Muloghonto
U19 12th Man
Yes,but such truely great players dont exist in reality, outside of maybe 2-3 players in history fo the game. If you think Ponting is greater than Dravid across all conditions, that is simply not true. Heck, Lara is not greater than Dravid across all conditions either, even though he is considered greter than Dravid as a batsman. Those are the realities of breaking down the player-pool.And here is where we have to disagree. The mark of a truly great player is that they can dominate everywhere and anywhere against any and all bowlers. An atg side is called an all-time-great side for a reason, its composed of the greatest players of all time. Now not all factors are the same, so we make as informed assumptions as we are able to make based on the range of data available to us in order to attempt to compare players between generations, teams and conditions as accurately as possible. As soon as you play horses for courses, you are no longer picking the greatest players, you are picking the best players in x conditions. Greatest =/= best which is a fallacy that many a person has fallen for. What makes players great (among other aspects) is that they can perform in all conditions, its why Michael Clarke is one of the greatest players of the modern era while David Hussey has been unable to gain his baggy green. Likewise the great WI and Australian sides are rated as two of the best ever because they won consistently everywhere, or at the very least performed very highly. The #1 Ranked Indian and English sides of recent times, not so much. When you're making an ATG side, you're pretending its a real team, the core of the team should remain the same no matter what conditions you play in, because it wouldn't be a great team unless it could compete in a variety of conditions. Now if you were just subbing out a couple of players based on the conditions i would be completely fine with it, because thats what teams do, but the wholesale changes in the teams you propose, lol whut?
I do realize your point of the greatest player and the best player, but the greatest XI, in reality, is the best XI. This is because, what really matters is winning and that is better accomplished by playing horses for the courses from a pool of 15-20 players than a static XI because, reality is, the best players for a given condition would win you matches for that particular condition more than the greatest players over all conditions would. In reality, cricket XIs can stay static for a long time and they usually do because, cricket is a hard sport and even amongst the extremely good pros, the competence to play all types of bowling and deliveries and shots is not universal. Obviously, ability to play all types of bowling exceptionally well is the primary condition over mastery of pitch conditions. But such considerations dont exist in the greatest/best talent pool across a generation or two, worldwide.
So, IMO, horses for the courses, is the best idea.