I remember in a book called "Test Cricket Lists", they had a section where they selected Test Team's from the person's surnames or name (as for the case of the sub-continent) plus also added those who played one or two tests and one for those who missed out on a team, and from what I can recall the 'H' team was immensely strong. In that team they had an idea, a selection that was from WAY out of the square, so far out of left field it wasn't in the same ballpark.
Their selection of wicket-keeper and who was positioned to bat at 7 was Hanif Mohammad. Their justification was that Hanif kept early in his career and very able in doing so, plus they could think of nothing more demoralising to a team to see Hanif Mohammad coming out and taking guard at 7.
Something worth thinking about, yip, imagine the opposing teams reaction.
Now these WORLD XI teams are always argumentative, and no-one can ever come up with the definitive team, averages are so subjective to times and conditions of the day.
Early days of Test cricket (say until the early 20's, late 10's) saw low averages for batsman & low averages/ high S/R's for bowlers on poorly prepared (compared with today) uncovered wickets, quick tests rarely lasting 4 or 5 days.
20's, 30's, & 40's saw averages in batting rise, this was helped in the combination of 'Timeless Tests' & better prepared wickets, although still uncovered, which still provided bowlers alot.
You get the drift??? Maybe if there was a way... like they do with inflation/deflation.
Go through every game, establish a '4 year block' work out average team scores etc and have multiplication factor that makes each 'block' even. Then work out everybodies adjusted averages, then compare.
But it's all just statistics, and here's the trouble about that...
There are three kinds of liars...men, women, and statistics!
--College Economics Professor
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
--Benjamin Disraeli
Do not put faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.
--William W. Watt
Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
--Aaron Levenstein
A judicious man uses statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted upon him.
--Thomas Carlyle
There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
--Rex Stout
The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.
--Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
When evaluating a model, at least two broad standards are relevant. One is whether the model is consistent with the data. The other is whether the model is consistent with the 'real world.'
--Kenneth A. Bollen, Structural Equations with Latent Variables
If your result needs a statistician then you should design a better experiment.
--Baron Ernest Rutherford
Having given the number of instances respectively in which things are thus and so, in which they are thus and not so, in which they are so and not thus, and in which they are neither thus nor so, it is required to eliminate the gerneral quantitative relativity inhering in the mere thingness of the things, and to determine the special quantitative relativity subsisting between the thusness and the soness of the things.
---M.H. Doolittle, 1887
...while a man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.
---Sherlock Holmes
