The idea of the two XIs was to have one with the elite bowlers who were poor batsmen, and the other with bowling all rounders who bring slightly less to the bowling, but a lot more to the batting. Dev is perfect in this exercise. Batting average of 30+ and an elite bowler without being very top tier. That's exactly what I was trying to achieve.
I get the point of the exercise, and it's an interesting one, I just think Dev fails to meet the criteria. To call him an elite bowler is a stretch. I'm not even sure he'd even be sure of a consitent place in the current Indian team if you didn't factor his batting in.
If Dev isn't good enough then Pollock isn't either. No point having Pollock when you have a better version of him above him, imo. Marshall would give your bowling variety and strengthen it without weakening the tail much. Curious about Miller ahead of Sobers too.
I think you're under rating Pollock as both a batter and bowler. My goal was to create a tail with the best batting while still being ATG. Pollock is a better bat than Macca.
He was but Maco was the far superior bowler. My point is he's a decent bat and a great bowler, but too similar to Hadlee. Marshall could hold an end while outperforming Pollock by miles with the ball.
Hutton and Hobbs are considered greater mainly because they generally faced better attacks/more difficult conditions . Hobbs was comprehensively outscoring the likes of Trumper in the pre WW1 period. And post WW2, Hutton faced the first truly great pace bowling attacks and came up trumps. Sutcliffe was stuck in the middle period when conditions are usually accepted to have been a bit friendlier.
He's the greatest Indian quick, but I'm not sure he'd be playing in all the home games today as a bowler. India change their attack according to the pitch a lot, and they have a number of bowlers extremely well suited to particular conditions. They have probably 6 or 7 options with home averages in the mid 20s, while Kapil had a home average of 37. While you can explain a large part of the discrepancy by pitch quality, I don't think he would be sure of a consistent place.
Cbf checking but there is zero chance this is true
It's not. Typed it wrong. 33.
I checked. It's 26. 33 is his away average.
Oops. C-combo error
Pollock averaged 23. Yeah it's not as good as Marshall's average of 20 and yes, it's clear that Marshall was a better bowler. But I would consider Pollock to be an ATG quick. Pretty much any bowler who averages under 26 (which catches Roberts and Warne) and takes over 100 wickets over a 5+ year career can be considered good enough to be an ATG. Pollock definitely qualifies on that regard.