As the rain washed away the first T20I between England and Australia, I started to ponder how the old-timers would have done at Twenty20, and fell, as one does, into constructing imaginary XIs for England and Rest of the World selected from those who finished their international careers before 1970, so as to exclude anyone who ever played an ODI. It is more of a jigsaw-puzzle than picking an all-time Test team because of the need to cover all the angles. You want at least eight batsmen who are unafraid of taking the aerial route, six bowlers covering every speed from 50mph to 90mph and a couple of really good fielders you can put in key positions.
Beginning with the England XI, SF Barnes is always the first name on the sheet for any team I select for which he is eligible since he was the best bowler ever, a master of swing, swerve, spin and pace.
Next for Twenty20 comes Gilbert Jessop, one of the most amazingly fast scorers ever seen. Fifteen of his first-class centuries were scored in under an hour. He was initially regarded as a bowler, of fast-medium pace, and was also a brilliant fielder.
The other two certainties for me are Denis Compton, whose talent for batting improvisation remains unsurpassed, and Frank Woolley, a man capable of peppering the roof of the football stadium at Bradford against the powerful Yorkshire attack. Furthermore, Woolley was an almost Test-class slow left-armer and Compton's leg-spin was good enough to bring him 622 first-class wickets.
So, with Woolley, Compton, Jessop and Barnes as the nucleus, who else?
Of the three great H's, only Wally Hammond seems cut out for this team. Hutton spent his career worrying about the weakness of those coming in after him and curbed his aggressive talents, and Jack Hobbs was a timer and placer as well as a great stealer of singles and would, I fancy, have been as unsuccessful a Twenty20 player as Michael Vaughan. Hammond, however, crunched the ball through the off side with immense power and frequency. That he could (if reluctantly) bowl fast and was a brilliant close catcher are also useful add-ons.
The obvious batsman-keeper is Les Ames, who can also open the batting. But with Hobbs and Hutton ruled out and most of England's openers before 1970 being a stodgy lot, his partner needs some selecting. I will go for Colin Milburn, whose England career finished when he lost an eye in 1969, but who had broken the mould of English openers with his blitzkrieg style.
Still room for one more specialist bat. My choice is Percy Chapman, who will also captain the side. A batsman who hardly knew the meaning of defence and a brilliant cover fielder, he was appointed captain for the fifth Test of the 1926 Ashes and won them back, and then went to Australia and rested after the fourth Test because England were already 4-0 up.
Three places left. We have no off-spinner and no top-quality fast bowler yet, and we can give those spots to Jim Laker and Fred Trueman, whose credentials hardly need further elaboration. The last place goes to Maurice Tate, the great medium-pace bowler between the wars who also opened the batting rumbustiously for Sussex.
So here is the final XI in batting order, with the proviso that Jessop might well be sent in early if it seemed like a good idea:
C Milburn
LEG Ames (k)
FE Woolley
DCS Compton
WR Hammond
APF Chapman (c)
GL Jessop
MW Tate
FS Trueman
JC Laker
SF Barnes
My Rest of the World Old-timers Twenty20 team will appear in a couple of days.
Ted Dexter should have been a strong contender, Statham for his pace bowling accuracy perhaps. Cant argue with it though.
Posted by: Asif Rahman at September 1, 2009 6:53 PM
Are you considering Sunil Gavaskar for your ROW XI? ;)
[Mike: Ho, ho, ho. Actually, since he played after 1970, he's not eligible.]
Posted by: Sushanta at September 1, 2009 8:38 PM
What surprises me is that inspite of the fact that the English claim that W.G.Grace is the best player ever, he does not find a place in any of the all time best XI even for England. Be it Test XI selected by cricinfo or be it T20 XI selected here.
[Mike: WG was an opening batsman and would have insisted on captaining. I'm not keen on him as a captain, and I'm also not convinced that he was as attacking a batsman as would be good for T20.]
Posted by: Matt H at September 1, 2009 10:38 PM
What about Ranji (excuse the fact I can;t spell it)? He was supposedly a genius with the bat and created new leg side scoring shots. That sort of improvisation could have been handy
Posted by: comptonforever at September 2, 2009 8:56 AM
Thanks for picking Tate. Was astonished he wasn;t even nominated for the all-time England Test XI.
Posted by: daneel at September 2, 2009 6:14 PM
I'd be tempted to put Harold Gimblett in there somewhere, personally.
Posted by: Mad Hamish at September 3, 2009 12:40 AM
There's a bit of a query about Hammond because he could be kept quite by bowling on his pads.
Posted by: matt t at September 3, 2009 4:00 AM
I'm assuming a person by the name of don bradman will be captain and bat at number 3 for the ROW XI
Posted by: KK at September 3, 2009 11:19 AM
Jessop's too far down the order!
W.G. Grace has to be there. Ahead of Chapman, I would think. And I'd be tempted to drop Tate and play two spinners - Laker and Blythe, perhaps? Or Verity?
Here's my ROW Old-timers T20 XI (which happens to contain at least one player from each Test-playing nation of the time!)
Victor Trumper
Learie Constantine
Don Bradman
Charlie Macartney
CK Nayudu
Keith Miller
JR Reid
Jock Cameron (w) (shaded Clyde Walcott, my initial pick on pure keeping skills, and was supposed to be a fine scientific hitter - a phrase that seems sadly to have gone out of fashion)
Alan Davidson (selected above Ray Lindwall for lower-order biffing and left-arm variety)
Fazal Mahmood
Clarrie Grimmett (as a cunning, teasing bowler he seems to me more suited to Twenty20 than Bill O'Reilly)
[Mike: As you will see from my next post, I agree with you about seven of those names. And I did say that Jessop could well float up the order if it seemed like a good idea at the time.]
Posted by: JK at September 3, 2009 9:34 PM
Great posting. I would venture to suggest 2 great names from the past for the ROW Old Timers XI; Mushtaq Ali (who played for India) and Keith Miller. My grandfather saw them both play and these 2 players as well as Lindsay Hassett are the few old timers that he remembers still....Apparently Mushtaq had such an endearing style that the Calcutta crowd boycotted a test match he was not picked (No Mushtaq, No test)...The Indian board had to play him and he promptly rewarded their gesture with a half century...
Posted by: daniel at September 7, 2009 5:27 AM
A superb side, cant really pick a fault in it
Posted by: JFree at September 9, 2009 11:52 AM
It would be nice to have links to the player's stats for an article such as this
Posted by: Reynold O'Neal at September 9, 2009 4:52 PM
If Ted Dexter's career at the international level ended by 1970,and I am not sure it did,he should walk into this team.I would venture a guess that on the All-time England XI opponents would be happier to see Kevin Pieterson than Ted marching to the crease.And a more than useful bowler too.
Samir Chopra lives in Brooklyn and teaches Computer Science and Philosophy at the City University of New York; his academic interests include the philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence and the politics of technology. In his third undergraduate year, he captained Mathematics in the departmental cricket competition (and lost to Chemistry in the first round). Samir played C-grade cricket in Sydney and makes guest appearances for his old club when possible (and desirable). Samir runs the blog Eye on Cricket and the cricket page at The Faster Times.
Paul Ford is a co-founder of the New Zealand cricket supporters' cult, the Beige Brigade. He was once described by a current New Zealand cricketer as "looking spastic" even mucking about with an Excalibur and a tennis ball in the backyard. Paul bowls right-armed Nathan Astlesque "nudes", his batting would make Ewen Chatfield look elegant, and he is a committed fielder. He sometimes grows a beard to hide his double chin and inhabits a periphery of cricket that Cricinfo is proud to be glimpsing through this blog.
Stephen Gelb grew up in Cape Town, a short walk from the beautiful Newlands ground. Always a better student of the game than player, his passion for cricket survived eight years as a student in Canada, where he learned to love baseball too. He lives in Johannesburg doing economic research at The EDGE Institute and teaching at Wits University.
Mike Holmans, a database consultant by profession, has spent thirty summers (and a few winters) going to the cricket. Brought up in one and working in the other, his dearest wish is for a season to end with Yorkshire winning the county championship by beating runners-up Middlesex by one wicket with five minutes to go. If it’s also a summer when England win the Ashes, so much the better.
Born in Colombo, educated at Oxford and now living in Brisbane - Michael Jeh (Fox) is a cricket lover with a global perspective on the game. An Oxford Blue who played first-class cricket, he is a Playing Member of the MCC and still plays grade cricket. His views on cricket might best be described as those of a "modern traditionalist". Michael now works closely with elite athletes in his job as a manager at Griffith University in Queensland.
Saad Shafqat takes special pride that his cricket-watching life began during the three-month interval between Javed Miandad's debut Test in Lahore and Imran Khan's 12-wicket haul at Sydney. Although a practicing neurologist based in Karachi, cricket has never been far from his activities. He has co-authored Javed Miandad’s autobiography Cutting Edge and has been a contributor to Cricinfo since 2005. His regular column Reverse Swing appears fortnightly in Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English daily.
RSS Feed
