The Best XI

Geoffrey Boycott first played for Yorkshire in 1962. He played his first Test match for England just two years later. In an eighteen-year career he played in 108 Test matches, scored 22 Test centuries, including a highest score of 246, and ended with a Test average of 47.73. Since retiring as a player he has enjoyed a hugely successful career as a commentator. He lives in Jersey and South Africa.

The Best XI

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Illustrations

2. The doctor in his later years gives little indication of the fine athlete he was in his youth. © Offside

3. Sir Jack Hobbs, the first professional cricketer to be knighted. What a player he must have been! © Getty Images

4. Sir Len Hutton, better known for his fluent cover drives than hitting sixes over mid-wicket. © Getty Images

7 and 8. Fred Trueman at full stretch, the most perfect action you could wish to see. © Offside; © Patrick Eagar

10. Sydney Barnes, ‘a relentless, unsmiling destroyer of all batsmen’. © Phil Britt

11. Wilfred Rhodes pictured at Scarborough. Started at number 10, ended up opening and took 127 wickets. © Getty Images

12. Jim Laker. He could make the ball hum in the air as it came towards you. © Offside

15. Bill O'Reilly. One of the three best leg spinners Australia ever produced and ‘The Don’ thought he was the best. © Getty Images

16. Ray Lindwall. A lot of English batsmen wished he had stuck with rugby league. © Getty Images

17. Dennis Lillee. He said of me: ‘Like a good red wine, he got better with age.’ He did, too. © Patrick Eagar

18. Shane Warne captured the public's imagination as very few have done. © Patrick Eagar

19. Adam Gilchrist, one ball short of the fastest Test hundred of all time. © Patrick Eagar

20. Graeme Pollock. The first name you write down when picking any South African side. © Patrick Eagar

21. Barry Richards: only four Tests before the curtain came down. © Patrick Eagar

23. Vijay Hazare. Not much of a stylist but he didn't give up easily. © Getty Images

24. The young Sachin Tendulkar, who went on to make a bigger impact on the world stage than any other cricketer. © Patrick Eagar

25. Sunil Gavaskar, one of the two best openers of my time, consistent and run hungry. © Patrick Eagar

26. Chandrasekhar. He might have had a withered right arm, but crikey, he could bowl all right. © Patrick Eagar

27. Bishen Bedi. Poetry in motion, perfectly balanced and a joy to watch. © Patrick Eagar

28. Kapil Dev. Far and away the best pace bowler India has ever produced. © Patrick Eagar

29. Prasanna, a little fellow who could spin and had subtleties of flight. © Patrick Eagar

30. Imran Khan. He's number one, it, Mr Pakistan to cricketers all over the world. © Patrick Eagar

31. Javed Miandad. A tough, spiky individual who loved getting up the opposition's noses. © Patrick Eagar

32. Wasim Akram. Aggression and the ability to swing it and seam it from left arm over the wicket made him special. © Patrick Eagar

33. Waqar Younis. The other half of a lethal partnership with Wasim Akram. © Patrick Eagar

34. Sir Garfield Sobers, the greatest cricketer there has ever been, blessed with so much natural talent. © Patrick Eagar

35. Sir Viv Richards. The swagger, the chewing gum, the faint smile; enough to give bowlers the jitters. © Patrick Eagar

36. George Headley. They called him ‘The Black Bradman’ after his mastery of Clarrie Grimmett. © Getty Images

37. Malcolm Marshall, one of the three best fast bowlers I ever faced. © Offside

38. Lance Gibbs. The ideal foil to fiddle a few out, 309 of them! © Patrick Eagar

39. Curtly Ambrose. Terrific stamina brought him 405 wickets at 20.99 each. © Patrick Eagar

40. Martin Donnelly. Only appeared in seven Tests but remains a legend in New Zealand. © Getty Images

41. Bert Sutcliffe and Jack Cowie. Bert became an iconic figure in New Zealand and was rated by Wally Hammond, while Jack's nine Tests were spread over 12 years. © Getty Images

42. Sir Richard Hadlee. He kept you under pressure all the time with hardly anything to hit. © Offside

43. Martin Crowe. In my opinion, he was thrown into Test cricket too soon. © Patrick Eagar

44 & 45. Muttiah Muralitharan. Ever since I first saw him, I've thought he throws it. If it's all right for him, why bother bowling properly? © Offside

Preface

We all like picking our best ever teams. It's a lot of fun, but in the end it all comes down to opinion – there's no right or wrong, and cricket lovers the world over will always disagree. It's fairly obvious that half the players in anyone's best team would be everybody's choice; it's the other half which causes debate and divides opinion because in most countries it's possible to select two great sides. So how do you make a judgement on the best team ever? There are players we've never seen, some we've never heard of, and our opinions are bound to be coloured by what we've seen or read. So present day players or those of the recent past have a big advantage. Since the advent of television in the 1960s images of players and teams have made a huge impression on people. But what about those who went before: do we rely just on their statistics?

I've always believed that statistics don't lie but nor do they tell the whole story. You can't be a great player without great figures but some of the biggest names of the past only played a handful of Tests; in the early years there were only the England–Australia games, then two world wars interrupted many careers and South Africa because of apartheid was excluded for 20 years. Then there are the runs made and wickets taken against weak opposition like New Zealand, India and Pakistan when they first became Test-playing nations, the equivalent to Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and the West Indies at the moment. Yes, figures are a vital part of the assessment but I think you have to study them and it's how we interpret them that's important.

In the early years the pitches were very poor with stones on them for heaven's sake, and even when they improved they were still open to the elements so batting was much more difficult; as the number of low-scoring games proves, bowlers controlled situations and dominated. Then we have to look at the leg-before law which prior to 1937 dictated that the ball had to pitch in line from wicket to wicket and be going on to hit the stumps. So automatically batsmen went back and across which negated a lot of offspin, the nip-back seamers and the inswinger.

Fast bowlers were pretty toothless up until the Bodyline tour of 1932–33 because they were expected to pitch it up outside or on off stump. It was just not the done thing to bowl at a batsman's ribs – ‘not cricket’, as the Aussies whinged. There was no systematic attempt to intimidate or put batsmen under pressure by making them think they were going to get hurt. All that was to change.

Then we have the difficulties of playing on two different surfaces, turf and the matting used in India, Pakistan and South Africa. The Springboks favoured the mat until S. F. Barnes's side annihilated them and then they quickly switched to turf, although it was 1930–31 before the first turf pitch was laid at Newlands and 1935 at the Wanderers. In Australia uncovered pitches didn't matter too much because they didn't get a lot of rain, but when it did come down you ended up with a ‘sticky dog’ and the pitch was unplayable. That didn't change until 1954–55 when full covering was introduced at the start of Len Hutton's tour, but in England it didn't happen until 1979. The Test and County Cricket Board (forerunner of the England and Wales Cricket Board, ECB) said: ‘At the behest of overseas boards and in fairness to the paying public, pitches for Test matches in England will be fully covered at all times.’ Thank you very much. I had 15 years on uncovered pitches and some of them were very juicy, let me tell you. In my first Test at Trent Bridge against Australia in 1964 I was 23 not out overnight when it rained and next morning Garth McKenzie broke my finger. That's the difference between uncovered and covered pitches.

There's a difference in equipment too. No helmets, not even batting gloves in WG's day and when they were introduced they were only flimsy cotton affairs with little rubber spikes on the back right up until the 1940s when the horsehair glove came in. Bats are now heavier and better and hit the ball harder and further and have evolved like golf clubs and tennis racquets. Even the wickets increased in size to 28in tall by 9in wide in 1931. In 1969, after experimental seasons in England, the no-ball law changed in all Test cricket from a bowler being required to keep his back foot behind the return crease to keeping his front foot behind the popping crease (the front line where the batsman stands). Sir Donald Bradman said the alteration was ‘the worst thing that has happened to cricket’ and other illustrious commentators like Richie Benaud agree. So do I.

Overarm bowling wasn't legalized until 1864 although it was still permitted to bowl underarm and roundarm. By the time of the first official Test bowling as we know it today was standard although WG stuck to roundarm for a while. We've also had four-ball, six-ball and eight-ball overs around the world at various times and one ball for the whole of an innings, however long. Bradman's 1948 team in England were allowed a new ball at 65 overs; I wouldn't have fancied facing Lindwall, Miller and big Bill Johnston with a new cherry that often. There were also timeless Tests which meant that batsmen were never under pressure to score quickly; one of them, in South Africa at Durban in March 1939, lasted ten days and was only abandoned as a draw because the MCC team had to catch the last train to Cape Town or miss the boat home. Another, the fourth Test in Jamaica in 1930, went on for nine days before they called it off as a draw.

I feel cricket always mirrors the times we live in and the world has changed since those days. The pace of life is quicker, everything has to be easier, faster, there's a desire for instant gratification. Cricket in England kept pace by introducing the Gillette Cup in 1963 with 65 overs a side; then came the one-day John Player League in 1969 with 40 overs a side and the Benson & Hedges Cup followed with, initially, 55 overs a side. Now the Twenty20 competition which started in England in 2003 has become a money-spinner worldwide.

Market research by the ECB showed that the public wanted quickfire, all-action games. Twenty20 delivers; it's all over in three hours and it's taken off like a rocket, even in India where there was resistance because they couldn't get enough TV adverts in the shortened version compared to 50 overs a side. Vast sums of money are being invested and suddenly this concertina cricket is taking over the game.

Meanwhile administrators do nothing to help Test cricket. It's 90 overs a day and in most matches teams can't even bowl them in six and a half hours – and financial penalties don't work. I'd have four-day Tests with 65 eight-ball overs a day and do away with the constant time-wasting that goes on.

In 2007, of the 31 Tests played, 12 finished in under four days while bowlers managed a paltry 13 six-ball overs an hour. Batsmen are playing more shots and we need to get the bowlers moving. It doesn't matter whether you play three-, four-, five-day or timeless Tests, there are always going to be draws. Like football, they're part of the game, but all over the world Test match cricket is struggling except in England and in Australia for the Ashes series.

In hot countries like South Africa, Australia, India and Pakistan we have to try day–night Tests. People aren't going to take their holidays to see games like they once did so we've got to play when they have the time to watch. I know all the arguments against: the white ball doesn't last, the dew causes a problem, but that's rubbish. We can put a man on the moon but we can't develop a white ball which retains its shape and colour? Then use a new ball at each end – it's been done before: I played in Australia in 1979–80 when Lillee and Thomson had a new ball each! The dew only has an effect on one-day games at certain times of the year so you avoid those periods. Not too difficult to work out, is it? The diehards and stick-in-the-muds never want to change anything so that performances can be judged against those of the past. But, as we've seen, that's nonsense because the game has changed so much over the years. There was a time when we all had outside lavatories and washed in a tin bath in front of the fire; now it's en suite bathrooms and hot and cold running water. It will be different again in the next 30 or 40 years. Cricket has to keep pace and administrators, who appear to have forgotten about the paying public in their pursuit of TV money, have got to do something to help Test cricket to flourish. For my tournament I'll make the changes needed. For a start I'd have a 10-run fine for every over in a day not completed so that time-wasting would affect the result of the game. Fines are a joke: they are so piffling compared to earnings and allow teams to get away with murder. The free hit for a no ball in one-day cricket worked wonders and overstepping is rare now. That's because three or four no balls could cost you the game. The same thinking should be applied to slow over rates. We've got to get the public back into watching Test matches – speeding up the game with innovation is one way forward.

Nobody wants to play in front of two men and a dog; you want big crowds, atmosphere, the big stage. Cricket is dying through poor administrators who rely too much on TV cash to keep the game afloat and I want to see a regeneration.

The conditions, playing regulations and laws have all evolved, equipment has improved and in this book I've taken all these things into account as well as judging a player's statistics against his contemporaries. If it was a simple matter of figures any schoolboy could just go through Wisden and it wouldn't take too long because current players would win most of the arguments. But if a player was perceived by the public as a legend or an icon against others of his era then that must be a factor. If they've captured the imagination of the people it's important, in my view, to take into consideration what rules they played under and what sort of pitches they played on. The difficulty is in comparing a man who has played only 20 or so Tests with someone who's played 150.

I think that today's batsmen with extra equipment and better pitches have records which are five to 10 runs better than those of their predecessors while it's harder for the bowlers to get wickets on flat, dry pitches with much shorter boundaries. The pitches themselves are better prepared, can start in pristine condition and the covering has improved no end. In the old days the covers stood off the ground and when the rain lashed down it got underneath them. At Lord's where there is an 8ft 8in fall from one side to another the water ran down the slope and on to the pitch. Today they have a space age thing that looks like a hydrofoil but does its job. Other grounds used tarpaulins which although they kept the rain off made the pitch sweat. To see what happens, try this: take a plastic bag, tie a knot in it and leave it overnight. Next morning you'll have water in it and that's just like the condensation caused by tarpaulins. Now they put coir matting on the pitch and tarpaulins on top so there's no sweating.

Currently there's a lack of genuinely great players. Today's batsmen are having a field day against mediocre bowling and the Aussies are miles above the rest.

My idea is to pick a group of 13 or 14 players for each country who will play each other at home and away, in all conditions. If it's on the subcontinent there will be turning pitches so it's important to have quality spinners. We've also seen that on good, covered pitches whoever has the class fast bowling holds all the aces. It's simple; on good pitches spinners don't hurt you, fast men put you in hospital. So fast bowlers dominate my selections.

I'd love to see pitches start very dry all over the world, which is good for batting but means there will be turn – a cricket match without spinners is like a chess match without two important pieces, a less interesting game. Many groundsmen, or curators as the Aussies call them, want the pitch to last a full five days so it doesn't start as dry as it should, but really you want to see some turn after the third day which would force teams to go back to picking two spinners. When there's bounce and turn spinners win matches, when it's flat they don't worry anybody.

If I had my way games would be played under the old back foot no-ball law that Bradman and Benaud advocated. Most players today aren't old enough to have seen it, let alone played under it, but it was better for the umpires because they had more time to look up and focus on the batsman and better for bowlers because they could get their heads up earlier and look where they were bowling.

I go along with the LBW law as it is now, I'd take a new ball at 65 eight-ball overs and use the English Duke's ball, which did for the Aussies in 2005, rather than the Kookaburra because it swings more (as they found out) and swing bowling is becoming a lost art.

I want the boundary ropes right back to use the full size of the ground which would cut out the half-hit shots that go for six. Why do I want eight-ball overs? Because if the batsman gets on top and is handing out a bit of stick I think it's more fun for the spectators and, conversely, if the bowler is weaving a web he's got two more deliveries to spring the trap. That's the sort of stuff which has people on the edge of their seats.

I'd go back to the old bouncer rule and do away with the current nonsensical two-an-over limit. A quick bowler is entitled to have a go at a new batsman, to let him have a few round his ears. It's a test of his courage, character and ability and perfectly legitimate. But I would empower umpires to say ‘enough is enough’. Dickie Bird was a prime example of doing it the right way: he'd let the bowler have a bit of latitude and then say ‘that's it’ and if the bowler didn't take any notice he'd let him have a warning. Two warnings and he's off. I've seen Dickie do it and it's the way short-pitched bowling should be handled by strong umpires. I expected the short stuff, it's part of being an opener and separates the timid, those who lack bottle, from the others and asks the question: ‘Have you got the stomach for a fight?’

In making my selections I know I could set out a case for many others from all the countries but to misquote Abraham Lincoln: ‘You may please all of the people some of the time, you can even please some of the people all the time; but you can't please all of the people all the time.’ I hope my best XI pleases you, and at the very least provokes some lively debate wherever this great game is followed.

Dr William Gilbert Grace (1880–99)

Dr W. G. Grace just has to be in the team. He was the first sporting superstar, a legend in his own lifetime and still one today. Show that photo of him in coloured cap, big belly, big beard to anyone all over the world and they will know who it is. Certainly he was cricket's first icon.

If you look at his Test match figures they are very modest if not downright ordinary by present day standards but what he achieved in the first class game was mind boggling. Batsmen didn't score as highly in those days and there were lower totals in most matches and although I wouldn't say bowlers dominated they had a much bigger say on pitches which were not always the best.

In his biography of WG, published in 1934, Bernard Darwin quoted the doctor as saying:

Many of the principal grounds were so rough as to be positively dangerous to players and batsmen were constantly damaged by the fast bowling. When wickets were in this condition you had to look out for the shooters and leave the bumping balls [bouncers] to look after themselves. At this time the Marylebone ground [Lord's] was in a very unsatisfactory condition, so unsatisfactory that in 1864 Sussex refused to play owing to roughness.

WG also played in an era where bowling evolved from underarm to roundarm to overarm on these poor pitches and it wasn't plain sailing. George Freeman, the Yorkshire fast bowler of the period, said after the doctor made 66 in 1870 on a ropey old pitch: ‘A more wonderful innings was never played. Tom Emmett and I have often said it was a marvel the doctor was not either maimed, unnerved for the rest of his days or killed outright. I often think of his pluck when I watch a modern batsman, scared if a medium ball hits him on the hand.’

If the doctor's Test results were only on a par with his contemporaries, in the domestic game he was in a world of his own, making an astronomical number of runs. He also took nearly 3,000 wickets with an extraordinary strike rate of one every 44 balls and he was miles in front of any other English player of the time.

That famous picture of him hides the fact that in his youth he was a natural athlete and in 1866 won the national 440 yards title and two days later made 244 not out for Gloucestershire against Surrey at The Oval. That's just phenomenal.

He was the first man to score 100 hundreds, he got 2,000 runs in a season five times, in 28 summers passed the 1,000-run mark and he did the 1,000-runs, 100-wickets double eight times. In 1896 he exceeded 2,000 runs and 100 wickets and a year earlier made 1,000 runs in the month of May, not by the end of May which includes matches in April, but just in the 31-day period. This guy was exceptional, make no mistake about that, and was a hugely popular figure. It was reckoned that along with William Gladstone, the prime minister, he was the most recognized man in England and when the MCC team sailed to Australia he went first class while the rest of the players were in steerage!

He finally fell out with the Gloucestershire committee; it was said at the time that ‘He loved playing for the county but as regards the Gloucestershire committee he had the greatest contempt.’ Words I wish I had heard about 20 years ago when I had similar feelings about the Yorkshire committees!

So he left and in 1899 founded his own club, London County, who were really mercenaries playing for a purse of guineas against all-comers (sometimes 22 in a team), and the prize was always bigger if the doctor was playing because they charged twice as much for admission if he was in the side.

While his reputation grew and grew on the cricket field he still had the time to found the English Bowls Association and practise as a GP in the winter although it took him 11 years to pass his medical exams, starting as a 19-year-old and finally becoming an MD when he was married with three children. An amazing man.

The public readily recognized his feats and in 1879 at Gloucestershire he had a testimonial which, based purely on subscriptions, raised £1,500. Fifteen years later a newspaper raised £5,000 in one-shilling (5p) subscriptions from readers, the MCC raised £2,000 and Gloucestershire £1,500, and the total came to £9,073 8s 3d. In today's money that's over £720,000 in pure donations; no fancy dinners, golf days or auctions, just the public putting their hands in their pockets. There was no TV or radio and newspapers were more local than national. All a far cry from today when nonentities become stars through reality television and celebrity is rarely based on achievement. With none of that shallow hype the doctor was a huge superstar. Just think what he would have become today.

It's impossible to ignore his stature in the game. At London County between the ages of 51 and 60 he made 26 hundreds and although there was talk of gamesmanship – one story recounts how he had his bails clipped early on in a game in front of a big crowd at The Oval, and, replacing them, told the astonished bowler, ‘These people have paid to watch me bat, not you bowl, so please carry on bowling, young man’ – does it matter? People are still talking about him 100 years later and telling the same stories. Pure legend.

The most influential club in the world, Marylebone Cricket Club, which is still responsible for framing the laws of the game, honoured him by erecting the Grace Gates at Lord's in June 1922, a tribute to the game's most iconic figure. W. G. Grace and Old Father Time together at cricket's spiritual home.

Sir John Berry Hobbs (1908–30)

The more I read and hear about Jack Hobbs the more astonished I am, not just at his sensational statistics or the fact he was the first professional cricketer to be knighted, but by the dedication and method he used to become such an icon of English cricket.

The eldest of 12 children, he taught himself the game by using a stump and a tennis ball in the fives courts (very like a squash court) at Jesus College, Cambridge, where his father was the groundsman and umpire. With no formal coaching he practised on his own through the long vacations and the hand–eye coordination and footwork, he said in his autobiography, were responsible for his ability to play predominantly off the back foot and place the ball accurately.

This simple practice laid a wonderful foundation, giving me a keen eye and developing the wrist strokes which I had seen in college matches. Boy as I was, I tried to emulate the same strokes and I was surprised at the number of successful strokes I managed to make. That was the way I became a natural batsman. The footwork came automatically and the practice became a great source of enjoyment when I recognised how important everything was.

This, to me, is the real key as to what made him a great player and it's fascinating that the great Don Bradman used a similar method as a child when he was growing up in Bowral on the other side of the world a few years later. When he was 12 years old or so he played schoolboy cricket on Parker's Piece, Cambridge, where Ranjitsinhji practised, and Hobbs saw his beautiful wrist-play, but the hero of Jack's boyhood was Tom Hayward, son of Dan Hayward who looked after the nets and marquees on the ground. Tom was instrumental in taking him to Surrey after Essex refused to give him a trial. They must have felt real twerps a couple of years later when he made his first championship century against them.

Like WG, he gave a new twist or direction to the game. Grace was the first to cope with overarm fast bowling, the first to mix forward and back play. Hobbs was brought up on principles more or less laid down by WG and his contemporaries, left leg forward to the length ball, right foot back to the ball a shade short, but the leg hadn't to be moved over the wicket to the off. Pad-play among the Victorians was just not the done thing, oh no, they thought it was unsporting.

Hobbs made his first-class debut for Surrey on a bitterly cold Easter Monday in 1905 against The Gentlemen of England, led by the doctor himself. Hobbs, then 22 years and 4 months old, scored 18 and then took only two hours over 88 in the second innings. Grace contemplated the youth from his position at point, stroked the beard and said, ‘He's goin’ to be a good 'un.' He could not have dreamed that 20 years later Hobbs would beat his own record of 126 centuries.

Jack learned to bat in circumstances of technique and environment much the same as those in which Grace made his runs. Bowlers concentrated their line of attack, by and large, on the off stump. Pace and length on good pitches, with varied flight. On sticky pitches the fast bowlers were often rested, the damage done by slow left-arm spin or right-hand off breaks. In those days only one ball was used throughout a team's innings, no matter how long, and the seam was not as prominent as it is now. In 1907, two summers after Hobbs's baptism of first-class cricket, the South Africans came to England, bringing a company of wrist-spinners in Vogler, White, Faulkner and Schwarz the like of which hadn't been seen before. Hobbs faced them only twice, scoring 18 and 41 for Surrey and 78 and 5 for C. I. Thornton's XI at Scarborough. But two years later, when the MCC visited South Africa, Hobbs demonstrated that he had found the answer to the problems of the back-of-the-hand spinners. He'd never seen the matting wickets then used in South Africa on which they turned the ball prodigiously, but in the five Tests of 1909–10 he scored 539 runs at an average of 67.37, double the averages of England's next best four run-makers, Thompson (33.77), Woolley (32.00), Denton (26.66) and Rhodes (25.11).

I find it fascinating that his career was divided into two periods, each different from the other in style and tempo. Before the First World War he was Trumperesque, quick to attack on spring-heeled feet, strokes all over the field, deadly but never brutal, all executed by the wrists.

When cricket resumed in 1919, Hobbs, who served in the Royal Flying Corps as a mechanic after a short spell in a munitions factory, was heading towards his 37th birthday and regarded as a veteran. But in this second phase he did away with some of the daring shots and ripened into a serene, classic stylist with a poise that was only ever approached by Wally Hammond.

In the three years from his forty-third birthday Hobbs scored some 11,000 runs, averaging round about the sixties. Yet he once said that he preferred to be remembered for the way he batted before 1914. ‘But, Jack,’ his friends protested, ‘you got bags of runs after 1919!’ ‘Maybe,’ replied Hobbs, ‘but they were nearly all made off the back foot.’

In those later years some people said that Hobbs took advantage of the leg-before-wicket law which, prior to 1937, allowed batsmen to pad up against offspin pitched outside the off stump. It's true that Hobbs and Sutcliffe brought the second line of defence to a fine art and on two sticky pitches made marvellous opening stands against Australia at The Oval in 1926 and at Melbourne two years later. But Hobbs believed the bat was the first line of defence, not the pads.

Sir Alec Bedser told me he saw Hobbs bat in a charity match well after he had retired and said it struck him how Jack held the bat with his left hand further round towards the back of the bat, much further round than the modern player or the coaching manuals tell you. They said that if you held the bat like that you wouldn't be able to drive fluently through the off side. Well, that's a load of rubbish, it didn't stop Bradman or Hutton, did it?

You can't fail to be impressed by some of the tributes to him from some of the greatest players of all time. Andrew Sandham, who shared 66 opening stands of over 100 with Hobbs, said, ‘I don't think I ever saw a ball beat him and get him out. It was usually an unforced error that accounted for his wicket. He appeared to have all the time in the world to place the ball exactly where he wanted.’

Wilfred Rhodes said, ‘He was the greatest batsman of my time. I learned a lot from him when we went in first together for England. He had a cricket brain and the position of his feet as he met the ball was always perfect. He could have scored thousands more runs, but often he was content to throw his wicket away when he had reached his hundred and give someone else a chance.’ (I don't know if I agree with the last bit!)

Herbert Sutcliffe said, ‘I was his partner on many occasions on extremely bad wickets, and I can say this without any doubt that he was the most brilliant exponent of all time, and quite the best batsman of my generation on all types of wickets. On good wickets I do believe that pride of place should be given to Sir Don Bradman.’

Jack Fingleton, the Aussie batsman and author, wrote, ‘Although figures indicate the greatness of Hobbs, they don't convey the grandeur of his batting, his faultless technique and the manner in which he captivated those who could recognise and analyse style. Australians who played against him believe cricket never produced a more correct batsman. But, it is well to note Hobbs’ claim that he never had an hour's coaching in his life. He was a self-taught cricketer, observing, thinking and executing for himself.

Neville Cardus wrote, ‘Immediately the bowler began his run, Hobbs seemed to have some instinct of what manner of ball is on the way; rarely does he move his feet to an incorrect position. His footwork is so quick, that even from behind the nets it is not always possible to follow its movement in detail.’

Mouth-watering stuff, eh? What a player he must have been and to read tributes like that just makes me wish all the more I had seen him bat.

In 1914 he was awarded a testimonial but The Oval had been taken over by the army at the start of the Great War and his benefit game was moved to Lord's. Although he was allowed to keep the gate money the MCC refused to allow a collection from the huge crowd! Later tributes brought him £1,671 2s 7d and he opened a very successful sports shop in Fleet Street, one of the first, where he regularly served behind the counter.

It was fitting that in 1934, his last season, Surrey opened the Hobbs Gates at their famous ground, unusual that. Most times you have to be dead before such an honour is given.

Sir Leonard Hutton (1937–55)

Len was one of the most complete batsmen ever to play the game and I meet many, many people who say he was their boyhood idol. There's not much of an argument that he was England's best since the Second World War. I never actually saw him play in a first class match. I was twice taken to Park Avenue, Bradford to see the great man but both times rain set in and, as it is apt to do in Bradford, never gave up all day. Apparently he had great technique, on uncovered pitches he was the master, and that was allied to wonderful elegance when conditions were more favourable. He played all his life under the LBW law which changed in 1937 and made batting much harder, so his considerable achievements are all the more worthy.

He was run out for a duck on his Yorkshire debut and failed to score in his first match for England against New Zealand at Lord's in 1937 but only a year later when he was 22 years of age he made the then world record Test score of 364 against the Australians at The Oval, beating Wally Hammond's 336 in 1933. His batting after 1945 was still of the highest quality which is all the more remarkable because after an accident in the gym while in the Services during the war he had to have an operation which shortened his left arm. Looking at his figures it didn't seem to make much difference, but when the Yorkshire middle order batsman Ted Lester remarked on what a player he was, Arthur ‘Ticker’ Mitchell, the county coach, replied, ‘You should have seen him before the war.’

In 1950 Hutton made the first double century in a home Test by an England player, 202 against the West Indies, and in the winter followed it with 156 out of 272 in the fourth Test against Australia in Adelaide and became the only England batsman to carry his bat through an innings twice. An oddity in his CV is the dismissal for ‘obstructing the field’ in the Test against South Africa at The Oval when he instinctively swatted an edged delivery away and was deemed to have prevented Russell Endean making a catch.

Some say his greatest innings came on an infamous sticky dog in Brisbane in December 1950 when, batting at number six to accommodate an opening pairing of Cyril Washbrook and Reg Simpson, he made 62 out of 122. Others claim his 30 out of England's 52 all out at The Oval against Australia in 1948 to have been his finest hour. In that series a new ball was due after every 65 overs and Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller and Bill Johnston, the Aussie pace bowlers, must have thought all their Christmases had come at once. Twenty overs apiece and a new cherry? That would be hard work for any batsman anywhere.

England broke with the amateur tradition when they made him captain against India in 1952, incidentally Fred Trueman's explosive debut, and he made the first double hundred by an England captain overseas with 205 in Jamaica in 1954.

He was the sort of man who kept his cards close to his chest and was very wary and guarded unless he knew you well. I went to him for advice in 1965 when I was in my third season to ask how he coped with swing and suchlike but he never really said anything and I find it strange that such a legend should have been so reticent.

He did, however, have a very waspish sense of humour. Bill Bowes told me that during the Manchester Test against South Africa in 1951 Cuan McCarthy, their pace man, bowled a testing spell at the end of the day mainly to Jack Ikin who opened with Len. Bill remarked to him at the close of play that in Ikin ‘we seem to have found a good 'un’. Len replied, ‘Good player was at the other end.’

In his last eight Test matches he made 1,109 runs and was knighted shortly after his retirement in 1956. It was some 10 years or so later when I played in a benefit match with him. He hadn't played for such a long time that we only bowled spinners to him but, fielding at short leg, I was impressed by the way he released the bottom hand so that the ball could be played softly.

Len was so highly thought of by the Yorkshire public that his benefit in 1950 raised a then record of £9,712 and in 2001 the county club erected gates at the Kirkstall Lane end of the Headingley ground in his memory.

Perhaps his retirement was a little premature; he felt very keenly that although he was good enough to captain England he wasn't considered good enough to captain Yorkshire who were the last county to do away with the amateur tradition. Although he made the vast proportion of his runs at the top of the innings, he's number three in my side because I want three openers against the new ball.

Walter Reginald Hammond (1927–47)

This man has to be my number four, there's no doubt at all about that. Every person you speak to who saw Wally Hammond play or played against him say he was simply the best, top of the shop.

Len Hutton didn't have a lot to say about many people, but he simply rolled his eyes and shook his head in awe whenever Wally's name was mentioned. He was the doyen of his era and the superlatives have flowed down the ages about his batting.

He had an odd start in life, learning most of the basics in China where his dad was based in the army, and when they moved back to England he was already in his early teens. In a house match at Cirencester Grammar School he made 365 not out and Gloucestershire immediately wanted to pick him up. But he was born in Dover and after Hammond had played a couple of games as a 17-year-old, Kent, through the hugely influential and autocratic Lord Harris, kicked up such a fuss about him not being Gloucestershire born that MCC ruled he had to spend two years obtaining residential qualification. During that time he could only turn out in a handful of non-competitive games in the summer while playing football for Bristol Rovers in the off season. He was 20 before his full-time career resumed and then he had to miss the 1926 season after suffering a debilitating tropical disease picked up the previous winter on MCC's goodwill tour of the West Indies prior to their admission as a Test nation. He'd already made 732 runs and taken 22 wickets before coming back to a Bristol hospital where he was at death's door for months and he was hardly recognizable when as a haggard figure he was able to return to the county ground at the back end of the summer. But a winter coaching in South Africa restored his health and he was back with a big bang, scoring 1,000 runs in May 1927, the first since WG.

There was no denying his genius on the MCC trip to Australia in 1928–29 when he out-Bradmanned Bradman with 905 runs in the series at an average of over 113, making 251 in Sydney, 200 in Melbourne and 119 and 177 at the Adelaide Oval in the second, third and fourth Tests. He will always be remembered for the then world record score of 336 not out in Auckland against New Zealand, made in just 318 minutes, not even a full day's play, the third hundred coming in just 47 minutes! He was clearly awesome when he was firing, like Bradman and Viv Richards put together.

He had an arrogance, like all great players, that sometimes upset his fellow professionals. The story goes that he did not think much of Monty Cranfield, a Gloucestershire offspinner, said he could play him with a stump and duly took the hapless bowler back into the middle and proceeded to do just that. After Tom Goddard bowled Gloucestershire to victory, among the joyful celebrations of a win bonus Wally poured on the cold water and said, ‘You're not that good – I could play you with the edge of the bat.’ He went out on to the square and again showed his tremendous powers much to Goddard's humiliation. But if that was the dark side of him he could also be generous. When the same Goddard – a wonderful bowler with nearly 3,000 wickets at under 20 apiece – was worried that his benefit match in his home city of Gloucester wouldn't last into three days, Hammond told him not to worry, he'd see to it and did, by batting the whole of the second day for a triple hundred. Cyril Washbrook was another who would never speak ill of him and often recounted Wally's kindness to him on his first tour. But if there were character flaws, what of it? I'm picking a team that would perform on the field, not because they were good to their mum.

Hammond was also a more than useful medium pacer with more than 700 wickets at 30 and a great slip fielder. His 167 hundreds put him third in the all time list behind Hobbs and Patsy Hendren and who knows, he might have been top if not for missing those three seasons. In 1938 he reverted to amateur status which allowed him to captain England in the series against Australia including the comprehensive win at The Oval where Len Hutton overtook his world record and he led MCC on the first postwar tour Down Under. But, suffering from arthritis, he had a poor time of it in the Tests and retired immediately on his return.

I met him in South Africa on the 1964–65 tour when he came to watch the practice day in Durban. Nobody recognized him except for the BBC commentator Brian Johnston who spotted him behind the nets, went up and introduced himself by saying he once interviewed him on the old radio programme In Town Tonight. Brian invited him to meet the players and he spent the whole of the Test match as a guest in our dressing room. I believe that by then he'd fallen on hard times and that the MCC management put up the money to fly him down to Port Elizabeth for the fifth and final Test.

At six feet tall and with the build of a heavyweight boxer, Wally Hammond lorded it over the cricket fields of the world. There was none better.

Denis Charles Scott Compton (1937–57)

My fifth batsman just has to be Denis, the golden boy of the postwar era. Those who saw him bat are knocking on a bit now but they still talk about being thrilled and mesmerized by his performances and he holds a special place in their memories. He had flair and inventiveness at the crease and that devil-may-care attitude of so many players who lived through the Second World War and lost so many of their pals. Compton was intent on savouring every moment of life and brought huge enjoyment to cricket followers everywhere as he went about his business. With Bill Edrich he formed a partnership which thrilled the country and in 1947 the pair made 7,355 runs between them, Compton making 18 centuries in his aggregate of 3,816 and his partner 12 hundreds. Some going is that. It was a well-deserved and rare honour that MCC named the two stands at the Nursery end of the ground after them.

But Compton wasn't just a cavalier strokemaker. He could buckle down when the going was tough, then, having battled through the hard times, he could change gear and take an attack apart. To have someone in the late middle order who can take the bowling by the scruff of the neck is why he gets my vote.

Quick on his feet against spin, and sometimes the seamers too, he could be flamboyant and play outrageous shots because he had marvellous hand–eye coordination.

Good looking, a charmer and popular with the ladies, Denis was the darling of the London set and became known throughout the land as the Brylcreem boy when his sleek head appeared on advertising hoardings all over Britain. He enjoyed a playboy lifestyle but underlying the carefree persona was a steeliness never better shown than when in the Manchester Test of 1948 he went to hook the very quick Ray Lindwall and was hit over the eye. He retired hurt for stitches, returned with his head swathed in bandages and made 145 not out in five and a half hours. That's the sort of raw courage which lay at the heart of the man.

He was every boy's idol and not only as a cricketer. He played outside left for Arsenal and appeared in the FA Cup final at Wembley when they beat Liverpool 2–0 in 1950, as well as winning a league championship medal and playing for England in 14 wartime internationals. Not just a two-bit second division player but a top drawer star at one of the biggest clubs in football. A naturally gifted athlete who was one of the last genuine dual sportmen who excelled at both games.

The long hot summer of 1947 really saw him at his peak as a batsman, averaging 94.12 in the five Tests against the touring South Africans and making a record 3,816 runs in the season at an average of 90.85, racking up 18 centuries. In 78 Test matches he averaged 50.06 and if that wasn't enough he took 622 first class wickets with his left arm chinamen and googlies. Among a catalogue of extraordinary feats came 300 in three hours for MCC against Northern Transvaal in Benoni on the 1948–49 tour of South Africa.

It was football, however, which laid him low when an old knee injury became a real handicap and he had a disastrous tour of Australia in 1950–51 averaging only 7.57 in four Tests. The Compton Knee became a running story in the newspapers, but he showed he was no dilettante by fighting injury and scoring the winning runs when England regained the Ashes after 20 years at The Oval in 1953, his highest Test score, 278 in 290 minutes against Pakistan in 1954 and making 94 in his final Test in 1956.

If there was a flaw in his Boy's Own Paper story it was in his running between the wickets. Trevor Bailey, an England colleague, said, ‘A call from Denis was merely the basis for negotiation.’ And he even managed to run out his brother, the Middlesex wicketkeeper and Arsenal centre half, in Leslie's benefit match. But that apart he just has to be in my side over other major players who on figures alone demand consideration.

The Best XI

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Dr William Gilbert Grace (1880–99)

Sir John Berry Hobbs (1908–30)

Sir Leonard Hutton (1937–55)

Walter Reginald Hammond (1927–47)

Denis Charles Scott Compton (1937–57)