On a broader point (see, I got to it eventually), I find it fascinating going over these old teams – and remember, they were all selected in the 1980s so aren’t that old – and seeing how the composition and balance of such teams has evolved even in my lifetime. You can see from the above that it was almost a matter of course that you picked five bowlers, and at least two of those bowlers were spinners. The two above – O’Reilly and Winning – who bucked that trend and stacked the batting to have only four bowlers, still had two spinners!
It is probably all these old books, and the penchant for beloved old cricketers I grew up idolising to choose teams with five bowling options, that influences to this day how I pick my teams. I absolutely don’t go in for choosing five specialist bowlers and the best specialist gloveman regardless of his batting, and subsequently leave myself with a tail starting at 6 or 7. But at the same time, I’ve never quite fully embraced the idea of six batsmen and four bowlers – I always like to have a fifth option.
That fifth option can take many forms – for example, I invariably pick Mushtaq Mohammad in my Pakistan ATXI because I love the balance and depth he brings to the attack while still being a good enough batsman to play in the top 6, albeit not as good as a pure specialist bat. My All Time Australian 2nd XI, on the other hand has both Bob Simpson and Steve Waugh. They took 163 Test wickets between them, so I am prepared to stack the batting in that team and jointly consider them my “fifth bowler”.
Where I diverge from a lot of people I think is when I have a genuine world class bowling all-rounder available for selection. It came up in discussion recently when talking about Ian Botham in an all time England XI, with some people saying he’d have to bat at 8 and be one of the four main bowlers, because if you picked him at six he wouldn’t make enough runs and wouldn’t bowl enough. This is where I fundamentally disagree, because at that point and if I have a player like Botham (or Keith Miller in the Australian XI equivalent) then he’s not a “fifth bowler”, he is one of my “five bowlers”. This is for me a really important distinction.
To me – and I realise that others think differently when developing the composition of their teams – I’m not picking a player like Ian Botham to bowl a handful of overs as a glorified part-timer to give my other four a rest. If I have a bowling all-rounder of that class then I know I am giving up some runs in the middle order specifically because I now have five world class bowlers instead of four, and I will rotate and utilise them accordingly to improve my chances of taking 20 wickets.
Maybe he is the fifth best of the five bowlers, but there’s a big difference between being the fifth best in a balanced attack of five world class bowlers and being the bits-and-pieces bowler who gives the four champions a rest. Colin Croft was the fourth best quick in the WI team he shared with Holding, Roberts and Garner but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t one of the quartet and a critical part of the full time attack. My philosophy is the same, but with five rather than four when you have the bowlers and the team balance to do so.
I know a lot of people think that if four gun bowlers can’t get your 20 wickets then a fifth won’t make a difference, and if that’s your thinking then fair enough – that certainly seems to be the prevailing thought these days. Suffice it to say, I don’t necessarily agree.
Anyway, that was a lot of words to say I have recently re-read an old book.
