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Ten players you wished you could have seen live in their prime?

mr_mister

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I saw all of Lara, Sachin and Ponting, three heroes of mine. Got to see Ponting get a double ton in fact.

I would have liked to have seen Viv, to see what the hype was about.
 

Ashes81

State Vice-Captain
Bradman
Hobbs
Hammond
G Pollock
Sobers
Tyson
Larwood
Miller
Trueman
Thomson - I saw him several times but only after his injury - would love to have seen him at his peak
 

AndrewB

International Vice-Captain
George Freeman - played in the 1860s, said to be "the best bowler they'd ever seen" by various Yorkshire cricketers 30 years later.
Charles Kortright - to see how fast the fastest bowler of the 1890s really was.
GIlbert Jessop
Learie Constantine - for various fielding exploits as much as his batting and bowling
Jim Smith - since he apparently played a huge swipe every ball
George Simpson-Hayward & Digby Jephson - the last successful lob bowlers
 

jcas0167

International Debutant
Batsmen dominated list (unlucky to miss out Joel Garner, Malcolm Marshall, Bishen Bedi, Abdul Qadir, Ian Botham Garfield Sobers and Ritchie Benaud, Derek Underwood).

Viv Richards
Barry Richards
Graeme Pollock
David Gower
Imran Khan
Greg Chappell
Wally Hammond (my grandad saw him get 300 at Eden Park)
Zaheer Abbas
Michael Holding
 

JBMAC

State Captain
A post in the other thread got me thinking, which players do you wish you had seen at their best? Limit to ten.

Mine (not in a particular order)

  1. Viv Richards
  2. Donald Bradman
  3. Gary Sobers
  4. Jack Hobbs
  5. Dennis Lilllee
  6. Malcolm Marshall (I am sure I saw him but I was 7 when he played his last Test and I cant remember)
  7. Bishan Singh Bedi
  8. Kapil Dev (I caught the very tail end of his career)
  9. Jeff Thompson
  10. Victor Trumper
Seen them all except Hobbs and Trumper. Even play with and against a couple
 

Yeoman

U19 Captain
So many of the classic/obvious names have already been mentioned. For me, it would be the pre-WW2 players of whom there is little footage. I would add Frank Woolley to the list, purely on reported stylistic grounds.

I like to have seen the reported ‘fastest ever’ candidates so that I could compare for myself. Most of all though I would like to have seen play on an old style ‘sticky dog’, just to have seen what it was really like.
 

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