Great thread Jono.
There would be literally hundreds for me, way too many to name, but I think that's largely because I came here with such limited cricket knowledge. My love of rugby league took me to online sports forum and my love of online sports forums took me to cricket. Now cricket is my greatest passion. When I joined here in in 2003 I only had a very passing interest in the sport; I liked ODIs more than Tests, knew of very few players who hadn't played international cricket for or at least in Australia since about 2000 and had no interest in the game's nuances or history.
This forum took my interest in and knowledge of the game way, way beyond what it was when I arrived, just by reading all your posts and getting sucked in. I now own dozens of cricket books, DVDs and videos, I don't think there's been a Test match I haven't seen at least a couple of hours of play of this decade, I spend hours every day reading articles on cricket websites, I run a simulation competition based on the sport, I've played probably close to 100 competitive matches now and spent just as long training and developing my own techniques, and so on.
The reason I'm posting all that in here is because I don't think any of it would've happened without this place. If this and even all other cricket forums on the internet went down for good then my interest in cricket would be unchanged, but I don't think it would've started or got to where it is now without this forum. And for that reason, all my opinions on players can be traced back in some way to what someone said here. My knowledge of cricket history is basically a child of the forum.
I know of all the candidates for each nation's all-time great side and at a base level at least why they're considered great (and much more in many cases) as well as every current international player and most signinficant domestic cricketers across the world. All that knowledge and all those opinions have started with someone making a post about a player here, then me deciding to research them further by reading old articles, books, contemporary accounts etc. A post here has been a starting point for my interest in a player to kick off in about 90% of cases. Of course I don't just stop with what people say here but it's always a starting point; it gives me my first impression of a player, so my opinion is changed from nothing to something on the spot.
So before I think of some big specifics and post them in here, my first answer is that this forum as a whole changed my opinion of cricket.
