Quote:
Originally Posted by LongHopCassidy
You know who could bat quite fluently when he felt like it? Beefy.
This would require dropping Knotty for Ames or Stewart - who was perfectly fluent in an era of truly vicious fast bowling, and was routinely picked over Healy in contemporary world XIs - to shore up the batting properly at 6 and let Beefy be his volatile self at 7.
Then we could have ourselves four specialist bowlers to boot, and personally I'd pick:
1. JB Hobbs
2. L Hutton
3. WR Hammond
4. DCS Compton
5. MJ Brearley* (specialist captain in the English tradition), otherwise KF Barrington and Hutton as captain
6. AJ Stewart+
7. IT Botham
8. H Verity
9. AV Bedser
10. JA Snow
11. FS Trueman
Personally I don't see how Knott is an auto-pick anyway; it's not like he kept to anyone truly difficult except perhaps Underwood.
Also severely skeptical of SF Barnes' routine selection - record significantly inflated against a seminal South Africa and preferred to beat up amateurs in league cricket instead of giving his all for his county. In fact, his Ashes record is worse than Hugh Trumble's, who doesn't even enter ATG discourse.
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Best poster on CW for Brearley's selection
Jardine is his only rival in my humble opinion - at least from an English perspective