Cricinfo Best Test 11 from last 25 years

[trundler]

All that is based on there's nothing between the 2 as bowlers, which I think isn't true. Hadlee's batting wouldn't be of much use when McGrath figures out Hobbs and Hutton in an over, lures them into driving and they're out edged to slip. Next DG Bradman c Gilchrist b McGrath off a bouncer. Tendulkar is his bunny anyway. A little bit of gamesmanship pisses of Richards and he tries hitting him over his head but gets out lbw instead. I'll let the others take care of the tail.

 

[smash84]

All that is based on there's nothing between the 2 as bowlers, which I think isn't true. Hadlee's batting wouldn't be of much use when McGrath figures out Hobbs and Hutton in an over, lures them into driving and they're out edged to slip. Next DG Bradman c Gilchrist b McGrath off a bouncer. Tendulkar is his bunny anyway. A little bit of gamesmanship pisses of Richards and he tries hitting him over his head but gets out lbw instead. I'll let the others take care of the tail.

Hadlee is going to smash McG with 5 fours in an over, like this.

 

[Red]

I am against this idea generally, but I do love the idea here of not playing 2 traditional openers, particularly as I dont really like any of the candidates apart from G.Smith.


Lara
Kallis
Ponting
Tendulkar
Sangakkara
S.Waugh *
Gilchrist+
Wasim
Warne
Steyn
McGrath

Murali in for one of the quicks if deemed necessary.

 

[Red]

FWIW I think any of Lara, Kallis, Sanga, Tendulkar could open in tests quite comfortably.

 

[trundler]

Hadlee is going to smash McG with 5 fours in an over, like this.

Pfft, who cares about ODIs!
I'll let teenage Sachin take care of Hadlee.

 

[trundler]

FWIW I think any of Lara, Kallis, Sanga, Tendulkar could open in tests quite comfortably.

Why not go Lara and Dravid since both of them did that occasionally and were successful?

 

[Red]

Why not go Lara and Dravid since both of them did that occasionally and were successful?

As much as I loved Dravid, he doesn't make my top 6.

 

[Burgey]

West Indies of the 80s didn't have an all-rounder either. It was the 2nd greatest opening partnership, King Viv, excellent middle order bats, Dujon, and the greatest fast bowling quartet ever assembled. No all-rounder and they were head and shoulders above the rest for a good decade.

Their middle order after Lloyd retired wasn’t that great tbh. Viv and Richie Rich were both excellent but you had blokes like Logie, Arthurton and Hooper come along who were pretty average tbh.

The hard part was getting to bowl to them. Dujon, of course, was brilliant.

 

[trundler]

Their middle order after Lloyd retired wasn’t that great tbh. Viv and Richie Rich were both excellent but you had blokes like Logie, Arthurton and Hooper come along who were pretty average tbh.

The hard part was getting to bowl to them. Dujon, of course, was brilliant.

Yeah, agreed but wasn't the point. No team has ever had 11 ATGs but WI got pretty close

 

[Burgey]

Yeah they were certainly a great side. Their best six or so players at any given time were so good they masked the lack of quality in their worst 3-4.

 

[Victor Ian]

It's hard to rate the batting of a bowler as a thing in an ATG team. Hadlee would hardly ever need to bat. Therefore his practice would go down and he'd become a McGrath. McGrath, in a good batting team never needed to give a shot about his batting. Hadlee, in a **** batting team did. I might pick hadlee over McGrath but I don't think I'd ponder too much on the bowling part. So now someone will point out that this atg team is playing against an art team so batting matters again, but against an atg team hadlee does not bat as well as his career suggests, so picking a bowler for their batting... I'm not sure.

 

[Victor Ian]

When I edit in phone mode it seems to delete my post. Bowling should be batting and art should be atg

 

[Bolo]

It's hard to rate the batting of a bowler as a thing in an ATG team. Hadlee would hardly ever need to bat. Therefore his practice would go down and he'd become a McGrath. McGrath, in a good batting team never needed to give a shot about his batting. Hadlee, in a **** batting team did. I might pick hadlee over McGrath but I don't think I'd ponder too much on the bowling part. So now someone will point out that this atg team is playing against an art team so batting matters again, but against an atg team hadlee does not bat as well as his career suggests, so picking a bowler for their batting... I'm not sure.

Against a team of comparable quality everyone bats at least once and often twice in the majority of matches. You wouldn't expect Hadlee to score a ton of runs against an ATG attack. But everyone will be scoring less, and the runs are more likely to be decisive.

For some thumbsucked example numbers, Hadlee might score 20 more runs per game than McGrath. They would both take about 4 wickets. McGrath might take them at a run and a half cheaper. The advantage Hadlees batting provides is worth triple the advantage of McGraths bowling.

 

[Mr Miyagi]

It's hard to rate the batting of a bowler as a thing in an ATG team. Hadlee would hardly ever need to bat. Therefore his practice would go down and he'd become a McGrath. McGrath, in a good batting team never needed to give a shot about his batting. Hadlee, in a **** batting team did. I might pick hadlee over McGrath but I don't think I'd ponder too much on the bowling part. So now someone will point out that this atg team is playing against an art team so batting matters again, but against an atg team hadlee does not bat as well as his career suggests, so picking a bowler for their batting... I'm not sure.

1st Test, West Indies tour of New Zealand at Dunedin, Feb 8-13 1980 | Match Summary | ESPNCricinfo

His batting here enables NZ to beat an ATG team;

fluke perhaps? Next test:
2nd Test, West Indies tour of New Zealand at Christchurch, Feb 22-27 1980 | Match Summary | ESPNCricinfo

He averages 32.4 against the WI - all between 1980 and 1987, at better than his career rate of 27.

He has significant game saving scores against Lillee, younger Botham, Willis, Imran, and a few that enabled NZ to win a game or two as well.

He is no Keith Miller, Imran Khan and even trails Kapil Dev with the bat in hand. But Hadlee was a useful batsman, and being useful with a bat makes a difference. Sometimes as it was against the West Indies, it is the difference between winning and losing the series.

 

[vcs]

It's hard to rate the batting of a bowler as a thing in an ATG team. Hadlee would hardly ever need to bat. Therefore his practice would go down and he'd become a McGrath. McGrath, in a good batting team never needed to give a shot about his batting. Hadlee, in a **** batting team did. I might pick hadlee over McGrath but I don't think I'd ponder too much on the bowling part. So now someone will point out that this atg team is playing against an art team so batting matters again, but against an atg team hadlee does not bat as well as his career suggests, so picking a bowler for their batting... I'm not sure.

That can be refuted fairly easily by looking at their FC batting records.

Hadlee played 148 First-Class matches for Nottinghamshire and scored 5854 runs at an average of 38.76 with 11 tons, including a double ton. This was his best batting record for any team in First-Class cricket. With the ball in hand, he accounted for 622 wickets at an astonishing average of 14.51. Thus, he remains one of their greatest all-rounders along with his comrade Clive Rice.

Richard Hadlee: 11 staggering statistics that reflect his genius - Cricket Country

McGrath averaged a steady 7 across all formats and all levels of the game.

Now, Hadlee's average might go down a bit if he was only batting against ATG teams all the time, but he'd still average 15-25 and McGrath would barely get off the mark.

 

[TheJediBrah]

When I edit in phone mode it seems to delete my post. Bowling should be batting and art should be atg

Mine does the same thing. It's annoying.

 

[cnerd123]

Mine does the same thing. It's annoying.

That's a funny coincidence, because your posts are also annoying

 

[AndrewB]

Yeah, agreed but wasn't the point. No team has ever had 11 ATGs but WI got pretty close

So which team had the best worst player - or, to put it another way, who's the best ever player who was the worst player in his team?

As an opening bid: the England XI at the Oval in 1953 was Hutton, Edrich, May, Compton, Graveney, Bailey, Evans, Laker, Lock, Trueman, Bedser. Not packed with ATGs, but no obvious weak links either.

 

[Starfighter]

That's a funny coincidence, because your posts are also annoying

Details please?

 

[TheJediBrah]

That's a funny coincidence, because your posts are also annoying

That is*