Matt79 said:
All time:
1) Australia (Ponsford, Trumper, Bradman, Chappell, Border, S.Waugh/Harvey, Gilchrist)
2) Eng (Hobbs, Hutton, Hammond, Grace, Barrington, Compton, Ames)
3) WI (Greenidge, Fredricks, Headley, Richards, Weekes, Sobers, Walcott)
4) Ind (Merchant, Gavaskar, Dravid, Tendaulkar, Hazare, Ganguly(?), Engineer)
5) SA (Taylor, Richards, Nourse, Pollock, Kallis, Mitchell, Boucher)
6) Pak (Hanif Mohammad, Anwar, Abbas, Miandad, Ul Haq, Mohammad Yousuf, Bari?)
7) NZ
8) SL
9) Zim
10) Bang.
I'd go for:
Australia: Hayden, Morris/Trumper, Bradman, Ponting/Border, Chappell, Waugh, Gilchrist.
England: Hobbs, Hutton, Compton, Hammond, Barrington, Grace, Ames
Windies: Greenidge, Hunte, Richards, Headley, Lara, Sobers, Walcott/Dujon
India: Merchant/Sehwag, Gavaskar, Dravid, Tendulkar, Hazare, Azharuddin, Engineer
SA: Barlow, Richards/Kirsten, Nourse, Pollock, Kallis, Mitchell, Lindsay
Pakistan: Hanif Mohammad, Anwar, Abbas, Miandad, Ul-Haq, Yousuf, Akmal
NZ: Sutcliffe, Richardson, Turner, Fleming, Crowe, Jones, Smith
SL: Jayasuria, Atapattu, Jayawardene, De Silva, Tillekaratne, Dias/Ranatunga, Sangakkara
I'm a bit hesistant to pick part-time keepers like Walcott to keep, as it seems like a bit of a cop-out, so Dujon is probalby the fair choice. Merchant vs Sehwag and Richards vs Kirsten depends on whether or not you require a lengthy test career as a key point of judgement or not. Ponting and Border is a close call for Australia, mainly because I think Ponting will get the nod once his career is finished, but right now Border is ahead. The Sri Lankan team is a bit makeshift because I know nothing about the Sri Lankan players before about 1995 or so. Haven't seen any of them bat and havne't read much, so it's just guesswork and stats, really. The rest of them I'm pretty confident in, though.
Obviously many key top 7 players in actual all-time XIs aren't there, like Kapil, Imran, Botham, Miller etc, since this is just about batting.