Re: All Time World-XI
and rest of us used to play gulli danda with bradman....
HAA HAa
HAA HAa
haa HAA A
HAAH
SHUT UP ! :D
Re: All Time World-XI
and rest of us used to play gulli danda with bradman....
mujhey lagh raha tha k tum achee sauhbat main nahi rahey ho.... :)
Re: All Time World-XI
MY ALL-TIME TEST XI
Sunil Gavaskar (13 out of 34 test hundreds against what I regard as THE best attack in history, surely no mean achievement)
Gordon Greenidge (the most destructive opener in history)
Don Bradman (test ave: 99.96)
Viv Richards (simply incomparable)
Gary Sobers (best batting all-rounder in history)
Imran Khan (best bowling all-rounder in history)
Adam Gilchrist **(best wicket-keeper batsman in history)
**Malcolm Marshall (arguably the most fearsome pace bowler in history)
Michael Holding ('Whispering Death', naturally gifted like Wasim Akram)
Shane Warne (the best leg-spinner in history)
Wasim Akram (THE best Left arm pace bowler in history)
ps. don't need two spinners. one is enough. Sobers could bowl spin too
Re: All Time World-XI
On second thoughts must find a way to include Sachin Tendulkar
Although I regard Viv as the greatest batsman I have seen in my lifetime - and that is just my honest opinion, the man is simply incomparable - Tendulkar's record is such that he will always be remembered as one of the all-time greats.
so out goes Holding!
Sunil Gavaskar (13 out of 34 test hundreds against what I regard as THE best attack in history, surely no mean achievement)
Gordon Greenidge (arguably the most destructive opener in history)
Don Bradman (test ave: 99.96)
Viv Richards (simply incomparable)
Sachin Tendulkar (49 test tons and still counting, most test runs)
Gary Sobers (best batting all-rounder in history)
Imran Khan (best bowling all-rounder in history)
Adam Gilchrist **(best wicket-keeper batsman in history)
**Malcolm Marshall (arguably the most fearsome pace bowler in history)
Shane Warne (the best leg-spinner in history)
Wasim Akram (THE best Left arm pace bowler in history)
This team has:
5 great batsmen
two great all-rounders
Gilchrist
three great pace bowlers incl. Imran
one great spinner
&
two decent part-time spinners (Sobers & Viv)
Re: All Time World-XI
I have a feeling though that cricinfo jury w'd go for the following
Sir Jack Hobbs over Gordon Greenidge
Dennis Lillee over Malcolm Marshall
Sid Barnes (Baba-e-Adam k zamaney ka bowler) over Wasim Akram
As good as Lillee was, his record is not that great on the dull and slow sub-continental pitches and that should count against him. Like we say world-class batsmen should be able to do well on seaming (e.g. english) and bouncy (Perth etc.) tracks, by the same token a truly world-class bowler should be able to perform anywhere and Imran Khan has a great record both at home and abroad. Malcolm Marshall was not only lightning quick but he also used to get lethal bounce off the pitch which made him almost unplayable on most days and he was equally effective in sub-continental conditions
Cricinfo All Time XI
http://www.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/482936.html
*The World XI: Jack Hobbs, Len Hutton, Don Bradman, Sachin Tendulkar, Viv Richards, Garry Sobers, Adam Gilchrist, Malcolm Marshall, Shane Warne, Wasim Akram, Dennis Lillee
The Second XI: Sunil Gavaskar, Barry Richards, George Headley, Brian Lara, Wally Hammond, Imran Khan, Alan Knott, Bill O’Reilly, Fred Trueman, Muttiah Muralitharan, SF Barnes
Readers’ XI: Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag, Don Bradman, Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Garry Sobers, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Wasim Akram, Muttiah Muralitharan, Glenn McGrath*
Re: Cricinfo All Time XI
I think the World XI is much superior to the "Second XI". The Second XI seems to be weaker in bowling (probably because I haven't seen most of them bowl!).
Readers' XI is representative of the demographics of cricinfo readers which is heavy on current or recently retired cricketers.
Re: Cricinfo All Time XI
kaka.. i dont know a lot of these old players so cant really comment on their selection but all the selections from modern day seem fair
Re: All Time World-XI
Disappointed not to see Imran Khan and Sunil Gavaskar in World XI but the rest of the squad picks itself. I would have dropped Hobbs or Hutton and Lillee in favour of Gavaskar and Imran respectively
Why’s Imran not in the all-time XI?
After all he has a rather nice posterior, does he not?
What a nihilistic, fearful and ultimately sexless world we live in, despite the clamour to the contrary. Do a Google image search for “Imran Khan” and what do you get: a few visuals of the great ex-cricketer but mostly pictures of some puff-faced, shiny-shoed, doe-eyed Bollywood mother-charmer who looks as threatening as a castrated Bambi and as interesting as old footage of Geoffrey Boycott at the height of his watchfulness. Thankfully there is no such thing as Google audio search because then my vexation would be amplified.
The Great Khan’s being elbowed-out from ESPNcricinfo’s all-time World XI seems easier to bear. I understand the argument. Sobers has to play, and none of the middle order are touchable. Replace Marshall, Lillee or Akram? It’s a close call, but on bowling alone one sides with the jury. So the judgement is tolerated and one accepts the blasphemy of Imran Khan playing in a Second XI as a necessary evil in the world. As the ancients told us, the existence of good necessitates the existence of bad. Sounds like philosophical hogwash, but this is all I can think of to explain Glenn Beck to my children.
Thus we rationalise. The question “How can Imran not be in the team?” is followed by a more detailed perusal of the XI and the subsequent "How can Imran be in the team?’ He can’t. Rationally speaking, he can’t. There’s no room. Any rational human being can see it.
Except we are not rational human beings. We are human beings.
And half of human beings are women. And we judge a guy by his game - not his economy figures, century tally and strike rate.
Statistics don’t really count, even the one that tells you Imran averaged 19 with the ball and 50 with the bat in his final 10 years as a Test cricketer. Even that he captained a side of freaks and factions to the brink (one dodgy lbw descision in the Caribbean) of being the No. 1 team on the planet. Spare me your facts and your history and just **look at the guy](http://www.ahmedalis.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Imran-Khan.jpg).**
He was the wild man from Pakistan’s NWFP, with a degree from Oxford. He was the Lahore aristocrat who bowled with the violence of a savage beast. He was the ultimate Mills and Boon hero made flesh and blood, and all dressed in white to boot.
You don’t use calculations for Imran Khan. You allow the epic and the romantic (which, sadly, too often lie dormant) to bubble over and carry you along on its hot, violent, unruly lava. If so-and-so is undroppable and you need two genuine openers and the middle order is a holy trinity and the bowlers rank higher and… please, spare me your well-argued points, I’m not listening. I’m watching replays of Imran’s run-up. And in doing so I realise now that the preceding paragraph is redundant. “Imran Khan had a great bum” would have sufficed.
You guys at ESPNcricinfo are very complex in your anaylses, but let me for a moment cut through your self-important male waffle with simple words: It’s Imran Khan and you have to have him. So if you’re not sure exactly how to include him in the team, take someone out at random.
**It’s Imran Khan and you have to have him. **
Just as if you needed a man from all of cricket history to save your life in a single-wicket competition, you pick Imran Khan. Just as if you had to make a movie of the ultimate cricket superstar, you cast Imran Khan. Just as if you’re married but one night Imran offers, you apologise to your husband and your God and you go for it anyway. It’s Imran Khan and you have to have him.
Because sport, as you men may or may not know, carries the erotic. It is the erotic speaking another language. The pursuit of eros is sport’s bloodstream, its unspoken raison d’etre. All our controls and rules are ways of harnessing this primal power into whistles and points.
And so we make metaphors: in basketball, taking another man’s possessions; in tennis, having another man submit to your will; in rugby, conquering another man’s land. Cricket is the greatest game because its metaphor is the greatest: life and death. Imran Khan is its greatest player because he not only took life (bowling), and saved life (batting), and played God with other lives (captaincy), but he did it all while winning the most hearts and turning the most heads. He will always be cricket’s rockstar, heart-throb, infatuation. He will always be cricket’s true love.
And judging by recent pictures, he will always have a nice bum!
http://www.cricinfo.com/page2/content/story/483966.html
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