- Vijay Merchant
- Bill Woodfull (c)
- Cheteshwar Pujara
- Herbie Taylor
- Eddie Barlow
- Monty Noble
- Denis Lindsay (wk)
- Jack Gregory
- Wilfred Rhodes
- Sylvester Clarke
- Wayne Daniel
I will take on L&Ls offer and right small posts about a few of my players.
Vijay Merchant: Nicknamed "The Don of the East", during World War II Merchant averages a whopping
156. His FC average of
71 is only second to Don himself for 10000+ runs. While an average of
47.7 in 10 Test matches in English conditions without any not outs sounds good, especially when playing for a very weak batting line-up; his Test career fails to showcase his total potential imo. He toured England twice and scored
4130 FC runs at an average of 61.5 in England; his average being only behind Don and Headley, even including English batsmen. Bedser rated him ahead of Gavaskar and as the best foreign batsman in sticky dogs.
Herbie Taylor: South Africa's first great batsman. The only batsman to average
40+ while batting at Top 3 almost exclusively pre WWI besides Hobbs. His Magnum opus came in the series in which Barnes destroyed SA, taking 49 wickets in 4 matches. He was the only SA batsman who stood up to him, leading the run scorers chart ahead of Hobbs with
508 @50 vs Barnes.
Eddie Barlow: I think most people rate Eddie Barlow the batsman fairly well. Imo, his
45 Test average describes his batting adequately. But I think many people don't know how lethal Barlow the bowler was. His 34 Test average being 10 points higher than his FC, is due to some really solid misfortunes. His bowling first came into place and he got notable success with his outswingers in 1970, the year SA was banned. In the subsequent ROW XI vs England series, matches which initially had Test status, he took
20 wickets at under 20 for ROW XI vs England, being the second highest Wicket taker. He end up with
571 FC wickets @24.
Monty Noble: Probably the text book definition of a proper allrounder, Noble was among Australia's best of his time in batting, bowling, fielding and captaincy. Imo, the best Australian allrounder after Miller quite easily. Mostly batting at Top 5 his whole career, was rated highly for his abilities in Sticky dogs.
Playing during Pre WWI 14000 FC runs @40 (2000 @30 in Tests) and 624 wickets @ 23 (121 @25 in Tests).
Wilfred Rhodes: To clarify, I am taking Rhodes the bowling allrounder, who was a very good lower order batsman; but arguably the best SLA of All Time. With more FC wickets than anyone in history in a very long career, his bowling average in Test marked down by playing a big proportion of his matches as a batsman who was a support bowler. Nonetheless, while centenary teams came around, he was included in almost every team as experts believed him to be an all conditions bowler, while Verity and Laker were seen as bad pitch ones.
40000 FC runs @30 (2325 @30 in Tests) and 4200 wickets @16.7 (127 @27) in a career spanning over 5 separate decades.
Sylvester Clarke: The lack of talent wasn't his problem, but the excess of in the hands of WI during his playing days was. Add to that his rebel tour and his Test career never got the opportunity to bloom. His talent properly came to fruition in his FC careers in England and SA, where he was as good as any bowler playing there. He took
591 wickets @19 in his County career for Sussex and took
193 wickets @ 20 in SA. In his best season in SA, he took
85 @12. He also had success in his limited chances in SC, took
21 @33 in India and was WI's best bowler by a mile and had a great series with
14 @17 in Pakistan.
Wayne Daniel: Pretty close to what happened to Clarke. Competitive team and lost favour due to WSC. Daniel played most of his career for Middlesex, where he became one of the most successful and popular overseas player in England and took a total of
867 FC wickets @22.5; mostly for Middlesex.
