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Strongest Xl that actually played together...

Slifer

Slifer

International Captain
Curious to know everyone's thoughts on the strongest XIs they've seen play together. Don't know if this thread already exists either way just thought I'd share my thoughts. For me it's hard to go past these lineups

Australia

Langer
Hayden
Ponting*
Martyn
Hussey
Clarke
Gilchrist +
Warne
Lee
Clark
McGrath

West Indies

Greenidge
Haynes
Richardson
Richards
Gomes
Lloyd *
Dujon+
Marshall
Holding
Garner
Walsh

Australia

Barnes
Morris
Bradman*
Hasset
Miller
Brown
Johnson
Tallon+
Lindwall
Johnston
Toshack

India

Sehwag
Gambhir
Dravid
Sachin
Laxman
Ganguly
Dhoni+
Kumble*
Khan
Sharma
Mishra

Etc. I welcome other opinions.....
 
a massive zebra

a massive zebra

International Captain
England

Hobbs
Sutcliffe
Hammond
Hendren
Mead
Jardine
Chapman*
Tate
Larwood
White
Duckworth+

www.espncricinfo.com

AUS vs ENG Cricket Scorecard, 1st Test at Brisbane, November 30 - December 05, 1928

Get cricket scorecard of 1st Test, AUS vs ENG, England tour of Australia 1928/29 at Exhibition Ground, Brisbane dated November 30 - December 05, 1928.
www.espncricinfo.com www.espncricinfo.com

Could probably be improved by replacing Percy Chapman with Tich Freeman and making Jardine captain, but that batting lineup is very possibly the best ever fielded.
 
a massive zebra

a massive zebra

International Captain
England

Hutton*
Edrich
May
Compton
Graveney
Bailey
Evans+
Laker
Lock
Bedser
Trueman

www.espncricinfo.com

ENG vs AUS Cricket Scorecard, 5th Test at London, August 15 - 19, 1953

Get cricket scorecard of 5th Test, ENG vs AUS, Australia tour of England 1953 at Kennington Oval, London dated August 15 - 19, 1953.
www.espncricinfo.com www.espncricinfo.com

A truly outstanding and complete side, full of great players and with absolutely no passengers, but a more modern side might drop one of the bowlers to add a bit more batting depth.
 
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a massive zebra

a massive zebra

International Captain
South Africa

Richards
Goddard
Bacher*
Graeme Pollock
Barlow
Irvine
Lance
Lindsay+
Procter
Peter Pollock
Traicos

www.espncricinfo.com

SA vs AUS, Australia tour of South Africa 1969/70, 3rd Test at Johannesburg, February 19 - 24, 1970 - Full Scorecard

Get cricket scorecard of 3rd Test, SA vs AUS, Australia tour of South Africa 1969/70 at New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg dated February 19 - 24, 1970.
www.espncricinfo.com www.espncricinfo.com

Amazing depth in both batting and bowling with Procter at 9 and six bowling options. Just lacking a top class spinner.
 
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Slifer

Slifer

International Captain
Magrat Garlick said:
will leave our thread starter to pick a team for Pakistan

New Zealand? Probably the one that just played right?

India 1973 is fun but probably only one for home tracks

(Engineer, Gavaskar, Wadekar, Durani, Pataudi, Viswanath, Solkar, Abid Ali, Venkat, Bedi, Chandrasekhar)
Click to expand...
For New Zealand imo it would have to be the current team. Pakistan imo:

Saeed
Afridi
Ijaz
Inzi
Mohammed Youssuf
Saleem
Moin+
Wasim*
Mushtaq
Waqar
Saqlain

Solid batting but the bowling was outstanding.
 
Zinzan

Zinzan

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Magrat Garlick said:
will leave our thread starter to pick a team for Pakistan

New Zealand? Probably the one that just played right?

India 1973 is fun but probably only one for home tracks

(Engineer, Gavaskar, Wadekar, Durani, Pataudi, Viswanath, Solkar, Abid Ali, Venkat, Bedi, Chandrasekhar)
Click to expand...
Yep, NZ's XI at the Rosebowl comfortably the best NZ side ever, not even close close really.
 
Flem274*

Flem274*

123/5
WTC final side has the most consistent quality, but I bet there's a team with Wright, Jones, Crowe, Smith and Hadlee in it who could hurt them. I've said this before but when I go back and watch old games or look at old scorecards, Hadlee was like a cheat code. Wouldn't feel comfortable calling this one definitively unless one of the quartet wants to do a Hadlee impersonation.
 
Teja.

Teja.

Global Moderator
Magrat Garlick said:
India 1973 is fun but probably only one for home tracks

(Engineer, Gavaskar, Wadekar, Durani, Pataudi, Viswanath, Solkar, Abid Ali, Venkat, Bedi, Chandrasekhar)
Click to expand...
Great mention in a thread like this.

Actually, you say that but India won a series in England in 1971 playing basically the same side (9 out of 11 of those players and the exact same bowling attack). It was a 3 match series where the first 2 tests were rain effected though England seemed to have the advantage. In the third test at the Oval, England headed into the third innings with a healthy lead of 73 looking to close out the test if they even made 150. Chandra famously took 6-38 to bowl out England for 101. The target of 173 was still very daunting on a day 5 pitch considering all of the spin quartet were bunnies with the bat. India took 101 overs (!) to methodically chase down the target with 6 wickets down - Sardesai scored 40 (156) and Vishwanath scored 33 (171).

It was a historic and unexpected away victory for India and capped off a great little mini-era of Indian cricket where we had our first 3 away series victories ever - the others being NZ in 1968 and WI in 1971. We had to wait for 35 years after the 1971 win until we had a stretch where we won multiple away series' over a few years (2004 win in Pakistan, 2006 in WI, 2007 in England and 2009 in NZ) which puts the achievements of that 1968-1971 team in perspective. Probably the most important side in Indian cricket history.
 
TheJediBrah

TheJediBrah

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Sydney 2005:
G.Smith
Sehwag
Dravid
Lara
Kallis
Inzamam
Flintoff
Boucher
Vettori
Harmison
Muralitharan

. . . lost by 210 runs but strong team on paper
 
OverratedSanity

OverratedSanity

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India:

Gambhir
Sehwag
Dravid
Tendulkar
Laxman
Kohli
Dhoni
Ashwin
Zaheer
Ishant
Umesh

www.espncricinfo.com

AUS vs IND Cricket Scorecard, 1st Test at Melbourne, December 26 - 29, 2011

Get cricket scorecard of 1st Test, AUS vs IND, India tour of Australia 2011/12 at Melbourne Cricket Ground dated December 26 - 29, 2011.
www.espncricinfo.com www.espncricinfo.com

Looks incredibly strong on paper and isnt far off India's all time XI, but all eleven players at that point in their career either sucked because they were over the hill or sucked because they were babies with no experience.
 
TheJediBrah

TheJediBrah

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harsh.ag said:
That's a terrible bowling attack for a world xi, Murali aside. Jeez the stocks were bad.
Click to expand...
OverratedSanity said:
A lot of the better bowlers skipped the game iirc
Click to expand...
Nah. Harmison was no. 1 in the world and Flintoff was peaking, coming off a lot of steam from the 05 Ashes. Pollock, Shoaib and others were available but not selected IIRC (they played in the ODI series beforehand). It does look a bowler short and Vettori is the questionable one, the 2 spinners was because of Sydney.

Other than maybe Vettori it was as close to a genuine World XI side as you could get. That's what was special about it compared to most other "World XI" series. Not sure why Sachin didn't play either. Maybe he's the other change you could make. You'd be hard pressed to find a stronger team on paper than that one that played Tests, personally I don't think most of the others ITT are even close.
 
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