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The ATG Teams General arguing/discussing thread
- Thread starter Red
- Start date
Himannv
Hall of Fame Member
Wilfred Rhodes outlasted all of those.
stephen
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Just threw an XI together with some players who've had really long careers. Rhodes in for Gavaskar. Hadlee in for Anderson for team balance reasons.
Grace
Rhodes
Bradman
Tendulkar
Border (c)
Kallis
Boucher (w/k)
Hadlee
Murali
McGrath
Walsh
smash84
The Tiger King
I believe in terms of the number of years Imran had a career longer than anybody in that team bar Tendulkar and Rhodes
Second Spitter
State Vice-Captain
Lots of good part-time bowling on that team. I
stephen
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Chanders a good shout but who does he replace?
Maybe Kallis, but Kallis is in there as an all rounder and he had 18 years under his belt in test match cricket.
What I really wanted the CW brains trust to do is find me a keeper to replace Boucher, who had 15 years of tests.
stephen
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Imran could come in to replace McGrath. That would give the requisite strength to the lower order.
Second Spitter
State Vice-Captain
Lets be honest: That side will be declaring with 5 or 6 down 99 times out of 100.
I think for a wicket-keeper with a longer Test career than Deryck Murray you have to go back to the very first Test and Jack Blackham (1877-1894), and even then it's only about 6 months longer.
I tend to think that Gubby Allen's "17 year career" is a bit of a con - he played fairly regularly for 7 years, then was brought back a decade later to captain a rather second-rate England team in the West Indies. Headley's and Faulkner's career lengths are also a bit artificial (so are Rhodes's and Woolley's, but theirs lasted over 20 years anyway).
I tend to think that Gubby Allen's "17 year career" is a bit of a con - he played fairly regularly for 7 years, then was brought back a decade later to captain a rather second-rate England team in the West Indies. Headley's and Faulkner's career lengths are also a bit artificial (so are Rhodes's and Woolley's, but theirs lasted over 20 years anyway).
OverratedSanity
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Headley's is a very artificially long career for sure. His actual career was 9 years long from 1930-39. After the war he played only 3 tests from 1945-54.
Coronis
International Coach
Hammond and Headley should never have played after WWII.
Red
The normal awards that everyone else has
I suppose if you include actual tests as part of his actual career his career is actually long....
ankitj
Hall of Fame Member
With an almost 18 year long career Murali should find a place. What is Gubby Allen there for?
OverratedSanity
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I wouldn't exactly call playing 3 tests in 15 years one of the prime examples of longevity. Might as well put John Traicos in there.
Barrington's a tricky one - his average of nearly 60 in the 1960s, when only Sobers was at the same level* and the other top batsmen of the decade* (Simpson, Dexter, Graveney, Cowdrey, Lawry) averaged around 50 suggests he should be thought of as an all-time great, and so is underrated.
OTOH, he does tend to get mentioned when people pick their all-time England XI these days, whereas in the late 80s I had the impression that the cricket writers old enough to have watched cricket since the 50s (if not earlier) wouldn't have considered putting him ahead of Hammond, May or Compton, and quite often rated him below Dexter, Cowdrey and (Bill) Edrich - they would probably say that he's now overrated by people who only know his average, and didn't have to watch him taking 7 hours to score 137 against NZ.
From vague memories of reading an article by Barrington, he reckoned he adapted his technique better for overseas pitches than most of his team-mates (his average in away Tests was nearly 70 - Dexter and Cowdrey were still around 50, and May and Graveney were in the 30s), which perhaps made his success less noticeable to the UK cricket watchers of the time.
*To be strictly accurate, Pollock (another ATG) and Walters had similar/better averages in about 20 Tests, but Walters didn't sustain this level and Pollock's career was of course cut short.
OTOH, he does tend to get mentioned when people pick their all-time England XI these days, whereas in the late 80s I had the impression that the cricket writers old enough to have watched cricket since the 50s (if not earlier) wouldn't have considered putting him ahead of Hammond, May or Compton, and quite often rated him below Dexter, Cowdrey and (Bill) Edrich - they would probably say that he's now overrated by people who only know his average, and didn't have to watch him taking 7 hours to score 137 against NZ.
From vague memories of reading an article by Barrington, he reckoned he adapted his technique better for overseas pitches than most of his team-mates (his average in away Tests was nearly 70 - Dexter and Cowdrey were still around 50, and May and Graveney were in the 30s), which perhaps made his success less noticeable to the UK cricket watchers of the time.
*To be strictly accurate, Pollock (another ATG) and Walters had similar/better averages in about 20 Tests, but Walters didn't sustain this level and Pollock's career was of course cut short.