cricketing developments caught up with me during the course of this series, which has been running since late July. Each XI is also accompanied by a link to the relevant selectorial post.
26TH: THE Qs
The challenge for this letter was actually finding 11 players to constitute an XI, and not surprisingly the final result was decidedly ill assorted. They managed just 7 of a possible 125 points.
25TH: THE Zs
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24TH: THE Is
While this XI has no great strength anywhere its biggest weakness was in the seam/ pace bowling department.
23RD: THE Xs
This was an XI which required a lot of chicanery to pull together. Between the creation of this XI and latter stages of the match ups a women’s tournament took place in New Zealand, and one development there was the arrival in the big time of off spinner Xara Jetly, who were I selecting this XI now would replace MaX Waller, who adds very little to the XI.
22ND: THE Us
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21ST: THE Ns
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20TH: THE Ys
The strong middle order, good spin pairing and one high class fast bowler saved this side from complete disaster.
19TH – THE Cs
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18TH: THE Es
A good spin pairing, two pacers with remarkable records and a world class keeper, but not enough batting for comfort and Bill Edrich the best available back up bowler. More here.
17TH: THE Os
The same score as the Es, but the Os get the higher spot as they won the match up between the two sides.
16TH: THE Ds
Good batting, good pace/ seam bowling, good keeper but the Ds fall down on spin bowling and captaincy.
15TH: THE Js
The Js.
14TH: THE Vs
The Vs superb bowling unit did not quite propel them into the top half of the table, as they lost a split tie (both XIs scoring 69 out 125) to…
13TH: THE As
Solid batting, a top keeper and a superbly balanced bowling unit was just enough to get the As into the top half of the table, since they won their match up with the Vs.
12TH: THE Hs
Stellar batting, a great keeper and a sound captain, but not quite enough bowling to get them to the very top. Neil Harvey might replace Hussey in some people’s estimation, and I would probably have served this letter better had I steeled myself to pick an all rounder (probably George Hirst, with his bowling stock in trade being left arm pace) rather than Hendren, but dropping the scorer of the second most FC centuries ever would have been a huge call.
11TH: THE Ps
The Ps, just missing out on the top ten.
10TH – THE Rs
This exemplifies the advantage of having Rhodes available – you can pick him for any one of several roles depending on your needs. Here, Rhodes the specialist spinner was required and therefore I selected him in that capacity, the one in which he both started and finished his career. The Rs.
9TH – THE Bs
In retrospect, given that Barnes could be said to attend to the leg spinners angle of attack with his ‘Barnes ball’, as explicated by Ian Peebles, himself an England leggie, it might have made this team even better to have selected Palwankar Baloo, Bishan Singh Bedi or left arm spinning all rounder Enid Bakewell in place of Benaud (who could instead be put in charge of the commentary team) to increase the variety available in the bowling department. Nevertheless, the Bs are a fine combination, and it says more about the top eight than it does about them that they ended up ninth.
8TH: THE Gs
If the Gs can be said to have a defect it is that none of their bowlers are left armed.
7TH: THE Ts
The Ts amassed the same number of points (90 out of 125) as the Ks and the Fs, but my tie-splitting procedure ranked them third out of three. Their batting was weakened slightly by the necessity of ensuring that there were relief bowling options available for three specialist quicks who demanded inclusion, a problem resolvable only by turning to the all round talents of Frank Tarrant.
6TH: THE Ks
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5TH: THE Fs
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4TH: THE Ls
Strong and well balanced, but the Ls just missed out on a medal.
3RD: THE Ss
The Ss are a stellar combination, although Sangakkara would not be considered a top flight keeper and the spin options are limited.
2ND: THE Ms
A powerful batting line up and a superbly balanced bowling line up, with Mahmood’s leg cutter meaning that a specialist leg spinner is unlikely to be missed.
FIRST: THE Ws
A strong batting line up, a wonderfully balanced bowling attack (Wardle’s ability to bowl left arm wrist spin covers the lack of an off spinner), a quality keeper and one of the greatest of all captains. The Ws are worthy champions.
This has been a fun exercise, though challenging in parts (both weak letters where actually completing an XI takes effort and strong letters where in some cases a second or third XI would beat most of the rest of the alphabet, which require extended acknowledgements of players one has overlooked).
PHOTOGRAPHS
Not one of my largest photo galleries, but I hope you enjoy it…
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