India All Time XI

[sanga1337]

Gavaskar
Merchant
Dravid
Tendulkar
Hazare
azharrudin
kapil dev
engineer
srinath
kumble
bedi

number 6 was a toss up between laxman, azharuddin, viswanath and umrigar. Really any one of them could be the in the number 6 spot. And if Sehwag can keep up his record at test level I would have to fit him in there somewhere

 

[bagapath]

I would love to have merchant, nissar and amar singh in the team. but sadly they didnt play enough test cricket (by enough i mean at least 20).

you can look at my team as post world war II XI.

gavaskar
sehwag
dravid
tendulkar
hazare
mankad
kapil dev (c)
kirmani (wk)
kumble
srinath
prasanna

i hope irrfan becomes good enough to replace prasanna and make it a more balanced 3 pacers + 2 spinnerd attack..

 

[Richard]

Personally Merchant is like Barry Richards - I don't really care how little Test cricket he played, it's obvious from the tiny little he did plus his astonishing domestic record that he's India's best-ever opener, and very possibly batsman of all, as Richards is South Africa's. Yes, he played in the 1930s, but even so, such numbers remain utterly remarkable.

 

[Richard]

Can't fathom how Gupte is the unquestioned greatest Indian spinner of them all. He had a strike rate of 70. That's enough to warrant exclusion or at least a second thought, imo.

SJS to reply.

Gupte is pretty much without question India's greatest-ever spinner.

 

[Richard]

I wouldn't have Vengsarkar anywhere near an all time Indian X1. Don't think he was that great a player tbh - was largely poor away from the subcontinent. Would even have guys like Laxman or Sehwag ahead of him.

Sehwag not a chance, Laxman maybe, and that's purely because Laxman is one of my favourites.

Having a closer look, I'd probably not either - Mankad and Hazare probably have a better case. Vengsarkar was still a superb batsman though, certainly not "not that great".

 

[SJS]

SJS to reply.

Gupte is pretty much without question India's greatest-ever spinner.

Well he is surely the greatest orthodox leg spinner of all time India have produced.

That much we can say without much chance of contradiction with the unorthocox, medium pacers of Kumble and Chandra.

Gupte is widely called by those who played with or against him as the finest spinner India produced so we cant just ignore that claim out of hand, Amongst those who swear by him are as great and legendary cricketers as Sir garfield Sobers.

Inspite of Kumble's 600 plus wickets, Bishen's magnificently beautiful bowling and mastery over his subtle craft and Chandra's amazing ability to strike suddenly and venomously and win matches in a short sharp spell, the fact remains that the only other Indian bowler who has been considered amongst the all time greats by opponents Is Erapally Prasanna.

Just as the West Indians are enamoured by Gupte and swear by him, the Australians of the late 60's and early 70's swear by Prasanna. And you may not be fond of Ian Chappel but there are few more knowledgeable students of the game.

I havent seen Gupte bowl but I have heard of how great he was hundreds and thousands of times from those who had played with him. Prasanna I have seen and consider the greatest Indian spinner, I have seen for various reasons which will take some space.

Coming to the problem of putting Gupte's greatness in the context of his figures let me tell you that figures tell you something for sure but they dont tell you everything unless you KNOW it.

Whats the BIG difference between Gupte, Bedi, Chandra, Prasanna, Kumble, and Venkat ? Its the same difference as between Andy Roberts and the other great West Indian fast bowlers who followed. He had very modest, if any support at the other end. And yet so many of those who saw him at his peak consider Roberts the greatest of the many great West Indian fast bowlers.

Roberts for most of his peak as a fast bowler, bowled with medium pacers of modest caliber at the other end. By the time Holding developed into a world class fast bowler, Roberts' career was on the wane. Hence iplayers like Lillee, Imran, Lloyd, Trueman, Bailey and Mallet among others rate him higher than those who followed him in-spite of his figures being, comparatively, less impressive.

Bedi, Prasanna and Chandrashekhar were in a period when India had no pace bowlers to talk of but they had each other and Venkat waiting to play now and then. Between them they made the greatest spin attack ever assembled in one Test nation. This did help though Kapil arrived ten years late for India to really benefit from a truly awesome attack.

Kumble when he arrived had Kapil with some juice left in him, Prabhakar close to his best, Venkatpathy Raju who joined the same year and Javagal Srinath who made his debut the next year. By the time Kumble flowered around mid-90's, Srinath was a world class bowler. Before Srinath went Harbhajan had become a top flight off spinner and there were a host of young medium pacers knocking at the Test doors. Not to mention that India by now had become one of the great batting sides in the world which was important because Kumble didn't have to always defend very modest scores.

Gupte had the worst in this respect.

The only single bowler whose career, briefly, ran parallel to Gupte's was Vinoo Mankad. The others were nothing to write home about. Gupte made his debut in Dec 51, was promptly dropped and included exactly 12 months later in Nov. 1952. From then till 1956, he played 20 Test matches, mankad played in 19 of them.

In these 19 Tests, Gupte took 94 wickets at 23.5 each.

Mankad was to play no more for India till recalled in 1959 to lead the country against Alexander's West Indies. I think the 3rd captain in 4 Tests. Mankad was already 42 years old and bowled only in the first innings when he took four wickets while Gupte took one. Gupte took another four in the second as West Indies thrashed India once again.

India's previous series in the West Indies ha been six years ago in the Carribean and they had managed to draw four of the five Tests with Gupte being the outstanding bowler with 27 wickets. Valentine who took 28 for West Indies was the only bowler to take more. Mankad was the next best Indian bowler and his wickets cost him 24 runs per wicket more !!

This time they decided that the pace of Hall and Gilchrist had to be met with dead wickets. All that did was that the Indian bowlers were slaughtered in four of the five games while Hall and Gilchrist with sheer pace took 56 wickets between them at 17 apiece.

Windies ran up consecutive scores of 443 for 7, 614 for 5, 500 and 644 for 8 decl in the last four Tests to win three of them by 203 runs, an innings and 336 runs and 295 runs !!

Gupte toiled on those dead tracks to bowl 312.3 overs. The next three Indian bowlers Borde ramchand and Mankad bowled ten overs less !! between the three of them.

Gupte whose 4 for 86 in the first Test had helped restrict the Windies to a very modest 227 and whose fabulous 9 for 102 in the second Test got them, single handedly, for 222, still managed the series with nothing to show but the toil of bowling day in and day out on dead wickets.

After 15 wickets at 19.99 each in the first three innings of the series, he bowled 210 overs in the next five innings for just 7 wickets for almost 90 runs each. It broke his spirit.

He had dead wickets to contend with, and for fellow bowlers, as we have seen

- Borde, primarily a batsman - an allrounder of sorts,
- Mankad also an allrounder and well past his use by date,
- Ramchand again a bits and pieces player with 33 Test wickets in his career,
- Polly Umrigar again primarily a batsman,
- Surendranath a very modest bowler with 26 wickets in his Test career,​

These were the five main bowlers for India in this series and between them they bowled 457 overs. Ramchand with 5 wickets at 49.4 was the most successful of the lot.

Four bowlers in the series took over ten wickets three of them bowled fast to medium pace in the series (Sobers too most of the time).

Hall 30, Gilchrist 26, Gupte 22 and Sobers 10.

Sometimes figures have to be seen in the wider context.

I think that if Gupte and Mankad had bowled in tandem for longer (more over lap) and/or if there had been a third bowler of some note in the Indian side of the fifites, we would be seeing completely different figures of Subhash Gupte.

I have stressed a lot on this series to stress the difference the lack of a balanced attack means. That is why Gupte, Andy Roberts and even kapil Dev for a large part of his early career and Richard Hadlee are such remarkable bowlers.

 

[bagapath]

Personally Merchant is like Barry Richards - I don't really care how little Test cricket he played, it's obvious from the tiny little he did plus his astonishing domestic record that he's India's best-ever opener, and very possibly batsman of all, as Richards is South Africa's. Yes, he played in the 1930s, but even so, such numbers remain utterly remarkable.

in that case, I think greatest middle order batsman for india would be Ajay Sharma. Who do you want to kick out the team to accommodate him, rahul or sachin?

 

[silentstriker]

Hmm, almost there. I'd bring in Mankad for Umrigar.

IMO we don't need another bowler and he isn't as good a batsman as Umrigar.

 

[silentstriker]

Well he is surely the greatest orthodox leg spinner of all time India have produced.

That much we can say without much chance of contradiction with the unorthocox, medium pacers of Kumble and Chandra.

Gupte is widely called by those who played with or against him as the finest spinner India produced so we cant just ignore that claim out of hand, Amongst those who swear by him are as great and legendary cricketers as Sir garfield Sobers.

Inspite of Kumble's 600 plus wickets, Bishen's magnificently beautiful bowling and mastery over his subtle craft and Chandra's amazing ability to strike suddenly and venomously and win matches in a short sharp spell, the fact remains that the only other Indian bowler who has been considered amongst the all time greats by opponents Is Erapally Prasanna.

Just as the West Indians are enamoured by Gupte and swear by him, the Australians of the late 60's and early 70's swear by Prasanna. And you may not be fond of Ian Chappel but there are few more knowledgeable students of the game.

I havent seen Gupte bowl but I have heard of how great he was hundreds and thousands of times from those who had played with him. Prasanna I have seen and consider the greatest Indian spinner, I have seen for various reasons which will take some space.

Coming to the problem of putting Gupte's greatness in the context of his figures let me tell you that figures tell you something for sure but they dont tell you everything unless you KNOW it.

Whats the BIG difference between Gupte, Bedi, Chandra, Prasanna, Kumble, and Venkat ? Its the same difference as between Andy Roberts and the other great West Indian fast bowlers who followed. He had very modest, if any support at the other end. And yet so many of those who saw him at his peak consider Roberts the greatest of the many great West Indian fast bowlers.

Roberts for most of his peak as a fast bowler, bowled with medium pacers of modest caliber at the other end. By the time Holding developed into a world class fast bowler, Roberts' career was on the wane. Hence iplayers like Lillee, Imran, Lloyd, Trueman, Bailey and Mallet among others rate him higher than those who followed him in-spite of his figures being, comparatively, less impressive.

Bedi, Prasanna and Chandrashekhar were in a period when India had no pace bowlers to talk of but they had each other and Venkat waiting to play now and then. Between them they made the greatest spin attack ever assembled in one Test nation. This did help though Kapil arrived ten years late for India to really benefit from a truly awesome attack.

Kumble when he arrived had Kapil with some juice left in him, Prabhakar close to his best, Venkatpathy Raju who joined the same year and Javagal Srinath who made his debut the next year. By the time Kumble flowered around mid-90's, Srinath was a world class bowler. Before Srinath went Harbhajan had become a top flight off spinner and there were a host of young medium pacers knocking at the Test doors. Not to mention that India by now had become one of the great batting sides in the world which was important because Kumble didn't have to always defend very modest scores.

Gupte had the worst in this respect.

The only single bowler whose career, briefly, ran parallel to Gupte's was Vinoo Mankad. The others were nothing to write home about. Gupte made his debut in Dec 51, was promptly dropped and included exactly 12 months later in Nov. 1952. From then till 1956, he played 20 Test matches, mankad played in 19 of them.

In these 19 Tests, Gupte took 94 wickets at 23.5 each.

Mankad was to play no more for India till recalled in 1959 to lead the country against Alexander's West Indies. I think the 3rd captain in 4 Tests. Mankad was already 42 years old and bowled only in the first innings when he took four wickets while Gupte took one. Gupte took another four in the second as West Indies thrashed India once again.

India's previous series in the West Indies ha been six years ago in the Carribean and they had managed to draw four of the five Tests with Gupte being the outstanding bowler with 27 wickets. Valentine who took 28 for West Indies was the only bowler to take more. Mankad was the next best Indian bowler and his wickets cost him 24 runs per wicket more !!

This time they decided that the pace of Hall and Gilchrist had to be met with dead wickets. All that did was that the Indian bowlers were slaughtered in four of the five games while Hall and Gilchrist with sheer pace took 56 wickets between them at 17 apiece.

Windies ran up consecutive scores of 443 for 7, 614 for 5, 500 and 644 for 8 decl in the last four Tests to win three of them by 203 runs, an innings and 336 runs and 295 runs !!

Gupte toiled on those dead tracks to bowl 312.3 overs. The next three Indian bowlers Borde ramchand and Mankad bowled ten overs less !! between the three of them.

Gupte whose 4 for 86 in the first Test had helped restrict the Windies to a very modest 227 and whose fabulous 9 for 102 in the second Test got them, single handedly, for 222, still managed the series with nothing to show but the toil of bowling day in and day out on dead wickets.

After 15 wickets at 19.99 each in the first three innings of the series, he bowled 210 overs in the next five innings for just 7 wickets for almost 90 runs each. It broke his spirit.

He had dead wickets to contend with, and for fellow bowlers, as we have seen

- Borde, primarily a batsman - an allrounder of sorts,
- Mankad also an allrounder and well past his use by date,
- Ramchand again a bits and pieces player with 33 Test wickets in his career,
- Polly Umrigar again primarily a batsman,
- Surendranath a very modest bowler with 26 wickets in his Test career,​

These were the five main bowlers for India in this series and between them they bowled 457 overs. Ramchand with 5 wickets at 49.4 was the most successful of the lot.

Four bowlers in the series took over ten wickets three of them bowled fast to medium pace in the series (Sobers too most of the time).

Hall 30, Gilchrist 26, Gupte 22 and Sobers 10.

Sometimes figures have to be seen in the wider context.

I think that if Gupte and Mankad had bowled in tandem for longer (more over lap) and/or if there had been a third bowler of some note in the Indian side of the fifites, we would be seeing completely different figures of Subhash Gupte.

I have stressed a lot on this series to stress the difference the lack of a balanced attack means. That is why Gupte, Andy Roberts and even kapil Dev for a large part of his early career and Richard Hadlee are such remarkable bowlers.

Excellent information there SJS, that's why I had him as 12th man, though I didn't know some of what you just said! Thanks!

 

[Richard]

in that case, I think greatest middle order batsman for india would be Ajay Sharma. Who do you want to kick out the team to accommodate him, rahul or sachin?

Sharma's case is actually one that's always fascinated me - why on Earth did he play just the single Test? Always has seemed inexplicable.

 

[Richard]

Well he is surely the greatest orthodox leg spinner of all time India have produced.

That much we can say without much chance of contradiction with the unorthocox, medium pacers of Kumble and Chandra.

Gupte is widely called by those who played with or against him as the finest spinner India produced so we cant just ignore that claim out of hand, Amongst those who swear by him are as great and legendary cricketers as Sir garfield Sobers.

Inspite of Kumble's 600 plus wickets, Bishen's magnificently beautiful bowling and mastery over his subtle craft and Chandra's amazing ability to strike suddenly and venomously and win matches in a short sharp spell, the fact remains that the only other Indian bowler who has been considered amongst the all time greats by opponents Is Erapally Prasanna.

Just as the West Indians are enamoured by Gupte and swear by him, the Australians of the late 60's and early 70's swear by Prasanna. And you may not be fond of Ian Chappel but there are few more knowledgeable students of the game.

I havent seen Gupte bowl but I have heard of how great he was hundreds and thousands of times from those who had played with him. Prasanna I have seen and consider the greatest Indian spinner, I have seen for various reasons which will take some space.

Coming to the problem of putting Gupte's greatness in the context of his figures let me tell you that figures tell you something for sure but they dont tell you everything unless you KNOW it.

Whats the BIG difference between Gupte, Bedi, Chandra, Prasanna, Kumble, and Venkat ? Its the same difference as between Andy Roberts and the other great West Indian fast bowlers who followed. He had very modest, if any support at the other end. And yet so many of those who saw him at his peak consider Roberts the greatest of the many great West Indian fast bowlers.

Roberts for most of his peak as a fast bowler, bowled with medium pacers of modest caliber at the other end. By the time Holding developed into a world class fast bowler, Roberts' career was on the wane. Hence iplayers like Lillee, Imran, Lloyd, Trueman, Bailey and Mallet among others rate him higher than those who followed him in-spite of his figures being, comparatively, less impressive.

Bedi, Prasanna and Chandrashekhar were in a period when India had no pace bowlers to talk of but they had each other and Venkat waiting to play now and then. Between them they made the greatest spin attack ever assembled in one Test nation. This did help though Kapil arrived ten years late for India to really benefit from a truly awesome attack.

Kumble when he arrived had Kapil with some juice left in him, Prabhakar close to his best, Venkatpathy Raju who joined the same year and Javagal Srinath who made his debut the next year. By the time Kumble flowered around mid-90's, Srinath was a world class bowler. Before Srinath went Harbhajan had become a top flight off spinner and there were a host of young medium pacers knocking at the Test doors. Not to mention that India by now had become one of the great batting sides in the world which was important because Kumble didn't have to always defend very modest scores.

Gupte had the worst in this respect.

The only single bowler whose career, briefly, ran parallel to Gupte's was Vinoo Mankad. The others were nothing to write home about. Gupte made his debut in Dec 51, was promptly dropped and included exactly 12 months later in Nov. 1952. From then till 1956, he played 20 Test matches, mankad played in 19 of them.

In these 19 Tests, Gupte took 94 wickets at 23.5 each.

Mankad was to play no more for India till recalled in 1959 to lead the country against Alexander's West Indies. I think the 3rd captain in 4 Tests. Mankad was already 42 years old and bowled only in the first innings when he took four wickets while Gupte took one. Gupte took another four in the second as West Indies thrashed India once again.

India's previous series in the West Indies ha been six years ago in the Carribean and they had managed to draw four of the five Tests with Gupte being the outstanding bowler with 27 wickets. Valentine who took 28 for West Indies was the only bowler to take more. Mankad was the next best Indian bowler and his wickets cost him 24 runs per wicket more !!

This time they decided that the pace of Hall and Gilchrist had to be met with dead wickets. All that did was that the Indian bowlers were slaughtered in four of the five games while Hall and Gilchrist with sheer pace took 56 wickets between them at 17 apiece.

Windies ran up consecutive scores of 443 for 7, 614 for 5, 500 and 644 for 8 decl in the last four Tests to win three of them by 203 runs, an innings and 336 runs and 295 runs !!

Gupte toiled on those dead tracks to bowl 312.3 overs. The next three Indian bowlers Borde ramchand and Mankad bowled ten overs less !! between the three of them.

Gupte whose 4 for 86 in the first Test had helped restrict the Windies to a very modest 227 and whose fabulous 9 for 102 in the second Test got them, single handedly, for 222, still managed the series with nothing to show but the toil of bowling day in and day out on dead wickets.

After 15 wickets at 19.99 each in the first three innings of the series, he bowled 210 overs in the next five innings for just 7 wickets for almost 90 runs each. It broke his spirit.

He had dead wickets to contend with, and for fellow bowlers, as we have seen

- Borde, primarily a batsman - an allrounder of sorts,
- Mankad also an allrounder and well past his use by date,
- Ramchand again a bits and pieces player with 33 Test wickets in his career,
- Polly Umrigar again primarily a batsman,
- Surendranath a very modest bowler with 26 wickets in his Test career,​

These were the five main bowlers for India in this series and between them they bowled 457 overs. Ramchand with 5 wickets at 49.4 was the most successful of the lot.

Four bowlers in the series took over ten wickets three of them bowled fast to medium pace in the series (Sobers too most of the time).

Hall 30, Gilchrist 26, Gupte 22 and Sobers 10.

Sometimes figures have to be seen in the wider context.

I think that if Gupte and Mankad had bowled in tandem for longer (more over lap) and/or if there had been a third bowler of some note in the Indian side of the fifites, we would be seeing completely different figures of Subhash Gupte.

I have stressed a lot on this series to stress the difference the lack of a balanced attack means. That is why Gupte, Andy Roberts and even kapil Dev for a large part of his early career and Richard Hadlee are such remarkable bowlers.

Muralitharan too, though he of course mostly had Vaas.

You haven't mentioned in the above extraordinarily long post the biggest reason why I've always thought Gupte's figures deceptive. The Indian close-catching of his day was said to be, by modern standards, deplorable. Whereas Bedi, Chandra and Prasanna had Solkar and one or two others, Kumble Dravid and Laxman, Gupte's close-to-the-wicket support was poor. For a spinner, this is catastrophic. Pakistani fielding has always been poor, and eventually bowlers like Sarfaraz and Imran worked-out that this had to be worked around by relying principally on inswing rather than outswing. But a spinner cannot rely purely on bowled and lbw, especially one whose stock-ball breaks away from most batsmen.

BTW, I so, so wish I could hear some reasoning why Prasanna is considered a better spinner than Bedi, never mind Chandrasekhar. All I've ever heard is "the Aussies all thought he was" - never why.

 

[SJS]

Muralitharan too, though he of course mostly had Vaas.

You haven't mentioned in the above extraordinarily long post the biggest reason why I've always thought Gupte's figures deceptive. The Indian close-catching of his day was said to be, by modern standards, deplorable. Whereas Bedi, Chandra and Prasanna had Solkar and one or two others, Kumble Dravid and Laxman, Gupte's close-to-the-wicket support was poor. For a spinner, this is catastrophic. Pakistani fielding has always been poor, and eventually bowlers like Sarfaraz and Imran worked-out that this had to be worked around by relying principally on inswing rather than outswing. But a spinner cannot rely purely on bowled and lbw, especially one whose stock-ball breaks away from most batsmen.

BTW, I so, so wish I could hear some reasoning why Prasanna is considered a better spinner than Bedi, never mind Chandrasekhar. All I've ever heard is "the Aussies all thought he was" - never why.

Oh yes I did think of mentioning the fielding as the third reason but that post became so long that I clean forgot about it.

Yes India were a terrible fielding side. and not just close catching, they were terrible in the outfield which for a leg spinner, who is basically an aggressive bowler tempting the batsmen to go for him, is a terrible handicap.

Yes I agree that Prasanna issue is baffling but I will write about it one day.

 

[SJS]

And yes that post became extraordinarily long basically because this series and what heppened in it really changed the course of Gupte's career.

At the end of the second innings of that Kanpur Test he had taken exactly 110 wickets in 23 and a half Tests at 24.42. His next 39 wickets cost him 44 apiece and took 13 and a half Test.

Its very interesting to look at the Indian leading bowlers during these two periods. The lack of bowlers in the second period is so glaring even when compared to the slim resources of the first period.

30th December 1951 to 17th December 1958

[B]Player        	T	 O	 M	 R	 W	 5w	 10w	 Best	 Avg[/B]
S P Gupte	23	1250.2	427	2807	111	11	1	 9/102	25.29
M H Mankad	27	1539.2	561	3096	107	7	2	 8/52	28.93
Ghulam Ahmed	18	790.1	238	1639	59	4	1	 7/49	27.78
D G Phadkar	21	712.3	229	1393	39	2	0	 5/64	35.72
G S Ramchand	27	722.2	223	1641	39	1	0	 6/49	42.08
R V Divecha	5	174	44	361	11	0	0	 3/102	32.82
L Amarnath	7	199.5	76	342	9	0	0	 4/40	38
P R Umrigar	32	231	74	443	9	1	0	 6/74	49.22
V S Hazare	15	165	47	346	8	0	0	 2/13	43.25

30th Dec 1958 to 17th Dec 1961

[B]Player        	T	 O	 M	 R	 W	 5w	 10w	 Best	 Avg[/B]
R B Desai	13	650	116	1922	48	1	0	 5/89	40.04
S P Gupte	13	630.2	181	1596	38	1	0	 5/90	42
R G Nadkarni	13	470.3	213	819	28	1	0	 6/105	29.25
C G Borde	19	393.3	75	1176	26	0	0	 4/21	45.23
R Surendranath	11	433.4	142	1053	26	2	0	 5/75	40.5
P R Umrigar	17	328.3	100	650	15	0	0	 4/27	43.33
G S Ramchand	6	107	33	258	2	0	0	 1/27	129
Kripal Singh	5	102	25	227	1	0	0	 1/27	227

India as a whole averaged over 42 runs per wicket in the second period as against 32 in the first.

 

[aussie]

Sharma's case is actually one that's always fascinated me - why on Earth did he play just the single Test? Always has seemed inexplicable.

Wouldn't say this for certain since i just checked up on him. But his performance could possible further prove the common notion that the quality of bowling & batting (with a few exceptions) in Indian domestic cricket in comparison to International cricket over the years is very big.

The amount of openers post Gavaskar that have come in with solid domestic stats that have either failed or not bene able to translate their domestic success on the international stage expect for Sehwag, Shastri & Sidhu shows that.

But as i said i don't know much about what occured with Sharma so i wouldn't say that idea perfectly suits him.

Also top input as usual SJS, always freshing to hear to talk about the past greats..

 

[Arjun]

Wouldn't say this for certain since i just checked up on him. But his performance could possible further prove the common notion that the quality of bowling & batting (with a few exceptions) in Indian domestic cricket in comparison to International cricket over the years is very big.

The amount of openers post Gavaskar that have come in with solid domestic stats that have either failed or not bene able to translate their domestic success on the international stage expect for Sehwag, Shastri & Sidhu shows that.

But as i said i don't know much about what occured with Sharma so i wouldn't say that idea perfectly suits him.

Also top input as usual SJS, always freshing to hear to talk about the past greats..

Breaking into an Indian middle-order has always been a tough task- then and now.

 

[duffer]

Seriously awesome contribution by SJS in this thread. Made for a great read.

 

[Richard]

Wouldn't say this for certain since i just checked up on him. But his performance could possible further prove the common notion that the quality of bowling & batting (with a few exceptions) in Indian domestic cricket in comparison to International cricket over the years is very big.

The amount of openers post Gavaskar that have come in with solid domestic stats that have either failed or not bene able to translate their domestic success on the international stage expect for Sehwag, Shastri & Sidhu shows that.

None of this changes the fact that the better you do at domestic level, the more chance you should get at international.

 

[Arjun]

How about this one?

• Gavaskar
• Sehwag
• Dravid
• Tendulkar
• Wadekar (C)
• Shastri (SLA)
• Kapil Dev (RMF)
• Kirmani (WK)
• Kumble (LBG)
• Amar Singh (RFM)
• Nissar (RFM)

There may be better players than Wadekar, but his record as captain stands out, winning in WI and England in the same year. Shastri is a standby for the second all-rounder. It was a tough decision to leave out Vinoo Mankad, Subhash Gupte, Bedi and Azhar, and I'm not too convinced about the likes of Ramchand, Borde, Amarnath, Binny, Madan Lal and Prabhakar. Hopefully some of India's current players will perform well enough to complete an all-time XI.

 

[bagapath]

None of this changes the fact that the better you do at domestic level, the more chance you should get at international.

why???? you make it sound like gospel truth. i disagree.

ramprakash and hick are classic examples of stupendous success in FC getting them umpteen opportunities in test level. it came to nothing. gower, thorpe, collingwood etc with inferior county records have done much better at international level... how do you explain that?

i find it funny when people compare barry richards or merchant with gavaskar and hutton when they discuss great openers... very unfair to sunny and len..

 

[sanga1337]

How about this one?

• Gavaskar
• Sehwag
• Dravid
• Tendulkar
• Wadekar (C)
• Shastri (SLA)
• Kapil Dev (RMF)
• Kirmani (WK)
• Kumble (LBG)
• Amar Singh (RFM)
• Nissar (RFM)

There may be better players than Wadekar, but his record as captain stands out, winning in WI and England in the same year. Shastri is a standby for the second all-rounder. It was a tough decision to leave out Vinoo Mankad, Subhash Gupte, Bedi and Azhar, and I'm not too convinced about the likes of Ramchand, Borde, Amarnath, Binny, Madan Lal and Prabhakar. Hopefully some of India's current players will perform well enough to complete an all-time XI.

Better than Nawab of Pataudi jnr? And even with him I would rather have a world class batsman. It just seems like a waste of a spot. And whats your reasoning for a second alrounder?