Quote:
Originally Posted by sum_1
You're absolutely right about Pollock. On second thoughts I'd put Procter and Imran ahead of him. My initial idea was to select an allrouder with exactly 50:50 batting/bowling capabilities, and only those 2 came to mind.
Regarding the spinners, I have a slight tendency to over glorify the past.  Though I'd rate Laker among the very best. He has some outstanding records both in domestic (1944 wkts) and international matches, and should walk into any all time XIs.
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if you're looking for allrounders with 50/50 batting/bowling then i'd say look at guys like botham, cairns etc the ones that average around 30 both bat and ball because all the others are generally too far one way or the other e.g. kallis a greater batter, imran greater bowler.
also the tail looks pretty long, though in an all time xi having a long tail probably isn't hurting to much but still nice to have a good #7/8/9 and there are plenty of options with the likes of procter, imran, hadlee, pollock, miller, botham, cairns, shakib, mankad, faulkner.
the all rounder spots are always tough in an all time xi, more so on the bowling front. for my all time XI's i always go by the philosophy that you should only pick an all rounder if you're picking them specifically for one suit with the other being a bonus. sobers for example makes my al time xi regardless of his bowling, imran and procter make my team for their bowling regardless of their batting. hadlee (which i did at one stage have in my all time xi) makes it as a bowler regardless of his batting, kallis would make it on his batting. that's why i don't usually have guys like cairns, botham etc in my all time teams because they aren't strong enough in one suit to make it at the all time level, though at their peaks they are tempting (cairns averaged 42/43 with the bat and 26 with the ball from about 1999-2004).
the other thing about all rounders is do you pick them based on their overall career or their peak when they did both batting and bowling best together? or their talent? for example botham had a great peak where he was awesome with both bat and ball at the same time, but it didn't last that long compared to his entire career. imran and faulkner have great bowling and batting numbers overall but supposedly they were never bowling and batting at their best at the same time (aside from occasional matches - even though imran averaged over 50 with the bat and something like 19 with the ball for a corresponding 10 year period he apparently was rarely bowling his best when batting his best as he bowled less as he got older and batted more so for that reason some people exclude his all round abilities when considering an all time xi). miller, great numbers overall but looking at his FC record where he averaged 48, he seems to have underperformed a bit with the bat internationally, however there are a lot of stories about him saying he would sometimes literally give his wicket away in certain situations and therefore he didn't always try his best, so do you pick him based on his international numbers or overall talent? he didn't always try, that's a negative, but when he did try he got the results which is a positive.