Dream Match-ups

One of the most interesting things about cricket, is the gladiatorial aspect of it. At one point, everyone here must've pitted cricketers across generations in their imagination. This is a thread for the battles that you'd sell your soul to watch.
I'll start:
Bradman vs Marshall. Fairly obvious. The only time Bradman was made to look a mortal was Bodyline. But that was arguably because of the physical danger. Give Bradman a helmet and the 2 are on equal footing. Marshall had the nastiest skiddy bouncer in business too.

Gavaskar vs McGrath: Despite both their styles best described as dour, this would be very interesting as Gavaskar was an excellent leaver with an impenetrable defence and McGrath was the greatest corridor bowler. Both of them relentless.

Would love to have seen Shoaib Akhtar or McGrath bowling to Kohli, with a bit of sledging etc. thrown in in a close match.

We haven't really seen much of Steyn vs. Kohli either.

vcs said:

Would love to have seen Shoaib Akhtar or McGrath bowling to Kohli, with a bit of sledging etc. thrown in in a close match.

We haven't really seen much of Steyn vs. Kohli either.

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Yeah that would be awesome. Two hot headed pricks going st each other.

I would've loved to see Mcgrath in T20s at his best too.

Boycott/Botham/Gower v Warne.

Just to see if they could have played him any better.

I feel like Mcgrath Gavaskar is a bit predictable. Not many runs, but Gavaskar would do a much better job of blunting the new ball than most. Watching Mcgrath settle into a 5th stump line when the ball isn't doing anything vs Gavaskar would be painful to watch.

Steyn vs any top right hander is a bit predictable as well. If he's not at his best they tend to do pretty well. If he is, they don't last. The only time I can remember a right hander winning a clash with an on song Steyn was Tendulkar, but there were an outrageous amount of near edges in the process.

The others, I'm not too sure. Would be great to see.

Warne/Murali Vs Sobers would have been pretty fun to watch too. I suspect if they couldn't get on top of Sachin or Lara they'd struggle with Sobers.

Sehwag against a truly nasty pacer like Lillee would be fun to watch. Maybe even Ambrose. The staredowns would be great.

***** said:

Warne/Murali Vs Sobers would have been pretty fun to watch too. I suspect if they couldn't get on top of Sachin or Lara they'd struggle with Sobers.

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Top spinners vs top players of spin will almost always come down to pitch conditions to some degree.

What would Steve Smith vs Mcgrath look like? 5th stump line attempting to bore him out?

McGrath vs Viv
Sehwag vs O'Reilly
WI pace quartet vs Ponting
Stuart Binny vs Bradman

Barnes(who IMO was the greatest bowler ever) vs Bradman

I'd actually really enjoy watching Sobers, Kallis, Grace, Wilfred Rhodes, Imran Khan, Botham, Hadlee, Dev, Miller, Benaud, Shakib, Aubrey Faulkner, Monty Noble, and all these other ATG/ATVG allrounders compete in single wicket/double wicket contests with a team of ATG fielders and keepers from across the eras (Rhodes, Constantine, Bland, Solkar, Symonds, Collingwood, Ponting, Waugh, Harper, Knott, Tallon, Healy, etc) providing support.

I know this is literally impossible, but that would be my dream

O'Reilly vs Lara would be great. Tiger thought left handers should be killed at birth and Lara was better against spin going away from him.

mr_mister said:

Barnes(who IMO was the greatest bowler ever) vs Bradman

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Well we got pretty close to that with Bradman vs O'Reilly.

Think Mcgrath vs Viv would go down like the first time Pidge bowled to Sachin, I think.

trundler said:

Think Mcgrath vs Viv would go down like the first time Pidge bowled to Sachin, I think.

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I think it goes down more like McGrath vs Razzaq tbh

***** said:

I think it goes down more like McGrath vs Razzaq tbh

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Nah only Shakib can do that.
Seriously though, Viv would just get bored and move across to hit him out of the park. Would work and then he'd get lbw.

Bradman vs Warne sounds good too since Don occasionally fell prey to leg spin but Warne got thrashed into oblivion by every great player of spin he faced at one point or another so I don't see him succeeding.

would love watching Wasim vs Kohli

Holding vs Ponting would be great. Ponting handled Shoaib at Perth well enough but Holding is an obvious jump in quality.
Ponting gets out, doesn't walk, Holding gets pissed off, tries to bounce him out.