best XI in the past 20 years

[chicane]

Well by that logic who's in the Aussie team like that? Possibly only Adam Gilchrist.

 

[GermanShepherd]

Imran was suffering later on in his career and his bowling suffered, but when on song, yep he was a great one.Edge to Imran over McDermott.

An edge ? I'd say Imran was a far superior bowler to Craig Mcdermott.

 

[delkap]

Indian Team:

Sunil Gavaskar
Virender Sehwag
Rahul Dravid
Sachin Tendulkar
Saurav Ganguly (c)
Mohammed Azharuddin
Syed Kirmani (wk)
Kapil Dev
Harbhajan Singh
Anil Kumble
Javagal Srinath

12th Man: VVS Laxman

Extras: Dilip Vengsarkar, Navjot Sidhu/Amarnath, Zaheer Khan, Ravi Shastri

 

[Deja moo]

Yeah ,I checked....Vishwanath's career was over in 83.
Vengsarkar ,as someone suggested is a worthy replacement.

S Gavaskar
V Sehwag
R Dravid
S Tendulkar
D Vengsarkar/M Azharuddin/M Amarnath
R Shastri
Kapil Dev
S Kirmani
J Srinath
A Kumble
Put one more bowler here( kill me if you want , but I suggest Pathan)

 

[delkap]

Yeah ,I checked....Vishwanath's career was over in 83.
Vengsarkar ,as someone suggested is a worthy replacement.

Put one more bowler here( kill me if you want , but I suggest Pathan)

Actually Pathan isn't that bad a choice.. But its too early to put him in best XI of 20 years. Though he could well prove to be best Indian bowler in next 10 years. But then again Agarkar started with a bang, so did Zaheer. They r struggling now... So who knows what will Pathan do..

 

[tooextracool]

South Africa

1. GC Smith
2. HH Gibbs
3. G Kirsten
4. JH Kallis
5. DJ Cullinan
6. WJ Cronjé*
7. SM Pollock
8. DJ Richardson
9. P Symcox
10. M Ntini
11. AA Donald

id definetly put fanie de villiers over ntini and would try to find a place for jonty rhodes......

 

[tooextracool]

And considering Imrans bowling was going off the boil after 85 due to injury, then the bowling looks a tad fragile

dont know about that....imrans bowling only went off the boil only in 89. regardless i'd much rather have wasim,waqar and imran in their prime as opposed to mcgrath,mcdermott and gillespie. the latter 2 would only be considered to be 'good' bowlers as opposed to the pakistani fast bowlers who were truly 'great'. the aussie pace bowlers had very little to offer in terms of variety compared to the best left hand pace bowler of all time, a master in the art of reverse swing and yorkers, and a traditional swing bowler.

 

[deeps]

yeah you are right, but I am talking about the elite batsman, ones who will be talked about in 50 years, like a Tendulkar for example...for me Miandad is the only one who could possibly be in that division of player as a batsman

actually zaheer abbas was pretty special...

anwar and ul haq are champions, and can rip any bowling attack to shreds on their day...imran was a decent batsman and salim maliq is solid...alot of balance and class there...australia don't stand a chance

 

[Waughney]

id definetly put fanie de villiers over ntini and would try to find a place for jonty rhodes......

No place for Rhodes in the team.

 

[tooextracool]

No place for Rhodes in the team.

the balance of the side strikes me as being a bit off.....kirsten should be opening the batting and cullinan should bat at 3 or 4.

 

[iamdavid]

Hmm

England
1.G.Gooch*
2.M.Atherton
3.A.Stewart
4.M.Vaughan
5.G.Thorpe
6.M.Gatting
7.I.Botham
8.J.Russell+
9.D.Gough
10.A.Fraser
11.A.Caddick
12th man duties will be shared between Robin Smith & Nasser Hussain.

Off the top of my head Bob Willis played his last match in 1984 , but Ive based this team on performances over the last 20 years so he dosent get it.

 

[delkap]

Hmm

England
1.G.Gooch*
2.M.Atherton
3.A.Stewart
4.M.Vaughan
5.G.Thorpe
6.M.Gatting
7.I.Botham
8.J.Russell+
9.D.Gough
10.A.Fraser
11.A.Caddick
12th man duties will be shared between Robin Smith & Nasser Hussain.

Off the top of my head Bob Willis played his last match in 1984 , but Ive based this team on performances over the last 20 years so he dosent get it.

I dont see any reason to include 2 wicket keepers in Stewart and Russell. Stewart is more than enough. If you believe Russel to be a better keeper, then you should probably pick a better batsman or atleast a spinner for a variety. I believe Trescothick to be a better batsman than Stewart. Maybe even Hussain..

If you keep Stewart, then Russell shouldn't be there and maybe a spinner or all-rounder can get in.

Harmison could be better than Fraser.. but we'll hv to wait for that..

 

[Swervy]

dont know about that....imrans bowling only went off the boil only in 89. regardless i'd much rather have wasim,waqar and imran in their prime as opposed to mcgrath,mcdermott and gillespie. the latter 2 would only be considered to be 'good' bowlers as opposed to the pakistani fast bowlers who were truly 'great'. the aussie pace bowlers had very little to offer in terms of variety compared to the best left hand pace bowler of all time, a master in the art of reverse swing and yorkers, and a traditional swing bowler.

you might be right....

a bowler for australia worthy of consideration is Bruce reid instead of Mcdermott.

I just dont know how 4 bowlers who were in a team which allowed opposition to average 330 runs in a full innings and only helped Pakistan win 2 games in 2 years could be considered an overwhelming thread to the best batsmen of the most successful team of the the last 20 years.

I sometimes feel that people believe that if you can bowl at 90mph and reverse swing the ball, you are one of the all time greats by default.It was possible to score vs Waqar and Wasim at their peaks,as teams like NZ in the late 80's showed...so to say that that Ausralian team that has been suggested has no cahnce vs that pakistan team is a bit silly to be honest.

 

[Mr. P]

Dean Jones hardly ever performed when the heat was on.

I LOVE the irony that just drips from this comment.

 

[Waughney]

OK, except for that innings against India, when literally the heat was on.

 

[tooextracool]

OK, except for that innings against India, when literally the heat was on.

did you even read my response?

 

[Waughney]

the balance of the side strikes me as being a bit off.....kirsten should be opening the batting and cullinan should bat at 3 or 4.

Agree, but still no place for Rhodes.

 

[tooextracool]

I just dont know how 4 bowlers who were in a team which allowed opposition to average 330 runs in a full innings

thats one way of looking at it, but the more logical way is to look at bowling averages and wasim,waqar and imran in their prime had far better bowling averages than mcgrath,gillespie and mcdermott.

and only helped Pakistan win 2 games in 2 years could be considered an overwhelming thread to the best batsmen of the most successful team of the the last 20 years.

that comes down to 2 factors, as you yourself mentioned their batting was ordinary bar miandad and was responsible for most of their losses. another reason is that post 89 when waqar and to an extent akram started to get into their prime imran khan and abdul qadir were completely out of it.

I sometimes feel that people believe that if you can bowl at 90mph and reverse swing the ball, you are one of the all time greats by default.It was possible to score vs Waqar and Wasim at their peaks,as teams like NZ in the late 80's showed...so to say that that Ausralian team that has been suggested has no cahnce vs that pakistan team is a bit silly to be honest.

i never suggested that the australian team was worse than pakistan, i just feel that the pakistan pace bowling attack was far better than australias.

 

[Swervy]

thats one way of looking at it, but the more logical way is to look at bowling averages and wasim,waqar and imran in their prime had far better bowling averages than mcgrath,gillespie and mcdermott.



that comes down to 2 factors, as you yourself mentioned their batting was ordinary bar miandad and was responsible for most of their losses. another reason is that post 89 when waqar and to an extent akram started to get into their prime imran khan and abdul qadir were completely out of it.



i never suggested that the australian team was worse than pakistan, i just feel that the pakistan pace bowling attack was far better than australias.

i do see what you mean..but i dont think there is much difference in the averages of McGrath and Gillespie compared to Waqar and wasim,and also one has got to bare in mind that for the last 5 years test cricket has been a batsmans game much more than 15 or 20 years ago, so even the best bowlers will TEND to have higher averages.

The point I was making was that in that final 2 years of the 80's, Pakistan only won 2 but drew 11 or 12 (cant remember)...that suggests to me that maybe that pakistan team werent so brilliant at taking 20 wickets in a match which is the whole objective of the game...the aussies have not had that problem.

It is easy to underestimate McGrath and Gillespie. People seem to think that because McGrath is 80 to 85mph bowler and not up in the 90's that he isnt a great pacer....well no-one in the game for that last 15 years has been as accurate (or indeed as successful) as Mcgrath in the pace bowling category.

And as for Gillespie, in my opinion, when he is fit and at the top of his game, I dont think there is a better fast bowler in the world, and that includes Shoaib,McGrath,Harimson,Pollock,Ntini.

So i just dont understand it when people say that the old Pakistan bowling line up is FAR superior to the Aussie one....i think it is too close to call. The bowler that tips it in Australias favour for me is Warne, who at his best would more than compensate for any possible skill gap between Wasim/Waqar and McGrath/Gillespie.

 

[tooextracool]

i do see what you mean..but i dont think there is much difference in the averages of McGrath and Gillespie compared to Waqar and wasim,and also one has got to bare in mind that for the last 5 years test cricket has been a batsmans game much more than 15 or 20 years ago, so even the best bowlers will TEND to have higher averages


The point I was making was that in that final 2 years of the 80's, Pakistan only won 2 but drew 11 or 12 (cant remember)...that suggests to me that maybe that pakistan team werent so brilliant at taking 20 wickets in a match which is the whole objective of the game...the aussies have not had that problem.

It is easy to underestimate McGrath and Gillespie. People seem to think that because McGrath is 80 to 85mph bowler and not up in the 90's that he isnt a great pacer....well no-one in the game for that last 15 years has been as accurate (or indeed as successful) as Mcgrath in the pace bowling category

And as for Gillespie, in my opinion, when he is fit and at the top of his game, I dont think there is a better fast bowler in the world, and that includes Shoaib,McGrath,Harimson,Pollock,Ntini.

So i just dont understand it when people say that the old Pakistan bowling line up is FAR superior to the Aussie one....i think it is too close to call. The bowler that tips it in Australias favour for me is Warne, who at his best would more than compensate for any possible skill gap between Wasim/Waqar and McGrath/Gillespie.

even if you take into account the fact that wickets have gotten flatter there is still a significant different in quality between the 2 pace attacks.
i do agree with you that mcgrath is probably the best bowler from both sides but hes still only marginally better than waqar in his prime,however im certain that wasim more than makes up for that gap when you compare him with gillespie.
but the difference between the 3rd bowler, which you failed to mention, is the one that really stands out. imran was light years ahead of craig mcdermott in his prime whatever way you look at it.
another point that should be considered is that the pakistan bowlers played half their games on batsmen friendly wickets at home as opposed to the aussie wickets which for most of the 90s offered a bit for the bowlers so those stats might not be as distorted as they appear to be on comparison.
as far as warne is concerned, it bares no relevance to the discussion because i was strictly looking at the pace bowlers,warne might make it even but that is another story altogether.