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The Class of the Year .....

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
Here is a list with a change.

These are five teams of players in which all the players in each team made their test debut in the same calendar year. It was easier to do this excercise for recent years with more test teams and therefore more debutants per year and very difficult for the early years. Still I have managed to pick two sides from the 40's. one from the fifties, one from the seventies and one from the nineties.

From 1990 onwards one can pick a side with ease for almost every year but these are my five favourite sides in terms of class and overall balance. Here they are in batting order


The Class of 1946
  1. Vinoo Mankad (LAS)
  2. Arthur Morris
  3. Rusi Modi
  4. Vijay Hazare (RAMP)
  5. Keith Miller (RAF)
  6. Colin McCool (LALS)
  7. Ray Lindwall (RAF)
  8. Godfrey Evans (k)
  9. Ian Johnson © (RAOS)
  10. Ernie Toshack (LAM)
  11. Alec Bedser (RAMP)

The Class of 1948
  1. Frank Worrell © (RALS)
  2. Alan Rae
  3. Neil Harvey
  4. Everton Weekes
  5. Clyde Walcott (k)
  6. Polly Umrigar (RAMP)
  7. Denis Atkinsen (RAMP)
  8. John Goddard (RAMP)
  9. Jim Laker (RAOS)
  10. Johnny Wardle (RALS)
  11. McCarthy (RAP)

The Class of 1958
  1. Subba Row
  2. Hunte
  3. Ted Dexter (RAMP)
  4. O'niell
  5. Butcher
  6. Saeed Ahmed
  7. Chandu Borde (RALS)
  8. Illingworth (RAOS)
  9. Eric Atkinson (RAFM)
  10. Wes Hall (RAF)
  11. Lance Gibbs (RAOS)

The Class of 1978
  1. Desmond Haynes
  2. John Wright
  3. David Gower
  4. Alan Border ©
  5. Mike Gatting
  6. Graeme Wood
  7. Kapil Dev (RAFM)
  8. David Murray (K)
  9. Malcolm Marshall (RAF)
  10. Bruce Yardley (RAOS)
  11. Rodney Hogg (RAP)

The Class of 1992
  1. Aamir Sohail
  2. Andy Flower (k)
  3. Damien Martyn
  4. Inzemam
  5. Jimmy Adams
  6. Hansie Cronje (k)
  7. Brian McMillan (RAMP)
  8. Shane Warne (RALS)
  9. Paul Reiffell (RAMP)
  10. Alan Donald (RAF)
  11. Muralitharan (RAOS)

The 1946 side has a very deep batting line up but the all rounders start early. This gives them the most powerful bowling line up of the five with Lindwall and Miller to bowl truly fast, Bedser one of the three greatest medium pacers of all time, a fantastic left arm spinner in Vinoo Mankad with Toshack for company, a superb right arm leg spinner in McCool and a fine off spinner in Johnson. Add to that Hazare and McCool's more than modest bowling skills and you have nine bowlers. seven of whom have taken a five for in a test innings three times or more !!

The batting is not as bad as it appears. The first eight have all scored test hundreds.

The 1948 side is very strong in batting with the three W's besides Harvey and Unrigar, but inspite of a plethora of all rounders, the real strike bowler is just one in Jim Laker.

The 1958 side is a fairly string batting side and with Hall and Gibbs has to of the top bowlers of the sixties but it doesn't look like an all conquering side somehow.

The 1978 side is well balanced and in Marshall and Kapil have two great user of the new ball besides the volatile Hogg and the steady Yardley. The batting is good without being imposing.

The 1991 side has a terrific attack headed by arguably the teo greatest spinners of all time - with over 1500 test wickets between them and counting. They have a great fast bowler in Donald with two decent assistants in Reifell and McMillan. The batting is headed by Flower and Inzy but again doesnt look imposing,

Anyway, I cant decide which of these five is the strongest - can you ?
 
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Goughy

Hall of Fame Member
Interesting concept. Ill have a look at doing a few when Ive time.

However, isnt 1946 a bit of a cheat as its a lot of players who would have debuted earlier if not for the War?
 

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
Interesting concept. Ill have a look at doing a few when Ive time.

However, isnt 1946 a bit of a cheat as its a lot of players who would have debuted earlier if not for the War?
You could say that but how can one make a side for , say, 1941 :)
 

Goughy

Hall of Fame Member
Class of 1989
Not as strong as I thought it ewould be, but it appears not too many debuted this year. Still not a bad team though

1 Mark Taylor (capt)
2 Atherton
3 Tendulkar
4 Tom Moody
5 Shane Thomson
6 Hashan Tillakaratne (wkt)
7 Chris Cairns
8 Trevor Hohns
9 Ian Bishop
10 Waqar Younis
11 Angus Fraser
 

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
Good job as always, sjs...will be interesting to see the class of 1996...
Here it is

Class of 1996

  1. Herschelle Gibbs
  2. Mathew Elliott
  3. Rahul Dravid
  4. Saurav Ganguly
  5. VVS Laxman
  6. Nathan Astle
  7. Lance Klusener/Robert Croft
  8. Mohammad Wasim (keeper)
  9. Jason Gillespie
  10. Venkatesh Prasad
  11. Kasprowicz

The problem here is no proper spinner. You could bring in Robert Croft and drop Klusener, maybe.
 

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
Class of 1989
Not as strong as I thought it ewould be, but it appears not too many debuted this year. Still not a bad team though

1 Mark Taylor (capt)
2 Atherton
3 Tendulkar
4 Tom Moody
5 Shane Thomson
6 Hashan Tillakaratne (wkt)
7 Chris Cairns
8 Trevor Hohns
9 Ian Bishop
10 Waqar Younis
11 Angus Fraser
You could consider Devon Malcolm in place of Trvor Hohns
 

Magrat Garlick

Global Moderator
2005 had decent batsmen.

Phil Jaques
Upul Tharanga
Michael Hussey
Shane Watson
Kevin Pietersen
+MS Dhoni
Brad Hodge
Gayan Wijekoon
Mohammad Asif
Charl Langeveldt
Shaun Tait

Admittedly the bowling is injury prone. But the middle order is reasonably solid.
 

Magrat Garlick

Global Moderator
If you can't find a better bowler then Wijekoon, then I feel sorry for your cricketing knowleadge.
OK, here are the other candidates...

Nuwan Kulasekara
Shaun Udal
Syed Rasel
Shahadat Hossain
Liam Plunkett
Iain O'Brien
Chris Mpofu
Graeme Cremer
Waddington Mwayenga

It was a hard task.
 

Jamee999

Hall of Fame Member
Class of 2000
ME Trescothick
MH Richardson
CH Gayle
KS Sangakkara+
RR Sarwan
Younis Khan
ND McKenzie
DA Marillier
MJ Hoggard
Z Khan
CS Martin
 

Beleg

International Regular
92 is the winner comfortably, IMO. Three of the greatest bowlers to have graced the game, two great batsmen, three very good batsmen and adequate bowling support.

All the players in that list would easily make their way into any of the teams playing currently. With the exception, perhaps, of Aamir Sohail.
 

Dissector

International Debutant
Yeah I think the 92'ers are the best though the 46'ers would give them a run for their money. However as noted earlier the 46'ers are really several years backlog who couldn't play earlier so it's quite natural they are very strong. To a lesser extent there is a similar story for the 92'ers with 3 South African's who might have debuted in different years if South Africa had been playing earlier.

The 92'ers are a good indicator of why the 90's are perhaps the greatest decade in the history of the game: the return of SA and the emergence of SL and the revival of spin bowling.
 

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
2005 had decent batsmen.

Phil Jaques
Upul Tharanga
Michael Hussey
Shane Watson
Kevin Pietersen
+MS Dhoni
Brad Hodge
Gayan Wijekoon
Mohammad Asif
Charl Langeveldt
Shaun Tait

Admittedly the bowling is injury prone. But the middle order is reasonably solid.
You could have considered Liam Plunkett (23 test wickets at 29.8) and Bangladesh's Shahdat Hussain (42 wkts at 36.7). In fact, Shahdat Hussain is the most successful test bowler of all those who made their debut in 2005.
Shaun Tate has only 5 wkts at over 60 and Wijekoon has only 2 test wickets till date.

As a batsman (again in tests since this is about test cricket) Shane Watson has a top score of just 31 in 3 tests while Phil Jaques has 2 hundreds and 5 fifties in 8 tests at an average of over fifty !!
 

Flem274*

123/5
Class of this season (07/08) anyone?

I'll add a few names, though they may be innacurate:

Mark Cosgrove
Ross Taylor
Ishant Sharma
Tim Southee
Mitchell Johnson
The Morkels (did they debut this year?)
Ryan Sidebottom (who cares about his test a zillion seasons ago)

I'm sure our tour to England will throw in a few debutants, whether they'll be any good is another thing entirely.
 

weldone

Hall of Fame Member
Yeah I think the 92'ers are the best though the 46'ers would give them a run for their money. However as noted earlier the 46'ers are really several years backlog who couldn't play earlier so it's quite natural they are very strong. To a lesser extent there is a similar story for the 92'ers with 3 South African's who might have debuted in different years if South Africa had been playing earlier.

The 92'ers are a good indicator of why the 90's are perhaps the greatest decade in the history of the game: the return of SA and the emergence of SL and the revival of spin bowling.
so true...
 

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