ODI team of players from the pre-ODI era

[Matt79]

For the sake of amusement/discussion, I thought it would be interesting to pick a team of players from the era before ODIs were played that you'd think would be a good outfit, ie. of players who, despite never having had the opportunity to play one day cricket, would be natural ODI players. I'd define this as players whose careers finished around 1970 - I'm including Garry Sobers, and he'd be about the latest player I'm including.

I'll preface this by saying that I recognise that any attempt to compare across such different eras is of necessity highly speculative, and that obviously very few of us on this site would ever have seen any of the players involved live - so there's no need to post to point that out!

After a little thought, I'd have:
Trumper
Hammond
Bradman
Sobers
Constantine
Miller
Walcott +
Benaud
Davidson
Lindwall
O'Reilly

A preponderance of Australians with a decent splash of West Indies style verve and sparkle. Sobers' allround skills makes him the first name on the list. Hammond and Trumper's ability to play shots gets them the "pinch-hitting" openers role, while Bradman's quick scoring in Tests (plus overall ability) suggests he'd be well-suited to the short-form. Walcott's in as keeper as he showed he could do it, and his ability to hit the ball with great power suits him to the lower order role of coming in and smacking it about - a role where hopefully he would be spared too big a workload as in his test career, keeping definitely affected his batting. Miller as a bowler of great variety, and a shot-making batsman is a natural. Lindwall sounds to me to have been a natural one-day bowler, with a lethal yorker, the ability to move the ball, and what Plum Warner described as the best range of slower balls he had seen. O'Reilly again kept batsmen guessing with changes of speed etc, and even Bradman found him hard to hit away, so he's a good fit too I guess.

Do people have variations, suggestions?

[Richard]

Any attempt to compare across such different eras is highly speculative.

Very, very guessworky IMO. And one thing I'd add seriously is that there are all sorts of players who, had OD cricket been started being played, say, in 1900, would have emerged as "one-day specialists" who, possibly, achieved little of note in Tests.

[archie mac]

Gilbert Jessop, huge hitter, fast bowler and one of the best cover points in the games history

[_Ed_]

Originally Posted by archie mac

Gilbert Jessop, huge hitter, fast bowler and one of the best cover points in the games history

Beat me to it.

[Matt79]

Originally Posted by Richard

Any attempt to compare across such different eras is highly speculative.

Very, very guessworky IMO. And one thing I'd add seriously is that there are all sorts of players who, had OD cricket been started being played, say, in 1900, would have emerged as "one-day specialists" who, possibly, achieved little of note in Tests.

Richard - you made a joke! That or my sarcasm detector is on the blink!

Yeah, you'd think that given the hypothetical opportunity, a similar division between those suited to ODIs and Tests would have emerged.

[NUFAN]

Len Hutton
Don Bradman
Neil Harvey
Graeme Pollock
George Headley
Gary Sobers
Keith Miller
Bert Oldfield
Sydney Barnes
George Lohman
Jim Laker

[oz_fan]

Not sure if they're good enough to make the team but here are a couple of players I think would come into contention: George Ulyett, Jack Gregory, Alec Bedser (economical bowler with lots of variations).

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Matt79

Richard - you made a joke! That or my sarcasm detector is on the blink!

Yeah, it certainly is. Me making a joke is, after all, completely impossible.

[chris.hinton]

Hobbs should be in there

[aussie]

New Zealand'd John Reid is another good option.

[thierry henry]

well in aussie, was about to say that