Furball's Greatest XI

[Furball]

Brian Lara

Brian Charles Lara was my first cricketing icon when I was a kid growing up, and remains by far my favourite batsman of all time. I first started playing cricket in 1994, the same year Brian Lara set his twin world records. You couldn’t possibly be into cricket and not be aware of this little genius from Trinidad and Tobago. He was the bloke I pretended to be in the games we’d play in the back lane and if I could somehow find a magic lamp and a genie to grant me 3 wishes, I’d wish that I could bat like Lara. The backlift, the follow through, the placement, the power, the playing 3 different shots to every ball. Lara had absolutely everything. He played great innings against great bowlers and murdered the best spinners. Honestly, there’s been no-one better to watch in full flight in the last 15-20 years.

And yet the perception is that Lara’s underachieved. Maybe it’s because he’s the unfortunate bridge between the end of the great West Indies and their gradual slide into the rabble they are today. Maybe it’s because we can’t believe that a player so phenomenally talented could “only” average 52. Maybe it was the timing of his retirement – the fact that he scored a ton in his final proper First Class innings showed that he clearly still had the game to stick around at Test level for a year or two.

When Brian Lara retired he asked the crowd if he had entertained them. The answer, from the crowd and the cricketing world at large, was an overwhelming yes. Maybe we’re just selfish, but we just wish you could have entertained us for a little bit longer.

Furball's Greatest XI

1. AJ Strauss *
2. R Dravid
3.
4. BC Lara
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. JM Anderson
11. GD McGrath

 

[Furball]

Writeup really doesn't really do him justice, DoG has kind of done that for me.

 

[MW1304]

Nah you do yourself an injustice there.

 

[bagapath]

Great thread. **** all team so far....

 

[smash84]

absolutely loved the write up

 

[kyear2]

Brian Lara

Brian Charles Lara was my first cricketing icon when I was a kid growing up, and remains by far my favourite batsman of all time. I first started playing cricket in 1994, the same year Brian Lara set his twin world records. You couldn’t possibly be into cricket and not be aware of this little genius from Trinidad and Tobago. He was the bloke I pretended to be in the games we’d play in the back lane and if I could somehow find a magic lamp and a genie to grant me 3 wishes, I’d wish that I could bat like Lara. The backlift, the follow through, the placement, the power, the playing 3 different shots to every ball. Lara had absolutely everything. He played great innings against great bowlers and murdered the best spinners. Honestly, there’s been no-one better to watch in full flight in the last 15-20 years.

And yet the perception is that Lara’s underachieved. Maybe it’s because he’s the unfortunate bridge between the end of the great West Indies and their gradual slide into the rabble they are today. Maybe it’s because we can’t believe that a player so phenomenally talented could “only” average 52. Maybe it was the timing of his retirement – the fact that he scored a ton in his final proper First Class innings showed that he clearly still had the game to stick around at Test level for a year or two.

When Brian Lara retired he asked the crowd if he had entertained them. The answer, from the crowd and the cricketing world at large, was an overwhelming yes. Maybe we’re just selfish, but we just wish you could have entertained us for a little bit longer.

Furball's Greatest XI

1. AJ Strauss *
2. R Dravid
3.
4. BC Lara
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. JM Anderson
11. GD McGrath

You don't give yourself enough credit. Brilliant write up. The first great batsman whose career I saw from beginning to end and was in the stands for his last odi innings and I would echo your sentiments.

My one great regret is not seeing his 153* live as I was about a mile away playing tennis and didn't even watch or listen on the radio as I believe that we had no chance in that innings. That was a great shame indeed, one unfortunately that I have not learned from.

 

[Howe_zat]

King Cricket on backlifts

We’re not one of those people who goes all weak-kneed at the aesthetics of batting. We don’t make unnerving *** noises when someone hits a textbook cover drive – we’re not Mark Nicholas. We did always love Lara’s backlift though.

We didn’t love it because of how it looked so much as what it said; what it promised. Even the most aggressive of modern batsmen doesn’t have a backlift like Lara’s. The bat started off so high that it didn’t seem it could come back down in time for the ball. Then, as the ball approached, it would jerk up vertically, even higher.

Take a photo at that exact moment and you would see why Brian Lara was so special. The bat has an enormous distance to travel and it must move at phenomenal speed if willow is going to meet leather.

Cats completely flip out from time to time for pretty much no reason. If you’re on the receiving end when they really lose it, you’ll know the moment. They tend to freeze just before they launch at you with their incisors and knife-hands and that pause is bloody terrifying. It’s all coiled threat. That pause is precisely what was expressed by the Lara backlift. That much tension and stored energy is only ever going to hurt you.

 

[Migara]

May not agree 100% with the selection of payers, but the write up are fabulous.

 

[Jarquis]

How can you disagree with somebody else's favourite players?

 

[Furball]

Kevin Pietersen

The most talented batsman of his generation and the successor to Brian Lara as the most entertaining batsman in the world takes his place at number 5 in the order for this XI. What a pairing they’d make in the middle – Lara and Pietersen at full flow together would be a joy to watch for the spectators and nightmare for opposition bowlers.

In fact, a comparison with Brian Lara is fairly apt for Pietersen, as he’s another player who’s arguably underachieved in his career, yet he’s well on his way to pass the 8,000 Test runs mark and averages close to 49 in Test cricket. There’s hundreds of players who’d love to have underachieved to that extent. Another comparison with Lara would be Pietersen’s love of the big stage – like Lara, Pietersen, albeit over only two series, can be argued to have tamed the big two of McGrath and Warne (only Sachin Tendulkar can argue to have done the same as those two), and like Lara, Pietersen handed out his fair share of beltings to Murali. And the final comparison with Lara is the way that both players can score all around the wicket to the same ball. The method each player uses to do so differs however – Lara’s method was all in the hands and opening and closing the face of the bat to put the same ball to different areas of the ground to manipulate the field and torment the opposition captain. Pietersen took that a step further and decided to play left handed to open up new scoring zones when captains closed off his favoured zones. It wasn’t just dibbly medium pacers or mediocre spinners who Pietersen did this to either – he pulled out the switch hit to Muttiah Muralitharan for Christ’s sake. And hit him for 6 over point/square leg for good measure.

To do that takes an astonishing amount of talent, and Pietersen on his game is the best batsman in the world. No-one else in the world is capable of hitting the highs KP can. Where he perhaps suffers in comparison to other batsmen in the game today is how often he hits those highs. But for my money, there’s no other batsman who could have twice tamed a rampaging McGrath on debut at Lord’s, or whacked the series winning 158 at the Oval. And recently, he’s had the small matter of making the South African attack look pedestrian at Headingley or producing a masterful 186 against India on an absolute dustbowl in Mumbai. There’s no-one in the game just now quite like KP, and for that, bowlers everywhere can breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Furball's Greatest XI

1. AJ Strauss *
2. R Dravid
3.
4. BC Lara
5. KP Pietersen
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. JM Anderson
11. GD McGrath

 

[MW1304]

I went back and watched highlights of the 149 again recently. It is the most authoritative and absorbing innings I have ever seen, and I'm beginning to think it is his best. Considering the context around that innings, his place in the dressing room and the obvious 'me against the world' mentality he held when he went out to bat, which is evident in hindsight even as he is walking out, the way he purposefully and systematically dismantled and annihilated the best attack in the world was beyond incredible. I never got to see Viv Richards bat live, but this is exactly how the most romanticised descriptions of him seem in my head. Strutting out with a frightening focus and playing the most audacious shots to skillful and hostile bowling. Nobody else looked fully comfortable, and then he came out looking the most calm and full of intent I've ever seen him. The six he hit off Steyn over long-off is totally glorious. I'm not even a KP fanboy usually but that innings seemed to exist in isolation, it was totally unique.

 

[Cabinet96]

To put things into perspective, people have scored tripple centuries against attacks featuring Dale Steyn. None of them scored more runs against him than KP did in that knock.

I still think his knock in Mumbai was better. There were still a few doubts about him in the England side, and he'd twice fallen to left arm spin the innings before. He smashed it everywhere on a pitch that was taking a lot of turn, at pace. His innings was put into perspective by the some of the greatest players of spin in the modern era, folding for **** all the next innings.

 

[Furball]

One thing I forgot to mention is that KP's flick through midwicket is second only to Ponting's pull shot as my favourite shot to watch by any player.

 

[Agent Nationaux]

Loved the Lara write up Furby and a good team so far except Strauss and maybe Anderson. Hope you include either Steyn or Waqar in this.

 

[watson]

One thing I forgot to mention is that KP's flick through midwicket is second only to Ponting's pull shot as my favourite shot to watch by any player.

Mark Waugh's flick through midwicket off his pads was just as impressive IMO. Especially off Curtly.

 

[MW1304]

To put things into perspective, people have scored tripple centuries against attacks featuring Dale Steyn. None of them scored more runs against him than KP did in that knock.

I still think his knock in Mumbai was better. There were still a few doubts about him in the England side, and he'd twice fallen to left arm spin the innings before. He smashed it everywhere on a pitch that was taking a lot of turn, at pace. His innings was put into perspective by the some of the greatest players of spin in the modern era, folding for **** all the next innings.

He had a hattrick of absurdly good innings last year and it's difficult to rank them in an order.

 

[Rory90]

I went back and watched highlights of the 149 again recently. It is the most authoritative and absorbing innings I have ever seen, and I'm beginning to think it is his best. Considering the context around that innings, his place in the dressing room and the obvious 'me against the world' mentality he held when he went out to bat, which is evident in hindsight even as he is walking out, the way he purposefully and systematically dismantled and annihilated the best attack in the world was beyond incredible. I never got to see Viv Richards bat live, but this is exactly how the most romanticised descriptions of him seem in my head. Strutting out with a frightening focus and playing the most audacious shots to skillful and hostile bowling. Nobody else looked fully comfortable, and then he came out looking the most calm and full of intent I've ever seen him. The six he hit off Steyn over long-off is totally glorious. I'm not even a KP fanboy usually but that innings seemed to exist in isolation, it was totally unique.

My favourite moment of that innings was the shot he played at around 8:13 in this video youtube.com/watch?v=aLp2QsaOvcI - just the look on Steyn's face after he had played the shot and was basically going "How the hell do I bowl to this guy?!"

 

[hendrix]

My favourite moment of that innings was the shot he played at around 8:13 in this video youtube.com/watch?v=aLp2QsaOvcI - just the look on Steyn's face after he had played the shot and was basically going "How the hell do I bowl to this guy?!"

That 6 the next ball...wtf.

That was a fast outswinger on a good length. Bowlers consider themselves lucky if they can get batsmen to drive at that length. And he just wacked it straight over his head for 6. Utterly outrageous.

 

[Furball]

Shane Warne

If my first wish would be to bat like Brian Lara, my second wish undoubtedly would be to be able to bowl like Shane Warne (I’d be a mirror image of both, but I digress.) Frankly, I could put him in this team for his 2005 Ashes efforts alone. He tormented England’s batsmen every single time he was brought on to bowl, and if Ponting could have bowled him from both ends in the two Tests that McGrath missed through injury, then I think he would have. I’ll never forget the nervy Trent Bridge run chase – 32/0 after 4 overs chasing 129, then Warne comes on, immediately gets Trescothick and gets Vaughan 6 balls later to set the cat amongst the pigeons. I honestly thought we’d blown it when he trolled Geraint Jones into smacking one straight up in the air to leave England 7 wickets down with 13 runs still to get.

That innings, in a nutshell, summed up Shane Warne. A constant menace to batsmen the world over, and a psychological weapon for Australia in their battles against England. As long as Warne was bowling, the game never felt won. Part of this mastery of the psychology within the game was the multitude of deliveries Warne had in his armoury – the topspinner, the zooter, the slider – all of which were basically deliveries that went straight on. He just invented deliveries to toy with batsmen’s minds, famously tormenting Darryl Cullinan of South Africa to the extent that none of us remember him for his fine batsmanship. We just remember the fact that he failed hilariously against Warne and had to seek a psychiatrist.

What places Warne on this list, much like his partner in crime Glenn MacGrath, is the mastery he had over his art. He raised the bar for leg-spin the world over with his accuracy and left the game as its greatest wicket taker. More than that though, was the sheer theatre that surrounded every Warne delivery. The deliberate setting of the field. The slow walk to the crease, and the explosion through it. And the waiting...would it be the leg break, the big leg break, or the ****ing massive leg break? (Warne actually broke HawkEye at the Oval in 2005 by sending down a delivery that turned too much; HawkEye had to be re-calibrated as when they tried to re-create the delivery, they got a “computer says no” error.) Or perhaps Warne had set you up perfectly for one that was going to go straight on and rap your pads dead in front, at which point you’d have to contend with The Appeal. As an aside, how many more wickets would have got in today’s age, with umpires more willing to give front foot lbws and a DRS system to review those ones where the umpires weren’t picking his straight ones?

As an England fan, watching Warne bowl in the Ashes was tortuous at times. But it was engrossing, beautiful, and sporting theatre at its finest. Not only was Warne a marvellously skilled bowler, but he was a useful batsman down the order, a fine slipper and a great tactical mind. Which brings me onto my third wish; not only do I want to bowl like Warne, I’d want to think like Warne as well. I hadn’t realised just how much I missed watching him until his Ashes masterclass on Sky. Cricket won’t see his like again.

Furball's Greatest XI

1. AJ Strauss *
2. R Dravid
3.
4. BC Lara
5. KP Pietersen
6.
7.
8.
9. SK Warne
10. JM Anderson
11. GD McGrath

 

[Hooksey]

Nice thread.

Gilly at 7?