Good post, you can definitely make the case for having the best bowlers & the variety in their bowling.
Certainly Barnes & McGrath were never in doubt with being selected, this is of course because they were the best bowlers of their country at the time. But when you now have a pool of bowlers who are close to their ability but can also bat on top of that I believe it is worthy of a discussion.
I suppose with the writeups & discussions regarding bowling styles/pairings that creates more interest than simply stating who averaged more with the bat. Additionally that being judged on the primary skill is more significant for their place in an ATG side as a bowler. My point isn't about who the best bowlers are, it's whether their place in the team creates a better chance of winning vs a very good bowler who can also bat.
My scenario is that your chosen XI plays the remaining best XI, if we exclude Bradman there would not be many runs difference between the 1st & 2nd XI's batting lineup. The runs the tailenders make could be the difference. I personally believe there is a plethora of top bowlers who can take 20 wickets of ATG batsman, Miller got Hutton out regularly, Khan with Gavaskar & Hadlee with G.Chappell & Border.
Even the best batting teams of history have been bowled out to standard bowling attacks, how would they fair against a star studded attack with no reprieve?
Not saying it's fair but I suppose there is the double standard because everyone bats but not everyone bowls. You lose effectiveness if your best bowlers are not bowling so the importance of a 6th/7th bowler in the side is smaller than runs that a number 8 bowler may contribute.
Side note: an interesting strategy would be to have a team of batsman who can bowl different styles to target specific weaknesses in a batsman's game, a swiss army knife of a team. However I suspect that just having specialist bowlers on would work better.
I mean that's fine if you like McGrath he is brilliant but realistically every player in an ATG team has a close replacement other than Bradman. I wouldn't immediately write off an approach just because it omits one player.
Disagree on the batting ability. Khan, Miller, Hadlee have good averages for a reason, they've scored hundreds against the best opposition they've played. Maybe they don't get as much as usual but they still make a lot more than Mcgrath, Ambrose & Lillee would. Especially if it was a series.
If every run counts, how about every wicket.
I have to believe that as a selector that you start with looking for the best attack, when you then start replacing those guys based on who can bat, that's the philosophical bridge I can't quite get across. Their primary job has to be taken into account, especially when that primary job is the most important one to get you 20 wickets and win a test match.
That being said, and as I've posted somewhere recently, Imran for instance was seen as, at best the 4th best bowler of his era and, yes, easily rated lower than Hadlee.
Let's forget the ball tampering and home umpires for a second, no one thought he was as good a bowler as Hadlee, or Lillee for that matter, and he was seen by some as below Holding as well.
Hadlee too, while ahead of Imran was also rated below first Lillee then, then Marshall. And I don't mean by one or two people, it was unanimous, every batsman throughout the era and his career. Boycott, Border, Gower, Snow, Richards, they will all tell you the same thing, it was Lillee, then it was Marshall.
Martin Crowe did his AT XI and he had Hadlee in his second team, along with Imran.
But becuse Imran can bat, we would choose the 4th best bowler of his era over someone like McGrath who was by some distance the best of his and someone who was the primary reason his team became arguably the greatest ever.
It's like saying, out batting is struggling and we're not scoring enough runs, and your solution is let's change 9 and 10.
1. If the all time batsmen are struggling, don't see 9 and 10 making that difference, and certainly not consistently.
2. That's not where you address,.you fix the batting.
Slip fielding has and will always be more important and critical to team success. The statistical and anecdotal evidence is there. No one says swap out Sachin with Hammond, Kallis or Chappell, because you just need 3, and at the end of the day, the primary job is still the best bat at 4, and one already has Sobers, Richards and Barry (for me) or in an absolute punch Warne (not preferable but hey).
At least acknowledge that you 10 and 11 doesn't have to be batsmen and at least your starting bowlers who you've entrusted to bowl out the opposition can be selected based on their skill doing that.
