Your All Time Teams for Every Format (After 1975)

[Lillian Thomson]

30+

Lucky guess.

 

[aussie]

Ha you had to be if as you've always claimed, you saw Botham as a peak, that Procter bowling performance live etc etc..

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Ha you had to be if as you've always claimed, you saw Botham as a peak, that Procter bowling performance live etc etc..

I was being sarcastic at your stating of the bleeding obvious. When you used the world "elder" I wondered what you consider to be old. If it's anything over 30 then I should point out that when your mother told you if you eat up all your nice vegetables you won't get any older, she was lying.

 

[aussie]

Haa no LT no reference to age. By edler i meant you along with SJS, luckie eddie, archie_mac, goughy, bagapth etc. Are among the few blokes on this site that saw great players from the past play live. Thus opinions of them should hold some weight (unless some bias favouritism is involved), over those of us who would have to use stats & highlights to come to a conclusion on past greats.

 

[flyslip]

Tests;

Sunil Gavaskar
Matthew Hayden
Viv Richards
Sachin Tendulkar
Brian Lara
Adam Gilchrist
Imran Khan
Shane Warne
Anil Kumble
Malcolm Marshall
Glenn McGrath

Check out that bowling attack.

 

[zaremba]

Which means you're picking him on 4 years of hypothetical performances.

No. He wasn't playing Tests, but the cricket he was playing was far from hypothetical.

Anyhow, personally I'd be pretty happy to pick Viv Richards for an all-time T20 team even though his entire T20 career really was hypothetical.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

No. He wasn't playing Tests, but the cricket he was playing was far from hypothetical.

Ignoring the semantics of selection qualification, would you personally pick Mike Procter ahead of Ian Botham?

 

[zaremba]

Ignoring the semantics of selection qualification, would you personally pick Mike Procter ahead of Ian Botham?

If I could be guaranteed the Ian Botham of the late 70s/early80s I'd pick him above just about anyone including Procter. However the relevant period also includes the period when we had to watch a bleach-mulleted embarrassment waddling around the cricket fields of the world from the mid-80s onwards. For most of the second half of his career Botham was hardly Test class, and arguably some way short of Test class.

If you take the entirety of Botham's career, good and bad, I might just take Procter.

Procter was a serious fast bowler and also probably a more capable batsman than Botham.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

If I could be guaranteed the Ian Botham of the late 70s/early80s I'd pick him above just about anyone including Procter. However the relevant period also includes the period when we had to watch a bleach-mulleted embarrassment waddling around the cricket fields of the world from the mid-80s onwards. For most of the second half of his career Botham was hardly Test class, and arguably some way short of Test class.

If you take the entirety of Botham's career, good and bad, I might just take Procter.

Procter was a serious fast bowler and also probably a more capable batsman than Botham.

I think when picking this sort of side you have to take a player in his prime as long as the prime was for a long enough period. That's why I say that Viv Richards is the best batsman I've ever seen although he obviously wasn't as good by the late 80's/early 90's.

I always say that Muhammad Ali is the greatest boxer I've seen but if you take the shambling wreck that fought Larry Holmes or Trevor Berbick I would have fancied my chances myself.

 

[zaremba]

Fair enough. And on that basis, Botham was one of the greatest players there's ever been, and he'd have a very good chance of getting into my 1975 - 2009 team.

 

[Ikki]

Tests;

Sunil Gavaskar
Matthew Hayden
Viv Richards
Sachin Tendulkar
Brian Lara
Adam Gilchrist
Imran Khan
Shane Warne
Anil Kumble
Malcolm Marshall
Glenn McGrath

Check out that bowling attack.

If you're going to have 2 spinners...surely it has to be Warne and Murali.