This reminds me of a light-hearted series of articles in Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1988-9 called "A Heavenly Match" in which Gatting and Border were summoned to heaven to captain an England-Australia 50 over match. The teams were:
Hobbs, Grace, Hammond, Ranji, Jessop, Gatting*, Foster, Lilley+, Rhodes, Richardson, Barnes
Trumper, Ponsford, Hill, McCabe, Armstrong, Border*, Gregory, Giffen, Oldfield+, McDonald, Grimmett
Naturally, besides Border and Gatting, only players who had died before the end of 1988 could be included. That got me wondering - could you get a stronger XI from currently living players or from deceased players? The XIs being something like:
Gavaskar, Richards (B), Richards (V), Pollock, Tendulkar, Sobers, Gilchrist, Imran, Hadlee, Warne, McGrath
Hobbs, Hutton, Bradman, Hammond, Headley, Miller, Ames+, Lindwall, Marshall, O'Reilly, Barnes
Edit: I see that (unsurprisingly) this question was discussed on the forum in 2007, with pretty similar teams... which suggests that the "died in the last 10 years" XI wouldn't be especially strong...