BEST AND VERY BEST OF TESTS CRICKET

wears the selector's hat and travels by the 'time machine' to pick the all-time Test team from the game's 134-year old history
Viv Richards or Brian Lara? Keith Miller or Walter Hammond? Malcolm Marshall or Waqar Younis? WG Grace or Ranjitsinhji? These are only some of the questions a sole selector of an all-time World XI has to face. The answers can be logical, based on figures, romantic, based on the rich literature on the game, personal and based purely on biases or simply illogical, inconsistent and unexplained.
But three, possibly five slots are already taken, and it is useful to recognise this early in the process. Jack Hobbs of the 197 first class centuries is the quintessential opening batsman, and the No 1 position is his. At No 3, it has to be Don Bradman, he of the 99.94 Test average.No 6 has been reserved for Garry Sobers for nearly half a century now, and is likely to be till the sun runs out of fuel and the stars collapse into themselves. Sobers is a five-in-one cricketer — a batsman who once held the world's highest individual record, a left arm fast bowler of genuine pace, an orthodox spinner, a back-of-the hand chinaman bowler and a close in catcher of the highest class. Quite possibly the greatest cricketer to don whites in the first 2000 Test matches.
Two other slots were filled in the recent past, one by a batsman on the brink of his 100th international century, and the other by a leg spinner who is the best the game has seen. Sachin Tendulkar, at No 4, to follow Bradman is a drool-worthy prospect. With Sobers capable of bowling in three styles, two of them spin, the side needs only one other spinner and that has to be Shane Warne.
With five positions thus filled, it becomes easier to pick the eleven. What we need are one opening batsman, one middle-order batsman, one all-rounder, one wicketkeeper, and two fast bowlers.
Let the arguments begin!
In the ideal team (and we are not picking the ideal team, merely the best one), we would be looking for a left-handed opening batsman who is an attacking player to complement the technical mastery of Hobbs. There are surprisingly few candidates even if we include Roy Fredricks and Sanath Jayasuriya in the probables along with Mark Taylor, both a better player and one with a better record.
The candidates for the best team include Len Hutton, Sunil Gavaskar, and if we want contrast, Virender Sehwag. Their records speak for them. Victor Trumper averaged just under 40, but it was said of him (inevitably, by Neville Cardus) that his art "is like the art in a bird's flight, an art that knows not how wonderful it is. Batting was for him a superb dissipation, a spontaneous spreading of fine feathers." Give me that over mere averages any day. The best of cricket manifests itself in both the runs made and the manner of making them; a Trumper or a Ranji takes us beyond figures into the realm occupied by the highest forms of music or the greatest art. Exaggeration from someone who never saw Trumper bat? Perhaps. But what is cricket without romance? So Hobbs and Trumper, then, to open. A marriage made in heaven.
At five, it will be Viv Richards, one of the most destructive batsmen to have played the game and one of its greatest all-round fielders to boot. If the opposition somehow gets through three wickets quickly, there will be no joy knowing that Richards and Sobers are to follow.
For the all rounder's slot at No 7, there are in effect three candidates: Jacques Kallis, statistically the best of them all, Wilfred Rhodes, who batted in every position from one to 11 and was good enough to play Test cricket at 52 and who finished with more first class wickets than anybody else, and Walter Hammond, classical batsman and top quality medium pacer. Perhaps we could pick both Rhodes and Kallis here, and name a twelve. One of them plays depending on the nature of the wicket — Kallis if the call is for a fast medium bowler and Rhodes if spin is needed.
The temptation to name Adam Gilchrist the wicketkeeper is strong, especially since his deeds are of such recent vintage. He is possibly the greatest wicketkeeper-batsman the game has known, but as a pure wicketkeeper, England's Alan Knott is superior. In all-time XI selections, the finest specialist should make the grade since the batting slots are taken by the best ever.
Who are the two fast bowlers to open the bowling? Under certain conditions, Sobers will open. The shortlist might include Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Dennis Lillee, Waqar Younis, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Harold Larwood, Ray Lindwall, and I will go with Marshall and Lillee, although Larwood merits thought for being the one bowler to reduce the run machine Bradman to human proportions. Bradman averaged a mere 56 in the Bodyline series, thanks to the pace and control of Larwood, the man chosen by destiny (and the English captain Douglas Jardine) to do the job.
That's it then. Here's the team: