WATSON's XI
This is a perfectly balanced team with depth in batting and great variety in bowling.
Batting: The Creme of the 1920s
Simpson and Lawry added more than 60 runs on average for the first wicket and are the most successful Australian opening partnership of all time. They are only bettered by Hobbs and Sutcliffe.
Macartney, Leyland, Ponsford and Hendren represent the crème of the 1920s. Indeed, it would be difficult to construct a stronger middle-order quartet from that era. As a modern comparison; Richards, Edrich, Kallis, and Walters would be similar in style, temperment and talent.
Bowling: No less than Nine Bowlers
The bowling attack is the most versatile possible. Barnes could either swing the ball at pace or bowl leg and off breaks. Johnston could either bowl left-arm fast-medium or accurate slow orthodox spin.
Therefore, depending on the state of the wicket, the team’s bowlers could either operate as a four pronged pace attack, or as an attack consisting of two spin bowlers and two fast bowlers. Add the left-arm orthodox bowling of Macartney and the leg-break googley bowling of Simpson and the team effectively has no less than 9 bowlers all capable of taking wickets!
Captaincy: Top 10 Ashes Captains
Bill Lawry captained Australia during 25 Test matches and was esteemed for his ‘astute field placings’ that were designed to limit the favourite shots of key opposition batsman. Assessed by Ian Chappell to be one of the ‘Top 10 Ashes Captains’;
Chappell's Ashes Captains: Bill Lawry - YouTube
Wicketkeeping and Fielding: The Best from South Africa and Australia
John Waite is South Africa’s greatest wicketkeeper-batsman. He is co-holder with Mark Boucher for the most dismissals in a 5 Test series by a South African – 26.
Macartney, Ponsford, Hendren were all known for their powerful throwing arms and expert out-fielding. Bob Simpson was probably the greatest slips fieldman of all time and will be backed up by the versatile Leyland and Lawry;
Bill Lawry makes cricket history, 1st ever catch in ODI cricket - YouTube
1.Bob Simpson (1957-1978)
Tests = 62
Batting Average = 46.81
Hundreds = 10
Highest Score = 311
Bowling Average = 42.26
Bowling Strike Rate = 96.9
Wickets = 71
5wickets = 2
Did you know?
Simpson and Lawry averaged 60.94 runs for the first wicket. This is almost 10 runs better than their closest Australian rivals Hayden & Langer.
Stats from the past: The opening salvo | Highlights | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo
Quotable Quotes: Wisden (1965)
Simpson's stance is easy and his style attractive, the result of a change of technique in the late 1950's when he turned from playing too square-on to side-on. Simpson found that it made all the difference to him in dealing effectively with the in-dipper and going-away balls as he describes them. More strongly built than most people suppose -- he stands 5' 10½" and weights 13 stone -- Simpson excels most when attacking.
The flashing straight-drive and devastating square-cut shows him at his best and these strokes, as well as the on-drive perfectly taken off his toes, are examples of power and elegance which never fail to evoke admiration. He rarely hooks, having largely discarded the stroke as risky, and does not pull overmuch.
As a bowler of guile, he depends more on the leg-break than on other variations.
Wisden - Bobby Simpson
2. Bill Lawry (1961-1971)
Tests = 67
Batting Average = 47.15
Hundreds = 13
Highest Score = 210
Did you know?
Simpson and Lawry added 382 against Hall and Griffith at Bridgetown in 1965. Simpson made 201 and Lawry 210.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/62972.html
Quotable Quotes: Wisden (1962)
A comparatively unknown 24-year-old cricketer who came to England with Richie Benaud's 1961 team made the strongest impact of any post-war Australian batsman on his initial tour. He was Wiliam Morris Lawry, a member of the Northcote Cricket Club in Melbourne and of the Victoria State eleven. As a Test left-handed opener he established himself as successor to Arthur Morris.
It was ironical that this tall, lean young man with the sharp jaw, who stood six feet two inches, bore the nickname "The Phantom" bestowed upon him when he first joined the Victoria team and his colleagues discovered his youthful addiction to a comic strip character of that name.
As he went from one triumph to another Lawry, with his slight crouch at the wicket, his long reach to kill the spin was very much there in the flesh in the eyes of the England bowlers.
Presenting a really straight bat, he combined a well-organised defence with a satisfying, if not very wide, range of strokes, showing readiness to hit the loose ball and extraordinary facility in placing it.
Admirable composure and power of intense concentration supplemented these assets. He was stout hearted, stubborn or pugnacious as circumstances prescribed, and had the temperament of being able to carry on unruffled by error.......
After the Old Trafford Test, W.E. Bowes, a former England pace bowler, wrote that Lawry was one of the best players against fast bowling I have ever seen.
Wisden - Bill Lawry
3. Charles Macartney (1907-1926)
Tests = 35
Batting Average = 41.78
Hundreds = 7
Highest Score = 170
Bowling Average = 27.55
Bowling Strike Rate = 79.1
Wickets = 45
5wickets = 2
Did you know?
Macartney played 13 Test matches after the First World War and scored 1252 runs with 6 hundreds at 65.89 . He scored a century before lunch at Leeds in 1926.
Quotable Quotes: Geoff Armstrong
In 1921, in a tour match against Nottinghamshire, Charlie Macartney scored 345 in less than a single day. He reached his 300 in 205 minutes, with one hit going clean out of the ground. In the dressing room during the tea break, having passed 200 in much better than a run a minute, he was seen rummaging through his kit. “What are you doing?” he was asked. “I’m looking for a heavier bat,” he replied. “I’m going to have a dip.”
Macartney was Australia’s greatest batsman of the 1920s.’
(‘The 100 Greatest Cricketers’, page 196)
4. Maurice Leyland (1928-1938)
Tests = 41
Batting Average = 46.06
Hundreds = 9
Highest Score = 187
Did you know?
Maurice Leyland averaged 56.83 over 20 Test matches against his favourite opponent – Australia.
Quotable Quotes: Ken Piesse
This dedicated and popular left-hander personified the spirit of Yorkshire cricket. He toured Australia three times between the wars and averaged almost 45 on each occasion. He loved tough situations and was at his best when his team was in trouble. He made a century on debut against Australia in 1928-29 and finished with another at the Oval in 1938 when he helped Len Hutton add 382 for the second wicket against Don Bradman’s side.
(‘Dual for Glory’, page 78)
Quotable Quotes: Sir Len Hutton
Sir Len Hutton announced his all-time England team with the portentious deliberation of some Bradford electoral returning officer. Then he stayed silent, counting the seconds it took you to spot that five of the eleven were Yorkshireman.
It wasn’t long, but experience warns you against engaging Hutton in the intricate swordplay of cricket theory.
In any case, only one was a contentious selection and Hutton, sensitive to accusations of Northern chauvinism, already had the gloves on waiting to defend his choice of Maurice Leyland ahead of Denis Compton, Peter May, or the early-or-mid-career Colin Cowdrey.
“Since it’s inconceivable that any all-time Australian team would go into the field without Bill O’Reilly,” he said, “I’ve picked Leyland as the horse for the course. O’Reilly was the best bowler Australia ever had: aggressive, unbelievably accurate to the right-handers. Well, Leyland was a left-hander and he also had a jinx on O’Reilly. I remember him saying: “I’ve got O’Reilly in my pocket and he knows it.” I’ve never heard another England batsman tempt fate by saying anything like that. But it was true and that’s why Leyland is in.”
(The Picador Book of Cricket’, page 425)
5. Bill Ponsford (1924-1934)
Tests = 29
Batting Average = 48.22
Hundreds = 7
Highest Score = 266
Did you know?
Bill Ponsford scored two quadruple centuries for Victoria. The first was against Tasmania while batting at No.5 and the second was against Queensland when opening the innings with Bill Woodfull.
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Quotable Quotes: Roland Perry
The selectors now decided to bring Ponsford back for the Third Test in Adelaide.
Woodfull, who had overdone the struggle to find the right batting order, this time put Ponsford at five. It was the only bating move that worked. Ponsford performed well and with courage, often turning his back to receive a bruise rather than take the risk of giving a catch. He made 85 in the first innings before Voce pushed one past his broad blade and bowled him. Many of his team mates received dangerous blows notably Woodfull who was hit above the heart, and Oldfield, whose skull was fractured. Ponsford displayed big multi-coloured bruises from shoulders to buttocks when he removed his shirt. When his team-mates expressed sympathy, Ponsford remarked: ‘I wouldn’t mind having a couple more if I could get a hundred.......
.......Bradman concluded that Trumper would have been a better player to watch, but he could not go past Ponsford, when selecting his best all-time Australian Ashes Team, for efficiency and results. It was this that swayed his selection. Bradman always chose an attacking batsman who would give him a better chance of winning over an attractive player who didn’t always achieve results. Bradman wasn’t selecting a side for its aesthetics. He was after the best winning combination.’
(Bradman’s Best Ashes Teams’, page 25, 60-61 )
6. Elias ‘Patsy’ Hendren (1920-1935)
Tests = 51
Batting Average = 47.63
Hundreds = 7
Highest Score = 205
Did you know?
Patsy Hendren made 170 centuries and scored 57,611 runs in first class cricket. Only the great Jack Hobbs has bettered both aggregates. He was named Wisden’s ‘Leading Cricketer of the World’ (1923) after scoring 3,010 runs at an average of 77.
Wisden ? the official site of the Cricketers' Almanack
Quotable Quotes: Australian Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies
He was a warm hearted human being who embodied and displayed true character of cricket. No cricket lover of my generation (or generations) will ever forget Patsy. His figure and face at the wickets or in the field are easily and distinctly recalled. He regarded the function of the batsman as that of hitting the ball and scoring runs. The bat for him was not a mere shield, but a weapon. If we had more like him there would be less to hear or to read about declining attendances and mournful prophecies about the future of the game.
(‘Dual for Glory’, page 71)
7. John Waite (1951-1965)
Tests = 50
Batting Average = 30.44
Hundreds = 4
Highest Score = 134
Catches = 124
Stumpings = 17
Did you know?
John Waite helped South Africa to a 3 wicket win over England at Old Trafford in 1955 by scoring 113 against Tyson, Bedser, Bailey, Lock , and Titmus.
3rd Test: England v South Africa at Manchester, Jul 7-12, 1955 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo
Quotable Quotes: Peter Martin
He represented Eastern Province, Transvaal and South Africa in a long career from 1948 to 1966. Although tall for a wicketkeeper, at well over 6 feet, he kept immaculately throughout his lengthy career to South Africa's fast bowlers and spinners, especially South Africa's match-winning offspinner Hugh Tayfield, off whom he effected many stumpings.
He held the record for most dismissals (141) by a South Africa wicketkeeper for several years, till he was overtaken by Davie Richardson and subsequently Mark Boucher. Waite still holds the joint-record for most dismissals by a South Africa keeper in a Test series, with 26 during the 1961-62 series against New Zealand. Boucher equalled that record in 1998.
John Waite 1930-2011: John Waite dies at 81 | South Africa Cricket News | ESPN Cricinfo
8. Ray Lindwall (1946-1960)
Tests = 61
Batting Average = 21.15
Hundreds = 2
Highest Score = 118
Bowling Average = 23.03
Bowling Strike Rate = 59.8
Wickets = 228
5wickets = 12
Did you know?
His Test century at Melbourne in January 1947 was the second-fastest by an Australian.
3rd Test: Australia v England at Melbourne, Jan 1-7, 1947 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo
Quotable Quotes: Ashley Mallett
Ray Lindwall heads my list of the five best fast bowlers I have seen.
This artist-cricketer changed his pace with all the subtle artifices any fast bowler of any era has achieved, and he did what all great bowlers must do: broke the rhythm of the batsman. At his peak he had the power to slay by thunder or defeat by guile.
Stocky and strong, Lindwall was like a well-toned welterweight, ready to punch and counter-punch. He bowled outswingers at genuine speed, and had what Pelham Warner called "shades of pace". To the purists, Lindwall's bowling arm was too low, but that helped his skidding bouncer. Instead of climbing harmlessly over the batsman's head, it came at the throat, earning him the nickname "Killer".
Ashley Mallett : Ashley Mallett on the five best fast bowlers he has seen | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo
Quotable Quotes: Roland Perry
Bradman considered Lindwall a better bowler than Larwood. The Australian could generate pace and accuracy more consistently than the Englishman. Lindwall had a grip on more variarations than Larwood, demonstrating these with a prodigious late out-swinger early in his career, an in-swinger mid-career, the capacity to change pace, a fearful bouncer, and perhaps the best Yorker of them all. While statistics, if taken out of context, may be misleading, the numbers here seem to suggest Lindwall’s superiority. In 21 Tests, Larwood took 78 wickets at 28.35. remove his Bodyline figures and his returns of 45 wickets at 37.26 for three quarters of his Test career give a more realistic refection of his effectiveness. In 61 Tests Lindwall took 228 wickets at 23.03.
(Bradman’s Best Ashes Teams, page161)
9. Bill Johnston (1947-1955)
Tests = 40
Bowling Average = 23.91
Bowling Strike Rate = 69.0
Wickets = 160
5wickets = 7
Did you know?
Bill Johnston harvested 102 wickets at 16.8 on his first tour of England with Don Bradman's 1948 ‘Invincibles’, including 9 for 183 from 84 overs in the first Test at Trent Bridge. He was the most successful bowler of the tour.
Quotable Quotes: Wisden (2008)
In the early 1950s Bill Johnston was capable of bowling as vicious a bumper as just about any bowler in the world. The problem was it would usually be followed by a chuckle, not the traditional fast bowler's wicked laugh but a guffaw that told the batsman there was no malice intended. It was the kind of response which once caused Bill O'Reilly to lament: "As a bowler he has one failing - he hasn't a temper." Indeed, his friend and team-mate Neil Harvey recalled: "His happiness spread itself through the team." With a secure understanding of his bowling talent, he didn't need a temper. Former Test opener Jack Moroney once declared: "Bill Johnston could do things with a cricket ball that were beyond normal human beings." And Harvey called him "one of the best all-round bowlers in the history of cricket".
Born at Beeac, in the Victorian dairy country, Johnston was originally a slow left-armer but, when he emerged from the RAAF, former Australian captain Jack Ryder advised him to bowl quicker, advice soon reiterated by Don Bradman, who wanted more pace on the 1948 Ashes tour. So Johnston used his height and strength, together with his looseness of limb, to turn himself into a left-arm bowler of immense variety, able to swing the ball at a brisk fast-medium pace, occasionally explode into short episodes of real speed and, when the conditions were right, reach back to the spin of his youth, each variety delivered with probing accuracy.
Wisden - Bill Johnston
10. Sydney Barnes (1901-1914)
Tests = 27
Bowling Average = 16.43
Bowling Strike Rate = 41.6
Wickets = 189
5wickets = 24
Did you know?
Sydney Barnes took 5 wickets in a Test innings against Australia 12 times, a figure only beaten today by one man, Richard Hadlee. In his final 3 years in Test cricket (1911-14) Barnes took 122 wickets at 14.08.
Quotable Quotes: Bernard Hollowood in conversation with Albert Hollowood (1970)
“Oh yes, he could ‘em all, but he got his wickets with fast leg-breaks. Marvelous, absolutely marvellous, he was. Fast leg-breaks and always on a length.” Others, Barnes included, have claimed that he bowled every known ball except the googly – swingers, off breaks, top spinners, the lot. But undoubtably his chef d’oeuvre was the leg break. He took a long run, a bounding springy run, and as his arm came over in a perfect action, mid on and mid off could hear the snap of his long fingers as they rolled and squeezed the ball into its revolutionary parabola. There has been no one like him. O’Reilly could bend them from leg, but not with Barnes’s consistency or devil. Douglas Wright could bowl fastish leg breaks, but not on the length that destroys and goes on destroying.
(The Picador Book of Cricket, page 37-38)
11. Neil Adcock (1953-1962)
Tests = 26
Bowling Average = 21.10
Bowling Strike Rate = 61.4
Wickets = 104
5wickets = 5
Did you know?
On the South African tour of England in 1960 tour he took 108 wickets at an average of 14 and was named as one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year in 1961 as a result.
Quotable Quotes: Wisden (1961)
Since Adcock emerged during the 1960 tour as South Africa's sole penetrating bowler when his young partner Geoffrey Griffin had to withdraw, any injury to him must have been disastrous to a side beset with more than a fair share of misfortune. As it was, his bowling, which some good judges thought to be the fastest in contemporary cricket, provided both an admirable spearhead of attack and a delight to spectators.
Even Adcock himself was surprised at his new-found ability and enduring stamina. He believed that the chief reasons for his success lay in his acquisition of a smooth rhythmic action which put a minimum tax on his energy, and in his building-up exercises. Unlike many fast bowlers Adcock does not employ a pronounced movement of the body at the point of delivery. He bowls without interruption in the course of his run, swinging his arm on a trunk that is virtually upright -- like a sudden gust turning a light windmill.
Wisden - Neil Adcock
12th. Peter Heine (1955-1962)
Tests = 14
Bowling Average = 25.96
Bowling Strike Rate = 67.0
Wickets = 58
5wickets = 4
Did You Know?
Peter Heine made his Test debut in England in 1955, taking 5 for 60 at Lord's on his first day as an international cricketer. He dismissed Tom Graveney, Peter May, Denis Compton, Ken Barrington and Godfrey Evans.
Quotable Quotes: Martin Chandler
.....Heine, who Jim Laker dubbed The Bloody Dutchman was even meaner and nastier than Adcock. He made an immediate impression on debut at Lords, May describing an early delivery to England opener Don Kenyon thus; "Don pushed sedately forward to a good length ball which kicked and, as the saying goes, almost parted his hair."
Tom Graveney was at the other end when that frightening delivery was bowled and for him Heine quickly established himself among the four best fast bowlers I have ever played against.
As to Heine the man Laker wrote, 'He was a fearsome figure, his black hair straggling over his eyes and a great red streak across the front of his shirt, on which he viciously polished the ball.' Years later Graveney commented, 'I was never sure what was his main interest in life - hitting the stumps or knocking batsman over ... he kept coming at you from a short length as if he were trying to bully you into error.'
Cricket Web - Features: The Dutchman and the Avalanche
