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Old May 10, 2013, 06:02 PM
Gowza Gowza is offline
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Join Date: July 15, 2007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Roey Haque
Love reading all these "all time XI" lists. Especially when they are backed up by justifications for the selections as in your posts. You should make a 3rd team.
Thanks. i actually shortened the explanations a bit as to not make the post too long but turned out very long anyway. as for a 3rd XI, i've never really thought about it but will give it ago.

3rd XI:

1 Matthew Hayden
2 Herbert Sutcliffe
3 Jacques Kallis
4 Brian Lara
5 Allan Border
6 AB De Villiers
7 Richard Hadlee
8 Alan Knott
9 SF Barnes
10 Allan Donald
11 Bill O'Reilly

the openers: sutcliffe was an easy choice, for some he is in their 1st XI. averaged 60, partnered jack hobbs so as you can imagine they had an incredible partnership so since sutcliffe averages 60 and was apart of probably the best opening batting partnership ever he gets into my 3rd XI. hayden edged out sehwag, reason for that was sehwag's poor record in england, NZ and south africa, not that hayden had amazing records their but he did have a solid to great record everywhere whereas sehwag has a much better record in Asia and not very good in some of the other conditions.

#3: kallis, edged out dravid, ponting and sangakkara. dravid has the slower strike rate is was edged it for kallis of dravid, and that kallis scored in a slightly more balanced way across all conditions than dravid did. kallis nudged ahead of ponting due to ponting's record in india, he had more than enough matches and couldn't conquer it near well enough so that's a big hole in his record. sangakkara has a solid record everywhere but kallis's record in his home country south africa where the ball does a lot more for pacers is what edged kallis in this one.

middle order: lara grabs the #4 spot, dominated attacks, struggled against quality pace (look at his record against guys like akram, waqar, mcgrath, donald/pollock, ambrose/walsh etc) but one of the greatest against spin and medium fast bowlers. plus has the record highest test score. allan border pretty much conquered everywhere with great consistency, lowest average is 38 in south africa but 38 is still good and he did only play 3 matches there. everywhere else he managed to average at least 45+. de villiers, shocking it maybe but he's there. his worst average is 33 in Bangladesh but he only played 2 matches for that, everywhere else it's 43+ so he gets in for his flare and consistency across all conditions.

#7: the allrounder hadlee gets in. this fight was between haddles, shakib and miller. i ended up picking hadlee because his bowling was ahead of both shakib and miller. shakib and miller were better bats but if you look at hadlee's FC record he averaged over 30 with the bat and scored 14 tons and that's very good for a #7, i think as an overall package he offers a bit more. shakib was very close here, since he spins it SLA and it would have added some great variation to the attack but i couldn't resist the pacey corridor 5fer man hadlee. perhaps if i revise this team shakib may make it over hadlee depending on the day.

keeper #8: knott, makes it due to his superb keeping and solid batting, he's in a lot of peoples 1st XI so that says a lot about how good of a keeper he was.

specialist bowlers: barnes could do anything with the ball, seam, swing, spin, pace, slower etc his great record combined with his ability to do so much with the ball and that people say he was perhaps the greatest bowler of all time is why he makes my 3rd XI. Donald is in there for his terrific record, pace and his aggressiveness, he didn't mind hitting a batsman, he gave them a bit of fear, great bounce and seam at high pace. o'reilly, similar to barnes but barnes did it quicker, o'reilly bowled the googly though which barnes never did. o'reilly is one of the greatest spinners ever, in my book the 3rd best, he nearly piped murali to make the 2nd XI but murali's numbers, uniqueness and being an offie made me decide against it.
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All Time Test XI: 1 Hobbs 2 B.Richards 3 Bradman 4 Kohli 5 V.Richards 6 Sobers 7 Gilchrist 8 Miller 9 Procter 10 Marshall 11 Warne
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