The Test-only players ODI Draft

[kingkallis]

Round 1

J_C - Barry Richards
watson - Keith Miller
kingkallis - Mike Procter
AldoRaine18 - Graeme Pollock
Zinzan - Wally Hammond
Morgieb - Bill O'Reilly
mr_mister - Stan McCabe
Red Hill - Harold Larwood
schearzie - Ray Lindwall
Pothas - S.F. Barnes
Agent TBY - Sir Clyde Walcott
OverratedSanity - Victor Trumper

Round 2

OverratedSanity - Gilbert Jessop
Agent TBY - Aubrey Faulkner
Pothas - George Headley
schearzie - Jack Gregory
Red Hill - Alan Davidson
mr_mister - Clarie Grimmett
Morgieb - Frank Worrell
Zinzan - Fred Trueman
AldoRaine18 - Neil Harvey
kingkallis - WG Grace
watson - Ted Dexter
J_C - Charles Macartney

Round 3

mr_mister - Len Hutton
Pothas - Richie Benaud
Zinzan - Everton Weekes
J_C - Wes Hall
Red Hill - Frank Woolley
AldoRaine18 - Jack Hobbs
watson - Denis Compton
Morgieb - Monty Noble
schearzie- Bill Ponsford
OverratedSanity- Les Ames
kingkallis- Dudley Nourse
Agent TBY- Clem Hill

Round 4

Agent TBY- Maurice Tate
kingkallis- Trevor Goddard
OverratedSanity- Jim Laker
schearzie- Denis Lindsay
Morgieb- Brian Statham
watson- Peter Pollock
AldoRaine18- Learie Constantine
Red Hill - Arthur Morris
J_C - Peter May
Zinzan - Hedley Verity
Pothas - KS Ranjitsinhji
mr_mister - Alec Bedser

Round 5

J_C - Hugh Tayfield
schearzie - Fazal Mahmood
Morgieb - Herb Sutcliffe
Red Hill - Norm O'Neill
kingkallis - Archie Jackson
watson - John R. Reid
OverratedSanity - Frank Tyson
AldoRaine18 - Jack Cowie
Pothas - Bill Johnston
Agent TBY - Warwick Armstrong
mr_mister - Lindsay Hassett
Zinzan - George Lohmann

Round 6

Zinzan - Ken Barrington
mr_mister - Douglas Jardine
Agent TBY - Neil Adcock
Pothas - Patsy Hendren
AldoRaine18 - Vijay Hazare
OverratedSanity - Maurice Leyland
watson
kingkallis
Red Hill
Morgieb
schearzie
J_C

Round 7

Red Hill
kingkallis
J_C
AldoRaine18
Pothas
schearzie
watson
OverratedSanity
Zinzan
Morgieb
mr_mister
Agent TBY

Round 8

Agent TBY
mr_mister
Morgieb
Zinzan
OverratedSanity
watson
schearzie
Pothas
AldoRaine18
J_C
kingkallis
Red Hill

Round 9

J_C
schearzie
Zinzan
mr_mister
kingkallis
Agent TBY
AldoRaine18
OverratedSanity
Red Hill
Morgieb
watson
Pothas

Round 10

Pothas
watson
Morgieb
Red Hill
OverratedSanity
AldoRaine18
Agent TBY
kingkallis
mr_mister
Zinzan
schearzie
J_C

Round 11

Pothas
Agent TBY
J_C
watson
OverratedSanity
Zinzan
Morgieb
Red Hill
kingkallis
mr_mister
schearzie
AldoRaine18

 

[watson]

Let's add some more enthusiasm to the team;

01.
02. Eddie Barlow
03. Ted Dexter
04. Denis Compton
05.
06. John R. Reid
07. Keith Miller
08.
09. Peter Pollock
10.
11.

He also had a rather unconventional trademark stroke of his own. As Mike Selvey wrote in The Guardian, “Pace bowlers were frustrated by the cavalier fashion in which he would defy convention and carve them over point or the slips in a manner that was alien then but common today.” It may sound familiar to Indian Premier League (IPL) followers.

The bowling was another matter altogether. He never looked like he was running up to bowl. On watching him approach the wicket Charles Fortune had commented that he ran in “looking like an unmade bed.” Selvey wrote that he was “capable of match-turning spells, his round face turning red with the effort.”

He had a decent out-swinger, but his main claim to fame was his deceptive slower ball: without any change of action he used to bowl slow off-breaks that dipped very late into the batsman, often yorking him; it was probably a predecessor of the kind seamers of later generation have used to great effect in One-Day Internationals (ODIs).


Eddie Barlow: One of the greatest all-rounders who was part of the lost generation of South African cricketers - Latest Cricket News, Articles & Videos at CricketCountry.com

 

[kingkallis]

Its time to give Procter his bowling partner. None other than 'The Demon' Spofforth.

CricZo XI

1. WG Grace / o
2. Archie Jackson /
3.
4. Dudley Nourse /
5.
6. Trevor Goddard / o
7. Mike Procter o /
8.
9.
10.
11. Fred Spofforth o

 

[mr_mister]

I know very little about cricket fro pre 1900 so I'm scared to go that far. Did Spofforth run in and bowl with a modern action like we see today? Or did he like bowl while standing still at the crease.... like we see in some pictures

 

[kingkallis]

This is what I found on Cricinfo. Some other seniors on this forum can shed some light on him though.

Tall, spindly, and a player who consistently tested the wits of opposing batsmen, Fred "The Demon" Spofforth was Australia's first true fast bowler. His first-class career spanned the 23-year period between 1874 and 1897 and, throughout that time, his accuracy, his lionhearted endeavour and the phenomenal rapidity of his wicket taking made him a revered figure.

 

[kingkallis]

Red_Hill > morgieb > Schearzie

 

[Red]

Time to get my my captain, a fine middle order batsman, and the man who'll share fifth bowler duties with Woolley. Colonel The Honourable Sir Francis Stanley Jackson, P.C., G.C.I.E.

Well-built and standing nearly six feet high, Stanley Jackson was equipped with special physical advantages for cricket; to these were added fine judgment, perseverance, and, above all, exceptional courage which amounted to belief in his own abilities. Free and stylish in method, he drove splendidly on either side of the wicket and was perhaps the finest forcing on-side batsman of his time. While essentially a forward player on hard wickets, he had at his command on sticky wickets a strength and science of back play to which few men have attained. His great stroke sent a good-length ball through the covers; he cut square or late and turned the ball cleverly on the leg side with similar precision. Nothing was better than the way he jumped in and drove the ball over the bowler's head, as shown in the life-like picture at Lord's, and as I saw at Bradford, where he sent the ball high over the football stand.

A right-handed rather fast-medium bowler with a nice easy action and plenty of spin, he kept a good length and often got on a sharp off-break. On a difficult wicket he was a bowler who might dispose of any side. While always a keen and smart field, especially at cover-point, he was not in his early days a sure catch, but steadily improved in this respect and made himself in every sense a great player.

 

[Red]

Red Hill XI

Arthur Morris
~
Frank Woolley (5)
Norm O'Neill
SF Jackson * (5)
~
Alan Davidson (2)
~
Harold Larwood (1)
~

 

[morgieb]

Charlie Turner

 

[NUFAN]

I know very little about cricket fro pre 1900 so I'm scared to go that far. Did Spofforth run in and bowl with a modern action like we see today? Or did he like bowl while standing still at the crease.... like we see in some pictures

Mate that is just a photo you've been looking at not a video.

 

[Red]

Charlie Turner

Brilliant choice. My favourite early Australian cricketer. Had to decide between Jackson and him this round, and had hoped he'd slide.

Can mount a pretty decent argument that CTB was the greatest of all the early era bowlers, over even Spofforth and Barnes.

 

[Red]

I know very little about cricket fro pre 1900 so I'm scared to go that far. Did Spofforth run in and bowl with a modern action like we see today? Or did he like bowl while standing still at the crease.... like we see in some pictures

Camera technology being what it was in the 1800s, most players just stood still and posed for a picture. There are very few real action shots. I think he was quick.

 

[watson]

A young Spofforth could be classified as Fast-Medium, and an older Spofforth as Medium-Fast. His speciality seemed to be the off-cutter as he bowled a high percentage of his victims - 54% in Tests.

Walter Hammond named Spofforth in his ATG XI back in 1947, and indeed up until the 1940s the prevailing opinion assumed Spofforth to be one of the greatest ever 'fast' bowlers. But several decades later we are more sceptical of his skills and do not seem to hold him in the same regard as past generations.

.....cricket enthusiasts are often curious about the speed at which Spofforth bowled. It is difficult to answer. When Charlie Turner, the successor of Spofforth as the Australian terror bowler, was measured for speed with chronographs at Woolwich Observatory near London, the registered velocity was 55 miles per hour. That is remarkably slow by today’s standards. Turner was considered faster than Spofforth’s final years, perhaps as quick as The Demon was in his younger days. As Spofforth’s biographer Richard Cashman rightly observes, “Pace is a relative concept: a bowler who is much faster than the others of his generation will appear fast. Spofforth certainly was.”

He was fast enough to intimidate opposition batsmen. He was perhaps fastest when “I bowled (for New South Wales in 1876) against Victoria (XII) at Sydney, taking all eleven wickets (actually nine, Spofforth was always fond of embellishing a good story) and breaking two stumps. In addition to this BB Cooper’s bat was broken three times and at the conclusion of the match Sir Hercules Robinson, the Governor, presented me with the broken stumps mounted on silver.”

We have to take Spofforth’s accounts with healthy pinches of salt, but there were newspaper reports to establish that he indeed broke Cooper’s bat at least once and also Tom Horan’s stump.

From the accounts of SP Jones, we do come to know that he had once been requested ‘not to bowl too fast’ at practice. The man making the request was Charles Bannerman, the first centurion of Test cricket.

Spofforth himself maintained that he was the quickest bowler that ever was. However, Lord Hawke dismissed this as ‘harmless delusion’ because ‘he never had anything like the pace of Johannes Jacobus Kotze or Charles Kortright’, or for that matter, a number of other bowlers such as Tom Richardson who emerged in the 1880s and 1890s. At best he was the fastest bowler around in the 1870s, and maybe the early 1880s.

By today’s standard, his fastest ball could be categorised as fast-medium. His first Test wicket, in the second ever Test match, was taken in his opening spell in the fourth over. It was a stumping dismissal. Five of his 94 Test wickets were the work of quick glovework behind the stumps. Jack Blackham and Billy Murdoch stood up to his bowling, although they retreated a few paces when Spofforth signalled that he was about to unleash a faster one. This suggests that his pace was perhaps comparable to Alec Bedser.

Spofforth played in an era far before developing tracks for the game became a science. Well directed fast-medium and medium pace were enough to get wickets in that period. In fact, according to JW Trumble, Spofforth started as a fast bowler, but soon realised that fast bowling on the wickets of his day did not pay and came down to slower bowling with a pacy ball put in occasionally as a faster delivery.

Spofforth also bowled with a ball less glossy and slightly larger than the modern cherry. The seam was also less raised. Hence, he never quite swung the ball and only three of his 94 Test wickets came through catches to slip. In the early days, the field set was vastly different, with Spofforth often starting with a short slip, a point, third man, long stop, long-leg, cover, mid-off, mid-on and short-leg. He sometimes used a silly mid-on to great effect, cutting the ball into batsmen. Catches at point — four of his 94 wickets — were not due to swing, but variable bounce which saw batsmen fending to the man stationed there.

However, Spofforth was a master of the cut and breakback, and he was always dead accurate on the stumps or hovered in their vicinity. He bowled 50 of his 94 Test victims. He was also a master of disguise and almost no batsman was confident that he could pick the pace or likely movement of a delivery. Without any change of action, he could send the ball faster or slower at will.

Fred Spofforth: The first aggressive fast bowler and one of the greatest ever - Latest Cricket News, Articles & Videos at CricketCountry.com

 

[The Battlers Prince]

I'll take Stewie Dempster

One of the top kiwi batsmen and great close in fielder

1.
2. Bill Ponsford
3.
4. Stewie Dempster
5.
6. Denis Lindsay+
7. Jack Gregory
8. Ray Lindwall
9.
10. Fazal Mahmood
11.

 

[J_C]

Martin Donnelly.

 

[J_C]

Red Hill > kingkallis > J_C.

 

[AldoRaine18]

Red Hill > kingkallis > J_C

 

[mr_mister]

Red Hill > kingkallis > J_C

 

[OverratedSanity]

Who are the next three again?

 

[Red]

Hugh Trumble- gun off spinner and handy lower order bat.